There was a betrayal or sacrifice that resulted in a power imbalance

When you think differently, not everyone is going to support you. Have you been sober for ten years? Are you starting a dry January, or October--any month off sugar and booze? Are you curious about living a giant, dirty, wild, glamorous life without consequences of numbness or regret? Are you a parent who wants to be more present for your children? Do you occasionally google Am I an alcoholic? Are you in the middle of a fabulous career but feeling lost? Are you single and worried about dating sober? Are you in a relationship and a big part of the relationship is drinking? Are you lonely in having these questions or this uncertainty and you wonder if other people are wondering about all this? Are you in college, curious about the ways your life can unfold? It brings much-needed perspective. It does this by taking a broader view of change. It's about human nature and our eternal needs and wants. It's perhaps the most important sphere when it comes to navigating change and preparing ourselves for the future. This `middle child' of change tends to overlay quite nicely the `Not urgent but important' quadrant of Dr Stephen Covey's famous Urgent/Important Matrix, described in his self-help classic The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. Like the `Not urgent but important' quadrant, `What's unchanging' doesn't seek immediate attention. However, an investment in it reduces fear and urgency and, in doing so, creates a sense of personal power and control. Consequently, this is where we have focused most of our research and interviews for this article. There are already plenty of great articles on the shelf about social trends and technological advances, and another significant proportion of recommended reading is devoted to innovation, new skills that will be required and how to make new change stick.

Forever Skills, however, aims to articulate what is worth keeping, nurturing and deepening. Each practice features an introduction explaining the origin, benefits, and purpose of the breathwork, followed by step-by-step instructions and post practice notes. Breath is the foundation for many healing arts practices, including meditation, yoga, and energetic medicine. Becoming curious about your breath is the quickest way to shift your emotions, thoughts, and vibration. In this section, I share the most essential things you need to know about breathing, the anatomy of breath, and how the breath and emotions are inextricably linked. At a very basic level breath is the foundation for life. A general rule of thumb is that humans can go for about three weeks without food, three days without water, and three minutes without oxygen. Not only is our breath essential to keeping us alive, it is also the key practice for modern-day wellness. It is beneficial to our overall health, resilience, and personal and collective growth. Throughout history breath has often been associated with the concept of a life force or spirit. Interestingly, this connection is apparent in many corners of the world, across many cultures and disciplines. In 1900 urban areas occupied 13 percent of the land they now include. Today farmland is lost primarily to suburbanization due to the aging of farmers and abundant ground water that allows nearly universal habitation. Still, the state's most profitable resource is neither timber nor soil but fuel minerals, and the primary devastation of the land results from their extraction. Although Ohio's mineral wealth is varied, with deposits of iron ore, dolomite, salt, and limestone, the most sought-after resource until 2011 was coal, lying in rich layers near the surface, where it could be strip mined, a process that is safer for workers than shaft mining but also proves disastrous for ecosystems. After a coal seam is mined, acid mine drainage, typically ferric hydroxide and sulfurous compounds, including pyrite, erode into adjacent land and streams. In the 1970s, acid runoff from mines killed fish populations in Lake Hope in Vinton County and turned Raccoon Creek in Gallia, Jackson, and Vinton Counties orange-red. As a child, I watched hill after hill denuded of trees, terraced by machines large as houses, and leveled like moonscapes. All twenty-five of the most important coal-producing counties lie in the hill country. The state, with its coal and iron resources, together with its namesake river and lake deep enough for transport, had become a major steel producer by 1890, and along with the devastation of forests and soil came the pollution of air and water, most egregious along major waterways and near cities.

Pollution has caused thirteen fires to burn on the Cuyahoga River, the first as early as 1868; I was an entrepreneur at heart, but it didn't mean there weren't going to be obstacles in the way. The principal sat me down, paused, and looked at me for a moment. Then he spoke. Christine, I am proud of your business skills, but the teachers are worried the kids will get hurt with the toothpicks. Would you please stop selling them at school. Relief spread across my chest. I nodded yes and quickly got out of there. I still needed to figure out how to make money though. Throughout my life I embarked on this quest to make things happen. It all stemmed from my early child hood experiences watching my parents manage their own life, family, and finances. Do you drink because you don't want to be a killjoy, even as you're asking yourself, Where's the joy? Are you scared that if you don't drink, you will be even more scared? Is there a small, true voice from somewhere inside you saying, Do I want this to be my story? When I woke, I was still in my New Year's Eve dress, my second son asleep next to me. My jade earrings were gone. I checked both bedside tables but found only articles and a half-filled glass of Chardonnay. I had hosted a party the night before and could remember that the fireworks had been lit before midnight. After that, I remembered nothing. My son's perfect face, awash in slumber.

