I had a great coffee date with my new friend Dara of Soulfully Creative yesterday. (If you check it out and like what you see, be sure and get on the wait list for Emerge, because she'll be there to take us through a watercolor meditation!) We talked a lot about the energy of the atmosphere these days, and the word that kept coming up was dense. Things feel dense.

Do you feel that? Whether it's uncertainty, fear, fluster, frustration, or simply unsure of what to expect from what's to come, there's a sense of hunkering down out there. I feel it too!

But when we hunker down, we lose connection to each other and nature. When we hunker down, our energy becomes stagnant, dense, and tired. A metaphoric cloud rolls in and the lights get dim. And as like attracts like, the more dense we feel, the more dense we become.

But it doesn't have to be like this.

Believe it or not, when our system gets out of whack in one direction, the best thing you can do is increase the opposite energy. So if you...

When I was around 10 years old I received First Holy Communion. (This is when Catholics learn the meaning of the Eucharist and how to take it during mass.) We had to learn some prayers and traditions to go with the sacrament. It was at this time that I received a little white book with a plastic cover and a rosary. I don't remember what the book was called, but I know it had the instructions for the rosary prayer beads.

And, like a devout little Christian, I remember kneeling at my bedroom bay window and learning the prayers of the rosary. I was amazed at how simple it was. It was a couple prayers I knew, plus Hail Marys, which I did not. But once you've recited it 50 times, you've got it. There was something about this simple repetition that I loved.

From that time through my mid-twenties, there was a rosary under my pillow and the prayers were the last thoughts going through my head every night as I fell asleep. It was a beautifully peaceful way to fall asleep. The...