” When I was five, my grandmother who was a Russian midwife and healer told me a creation myth about a huge crystal bowl in the dark sky. One night it shattered into millions of tiny seeds of light that lodged inside of every being on the planet. Each was called a spot of grace. She told me that our task as humans is to find, grow, and shine that seed into the darkness of the world. She said that when everyone does this, the bowl will be made whole again...These days, in a fragmented world of more than 6 billion people, it’s more important than ever that each one of us understands we’re unique and make a difference. So I decided to ask people to send me stories about the people and moments that helped them recognize that uniqueness and grow it.”

“ According to the author, we each contain our own hidden wisdom for how to change or heal, but it is the healer’s job to pull that knowledge out. The right story challenges our hidden assumptions, (that change is not possible, or that there is no way out or only one way out), by presenting us with new possibilities. Mehl-Madrona says that stories are alchemy — if we hear enough stories about transformation then we can’t help but transform. This is powerful stuff, as is the idea that biology follows context — and Coyote Wisdom is a beautiful and powerful book.”

Many years ago I, too, had what they now call an “STE,” or Spiritual Transformative Experience. Like others, I only told my mother and a few close friends at the time. In my case, I was fortunate in that it was not preceeded by an accident or life threatening illness, instead it came seemingly out of nowhere one evening. Just like a Near Death Experience, I was enveloped in light, spoke with guides, and felt the ecstatic bliss of unconditional love.

In his new book Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age Feiler notes that the idea that we’ll have one job, one relationship, one source of happiness for most of our lives is outdated, and that we now live in a non-linear world that forces us to make transitions. While this trend has been occurring for some time, what is new right now is that the whole world is going through these transitions at once. How we face these life altering changes, and what tools we can use to help the process these events is at the core of this book.

Those of us who weren’t born yesterday and haven’t been hanging out with Rip Van Winkle in Sleepy Hollow, know we are in a time unlike any before it. In addition to the many challenges we face – climate change, energy, education, healthcare, immigration, wealth inequality, gender and minority inequality to name a few — we are also in a demographic revolution that will, over the next several decades, result in 50% of our population here in the U.S and Canada and in every industrialized country in the world being over 50 for the first time in history. Increasing longevity, decreasing birth rates and shrinking tax base are just a few of the startling and relatively immediate implications this demographic revolution will have for those of us who are older GenXers, Boomers and Elders here in North America and billions more around the world.

Once they are free of their physical bodies and physically-oriented assumptions about the rules of reality, our dead can become extremely helpful and reliable psychic advisers, since they can see across space and time quite easily. We have this ability too, but while we are encased in physical bodies and self-limiting beliefs about physical laws and linear time, we often forget to use our ability to see beyond these things.

Monique Fay is a pioneer and a visionary in the fields of photography and healing. Her practice, based in Santa Barbara, CA, offers a unique synthesis of skills, wisdom and experience. She is the author of The Book of Fay and has just released The Apprentice Cards, a wonderful set of healing cards geared toward inspiring insight and personal transformation. The photos are stunning, and the experience of working with them immersive and powerful.

There’s increased evidence showing that practices such as qi gong, meditation and yoga can not only prevent disease, but actually reverse it and delay aging as well. As scientists learn more about such topics as gene expression, what turns a gene on or off, and how to prevent telomeres, (the strands of protein in our cells that control aging) from unraveling, it becomes impossible to ignore just how much our good lifestyle choices can pay off.

Dandelion, both leaves and roots, whether grown wild or cultivated, is full of medicinal benefits. The greens can be chopped into salad, cooked like spinach, or added to juicing, while the root form can be used to make an infusion/tea or extract. Pamela Ovadje, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Windsor, has done extensive work in investigating the anti-cancer properties of dandelions and other natural extracts. She found that an extract of dandelions can cause apoptosis, or cell death, among cancerous cells while not harming the healthy ones.