Alyssa Luboff, PhD

An old college friend once posted, “I’m from the middle of the country, and my political views are exactly the same—they fall right in the middle.” It was a tense election season, and I, swept up in the rhetoric of one side, could not relate. Didn’t the middle mean that you were only half right? And worse, that you were also half wrong?

If you tell me there is another side, opposite yours, I will believe you. There are so many ways – right and left, up and down, diagonal zig-zag and spiraling across all the sides of this 360-world we live in. It is important to see, to acknowledge all of them. If you tell me that other side is

As our world grinds to a halt – Flights canceled, production stopped, commutes erased – Our planet, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Reverses the flow and begins to breathe. She is healing, shedding, transforming. And this virus, ironically, attacks the human lungs. We gasp for air. What do we do now? Are we doomed? How do we breathe?

I once read the Tao Te Ching from cover to cover in a single afternoon. Sucked in and mesmerized, I had no words; simply, the truths of the Chinese classic resonated with my soul. This is how it is to flow with the universe. I emerged from my office as if to another world, my head swirling with the poetry of being. Everything felt alive, as if it were speaking to me, as if we were not separate, but deeply interconnected.

Do you crave someone who has all of the answers? A teacher who will step in and tell you what to do? Or, at the very least, someone to offer guidance, to tell you when you have strayed from your path, and when you are back on? – I have often wished I had such a person. Indeed, sometimes in life we find them, at least for a time. It is wonderful to study under someone who has mastered a skill we are just learning, someone who can offer us guidance, who can support us on our pa

One day in Tai Chi class, my instructor said something that surprised me. When you’re experiencing a lot of Yang energy and everything is going strong, he said, expect Yin to come along. In other words, when you’ve been flying high for some time, expect to come down. When life is easy, expect it to grow hard. Now, if you’ve ever heard of Yin and Yang, you’re probably wondering why this surprised me. I’m a healer and philosopher; don’t I know this? Life goes up and down. The p