Archive | Life columns & features 14-15

ONE of my favourite stories was written by author and western Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield in his book A Path with Heart. Kornfield, from an American Jewish home, had come to realise there was too much pain in his family. He was Ivy League educated, but ignorant when it came to his emotions. Continue Reading →

I HAD an acquaintance who killed a young man during a pub brawl by stabbing him with a knife. Continue Reading →

POLITICAL correctness has gone rampant. The UN believes that it should be illegal for parents to smack a child and that children should have the same protection from “assault” as adults. At the same time as horrific details of child sexual abuse are coming to light by way of clergy, and celebrity paedophile rings, loving parents who smack their child for running across a road could be dobbed in by teachers or neighbours and prosecuted as criminals — and then what, guys? Fifty lashes? Continue Reading →

There’s something about the marital bed that is not conducive to great sex. In fact, the whole house is a dampener when it comes to libido for many couples. When I ran Triple M’s Sex Show many moons ago, I heard from callers time and again that after a day of work, kids, and duties, let’s go to bed meant “Let’s go to bed”. Continue Reading →

My cat, which is a very large breed of cat (8.5kg, the size of a small lamb), has slept at the foot of the bed for eight years. In the months leading up to “the event”, I noticed he had been making his way up the middle of the bed, which didn’t worry me as he slept between myself and my partner, which was kind of cute. Continue Reading →

I RECENTLY travelled to Nepal with my spiritual teacher, a man known as Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Not the musician – Shankar is a common name in India – rather, a famous teacher or “guru” who was a disciple of the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (guru to The Beatles, and founder of the Transcendental Meditation movement). Continue Reading →

IT’S all too wonderful. Scientists in the US and ­Britain are working on a brain implant that will stimulate pleasure centres, according to an authority on Ayurvedic and complementary medicine and surgery, Robert Svoboda, speaking in Sydney as part of an ­annual conference run by the AYA association (Ayurveda Yoga Australia). Continue Reading →

I MET a man during my recent spiritual journey through Asia and Nepal, who shared a surprising story. He was married for 25 years. He and his wife loved each other deeply. A few years ago doctors diagnosed him with heart disease and told him he had to dramatically change his lifestyle. Continue Reading →

IN the wake of Charlotte Dawson’s suicide, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s drug overdose and with Michael Hutchence’s death again on our minds, many people are wondering why and how. “But he/she was so talented and beautiful …” Continue Reading →

TO many, the term “Conscious Uncoupling” sounds like a huge pile of psychobabble mixed with deluded New Age naivety. It left most media people and couples therapists shaking their heads when Gwyneth Paltrow used it to describe what she and her soon-to-be-ex-­husband Chris Martin were doing. Continue Reading →