“Practice.”
We use that word a lot when it comes to yoga and meditation and mindfulness, and here’s one of my favorite parts of it all: there are lots of ways to practice. <<click on the image to read more>>
5 Hacks to Help Your Digestion While Traveling
Life on the road with relentless days and weeks of entertainment, client hospitality and multi course meals can leave you feeling sluggish and your metabolism just plain stuck. So here are five easy hacks to help your digestion stay ahead of your schedule. <<click image to read more>>
What Are Your Triggers? More Importantly, What is Your Response?
Triggers. They’re the things that set us off, and the things that we know, probably from repeated experience, will threaten to set our days, our agendas, and our emotions off the rails. <<click image to read more>>
Where We Are At, and How You Can Help
The Food and Wine Classic in Aspen remains the pre-eminent food and wine festival in America. After 35 years, the professionalism of the event and its offerings are as honed as the finest knife edge. But this year was different. <<click image to read more>>
What Else Can We Learn from Anthony Bourdain?
We can’t not talk about it.
Bourdain, I mean.
How could he not have known how much we appreciated him?
I’ve heard that a hundred times this past week, and wondered it, myself. <<click image to read more>>
Where Do You Go When You Want to Know?
Last week I attended my first cannabis event hosed by the entrepreneurial powerhouse Marcia Gagliardi of San Francisco dining bible Tablehopper and the genius behind MyMilligram – a site offering low dose, high quality cannabis products through a non-presumptive approach. <<click image to read more>>
Why is it So Hard to Just Be?
Several years ago I volunteered in the kitchen at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center near Muir Woods, north of San Francisco. A sign of instructions for cooks was posted that could not be missed. <<< click image to read more>>>
One Powerful Word To Reduce Your Stress
Philosophers, sages, teachers and critics have debated over translation, interpretation, and nearly every aspect of yogic philosophy, but the one thing that still unites all communities is the universal sound of Aum, or more commonly, “OM”. <<click image to read more>>
A Love Letter to Mystery and Mindfulness
“I don’t want to know everything about wine. Can we stop trying to understand it all? Let’s leave the mystery in…”
A good friend of mine, an importer in the wine industry, said that to me a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten it. <<click image to read more>>
Reduce Stress in 60 Seconds: Dial “N” for Nature
Decades of medical research, books, journals, and papers exist on the benefits of spending time in nature, the positive impacts on stress levels, and the our overall physical and mental wellbeing. <<click image to read more>>
The Secret Sauce of Work-Life Balance
There's something missing from most discussions of "balance" that I've seen.
It's what matters most.
Think about what matters most to you -- your priorities, your beliefs, the things you long for, the things you're utterly devoted to. <<click image to read more>>
Who and Where is Your Tribe?
The need to belong is a psychological driver behind a desire for human connection, but WHO are the people we want to connect with, beyond basic survival needs, and HOW do we find them? <<click image to read more>>
30 Days Are Over - What's Next?
Putting a new idea out there — such as this 30-day practice for the wine industry on breathwork and meditation — is a lot like turning on a lightbulb. Once it’s lit, we’re more able to see what we couldn’t see before. << click on image to read more >>
The Importance of Showing Up
Our aim with the 30 Days of Practice is to share ways to help you navigate a career and industry that can be difficult at times. But there’s one thing we can’t teach you how to do, which is perhaps the most critical step in the process –- and that’s to show up in the first place.
Don't Think You Have Time to Meditate? Try This Instead.
Don’t think you can find time in the day to meditate?
Think instead about the times during the day when you move.
As in, walking – from your car to the office, say, or walking the dog, or even walking from one meeting to another. Notice the different paces of walking – sometimes briskly, others leisurely. <<click image to read more>>
Two Tools For Better Breathing and one is FREE!
As we draw to a close of our 30 Days of Practice, here’s two simple resources I have found instrumental in helping get deeper into my breath and manage stress, concentration and anxiety - and one is free!
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The Light in You
In the presentation that launched this 30-day practice, for my part on meditation, I spoke about two things that seemed like fairly radical ideas.
The first was to underscore that quieting your mind is a challenge, and that’s normal. It’s normal that a new thought crosses your mind every 1.5 seconds on average, and it’s normal that every new thought is a psychological release. <<click on the image to read more>>
Go Easy on Your Self-Talk
At Cathy’s kind invitation, earlier this week I spoke to a group of MBA students at Bologna University on the importance of narrative in wine storytelling. Storytelling one of my favorite subjects to study and share, and I truly believe compelling stories can take a wine brand from good to great. <<click on the image to read more>>
How to Find Your Center
“Stand with all four corners of your feet on the floor. Rock a little forward. Then rock a little backward. Then forward again, and backward again, a few times. Find your center.”
Sound familiar? <<click image to read more>>
Jetlag - 6 Tips To Take You From Fog To Fabulous
For the 6% of the population who never suffer jetlag, you are truly superheroes in my mind.
But for the other 94% of us, the sleepy, foggy, groggy feeling of jetlag can strike at the most inopportune times when traveling on business. <<click image to read more>>