It seems we are all in need of some healing. And I guess this is always true, to some degree, but now probably more than ever. Thinking about it, a few links that might help. From life writing through the practice of breathing to creative work and choosing joy!

Here are the highlights:

• “How to heal through life writing” – an excellent article from Uddipana Goswami who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. And how expressive writing differs from life writing? “

In 1919, Virginia Woolf complained in her diary: ‘Life piles up so fast that I have no time to write out the equally fast rising mound of reflections.”

• Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. A fantastic book by James Nestor, an author and journalist.

The book “explores the million-year-long history of how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why we’re suffering from a laundry list of maladies—snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, autoimmune disease, allergies—because of it. I ended up traveling the world in an attempt to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers, I discovered, weren’t found in pulmonology labs but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo. Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. “

• “The Practice.” Seth Godin’s new book. You can find interviews with him here and here. And here is a snippet from his blog about it:

Creativity matters more than ever, and each of us is being called on to be a Creative. A professional, able to conjure original thought on command. We tweet, we run meetings, we write. We invent and share ideas. Mostly, we’re in a race to find our voice, change the culture and make an impact that we can be proud of.Along the way, we’ve also been brainwashed into believing that creativity is a gift, something mysterious that the muse hands to a few select people. We’re not to look at it too closely or it might disappear. Nonsense. Creative is a choice.

• And here are “The 10 Foundational Practices for a Good Life” from Scott H.Young, the author of “Ultralearning.” He has a very cool newsletter with wonderful drawings.

• And the last, from Maria Popova, could not fit better with today’s theme: “Choose Joy”!

Until the next time.