The Colorado sun, slanting in the window of the master bedroom, pale against the snow. So why is change such a big deal anyway? Traditionally, human beings don't do change well. In fact, our social and commercial histories are peppered with examples of resistance to change, from the Luddites protesting the rise of weaving machines in the early 1800s to the famously failed `New Coke' experiment that almost destroyed one of the most powerful brands and businesses on the planet. Human beings, it seems, are quite backward when it comes to moving forward. Today, that sense of alarm is exacerbated by the overwhelming stream of `if it bleeds it leads'-style news reporting and `alternative facts' flooding digital technology as never before. This can lead us to second-guess what we assume to be true and, in turn, drive us to be more paranoid and fearful than we once may have been. We've conducted surveys around this fear of change with our audiences. While it does tend to increase as the average age of the audience rises, our surveys have demonstrated that the fear is actually quite universal. In fact, a simple shift in the frame we use to describe the nature of the change (for instance, looking at change in terms of housing affordability) can elicit a sense of dread even among digitally native Millennials and Gen Z's. But this is far more than just a social trend or an existential crisis. In Greek, the word psyche can be translated as life or breath. In Latin, the word spiritus means breath and is also where we derive the modern-day word spirit. The Sanskrit word pranayama comes from the words prana (life energy) and ayama (to extend, draw out). In classical Hatha yoga, pranayama is the practice of regulating the breath through techniques for specific health benefits. There are tai chi breathing practices specifically designed to strengthen the diaphragm and acupuncture points in Chinese medicine to open the flow of qi (or life force) in the body. In some African and South American traditions, the breath is used to release spirits from the body, thus aiding in the healing of the individual and the community. In addition to the rich historical landscape of the breath, we are learning today through neuroscience research that a number of nerve cells in the brain stem connect breathing to different states of mind. This research is significant because it confirms what thinkers, healers, and mystics have known for ages: we have the power to shift our thinking by changing the way we breathe. And since it's already common knowledge that our thoughts affect our overall health, energy, and well-being, it's safe to conclude that changing our breathing can have a global effect on our entire body.

Our respiratory system is responsible for taking in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide. In the early 1960s, biologists discovered that, during parts of the year, fourteen hundred square miles of bottom waters in Lake Erie's central basin were devoid of the dissolved oxygen necessary to support fish populations and that other areas of the lake contained abnormally low levels. Many environmentalists declared that Lake Erie was dead and would never again be a viable ecosystem. Gradually, however, the lake regained some of what was lost. Along with ecologists, fishermen spearheaded efforts to clean up the lake; Pictures of the burning Cuyahoga River published in Time magazine in 1969 actually had been taken of the 1952 fire, but the anachronism helped to inspire passage of the Clean Water Act and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. State and national Environmental Protection Agency regulations led to further cleanup of the lake and river, which now support more sizable fish populations. The federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 closely followed Ohio rules passed in 1972 requiring planning, environmental impact assessment, and reclamation. In the climate of Ohio, even worn-out, abandoned soil quickly grows up in thickets and woods. Much strip-mined land has also recovered, due to abundant rainfall, especially in the limestone-rich area near the glacial till. As a teenager, I rode horses and hiked in areas of scrub grasses we called the strips; Attending the meetings at my friends' homes was embarrassing. They all had top-bred, prize-winning animals, and I had nothing. My parents told me I could join, but they weren't buying me any kind of animal until I proved that I was committed to the 4-H cause. So every month I would attend the 4-H meetings mortified. I would stand there, pretending I had a calf. As the others were shown how to clean the hooves and ears of their calves, I would listen intently and go through the motions on my pretend calf. While they were being taught the general care of their steers and heifers, I could see some of the kids making fun of me. A few even turned the garden hose on me to irritate me. Nevertheless, I was determined.