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Video Blog Summary: In this video, Michael Hoffman discusses the importance of insisting that people treat your open heart with respect. We ultimately choose how people treat us by what we allow and disallow in our interactions with them.

Video Blog Summary: I discuss the importance of being aware of when you are open and when you shut down. This allows you to choose walking with your heart open and being connected to life

There were some tough lessons at the Summer Solstice Ceremonies this year. Challenging and painful, but critically important. Several days into our gathering, Ann Coughlin and Eve Costello conducted a series of ceremonies that guided me deep into the beauty of my heart. After each successive ceremony, I found myself to be more and more open and sensitive. When I returned to sit around the fire between ceremonies, I noticed even the most subtle forms of sarcasm or cleverness

We live in a vigilant culture. We are inclined to believe that if we do not prop things up, everything will fall apart. We come by this honestly. Our vigilance may be necessary on the make-ends-meet level. However, it turns out we are not wired that way at the emotional and spiritual levels. On the contrary, in these realms, it is more beneficial to stop propping things up and let things return to their natural state. Emotionally this may translate to simply allow ourselves t

Are you ready for spring? In my tradition of the medicine wheel, the new year starts in the spring. Spring is when a new cycle of your life is born. This is readily apparent in nature with plants sprouting and animals giving birth in the spring. To be clear, spring is when the essence of your new cycle is conceived, so it may not have taken form yet. It's also when your intention naturally begins to issue forth from you to create the new things you would have for yourself. Ac

Whether we realize it or not, we carry an intention for the things we want in our life. Life is constantly partnering with us to actualize the thing we intend for ourselves. Life is perpetually guiding us to what we intend by presenting doorways for us to step into. I recently missed the boat. I was tired on an evening after many days of hard work and had planned to relax and watch a movie at home by myself. Some things unfolded at the last minute that led me to be indirectly

This coming weekend we will set our clocks forward, and it will get dark an hour earlier in the evening. This seems to be the time of year when it begins to hit us that winter and shorter days are here. With increased darkness and longer nights, winter is a natural time of introspection- a time to look inside. So what is going on inside? Internally, we are changing all the time. Our mind, however, likes to see ourselves as static and stable. It creates an identity and persona

An unexpected transition occurs when something happens that forces you to reevaluate and change your life. When things are going well, there is little incentive to make a personal change. But then life happens. Just when you think your life is stable, something upsets your apple cart. Suddenly, you find yourself navigating a divorce, career change, or family crisis. While such transitions may be disorienting, they create a window of openness to reevaluate your life. In my exp

I woke up with the thought, "What if I was just totally open and supportive to my friend?” Then, a part of me pulled back and thought, “I will wait to do that after I see if another piece falls into place in our friendship.” I continued the conversation with myself: Hold on, why not just offer my openness and love regardless? It is not going to make the chances of things falling into place any less. In fact, it would seem to increase the chances of that happening. It suddenly

A vision is when you experience a specific possibility as a potential for yourself. It has to have the element of it being possible for you. It may come in the form of an idea, a dream, or a realization such as an "aha experience." Vision is direct communication from Life itself. In addition to serving you personally, vision is critically important to the culture that you are a part of. It was standard practice in many Native American and aboriginal cultures to receive and sh

The notion of the big world came from interacting with my cat when I lived in Oceanside, California. There was a fenced-in area on my patio that she could be outside but still protected. But if she went out the gate she was in the Big World. There were coyotes out there. While she liked the safety of the fenced world, but she was always happiest and seemed most alive when she was out in the Big World. Walking with your heart open requires you to live in the Big World. Life is

We tend to adjust who we are and what we say based on the people and setting that we are in. We often segment ourselves by allowing some parts of ourselves and excluding others in various interactions. We may dumb ourselves down or become more sarcastic to fit with the folks that we are with. We do things that are out of character. This inevitably causes conflict with ourselves. At some level, we know that we acted outside of our wholeness and integrity. Historically in oppre