Actions To Take That Will Benefit Your 'Healthspan'

 In a recent article on Awaken.com, Peter Diamandis details the actions you can take right now that will allow you to age gracefully and get to 100. Click here to learn more...

How Animals Teach Mindfulness and Spirituality

Henry Gellis is a Southern California entrepreneur who is a founding investor of Awaken.com, an online publication with a unique emphasis on topics from healthy living to yoga. A recent article in Henry Gellis’ publication brought focus to lessons we can learn from animals when it comes to spirituality.

For adults, communing with other species may be mind-expanding and good for the soul. Children may have a particularly strong connection with animals, as they are closer to their elemental selves, free from information overload, expectations, and excessive cultural formations, including language. Different species each have their own ways of sharing, interacting, and loving, and to understand this first hand broadens our own capacity in these realms.

Through taking time to commune with an animal companion, adults may be able to bring themselves into a more mindful state, free from internal and external noise. In many cases, such interactions emphasize the importance of patience, as animals do not adhere to the time schedules of humans.

One approach to learning from an animal is to practice mindful breathing corresponding to that of the animal. Another involves learning to communicate fully without words. The author describes attending a workshop facilitated by a shaman who was also a horse trainer. One practice she found valuable centered on making requests of horses only using focused thought. To have the horse respond to the energy of these concentrated thoughts was empowering and enlightening.

Jane Goodall’s Experience That Transcended Mainstream Science

Henry Gellis is an established Southern California investment executive who helps to inform Awaken.com, an online health and wellness journal. The publication, in which Henry Gellis is a founding investor, offers a wealth of timely and informative articles across a spectrum that includes philosophy, spirituality, yoga, sustainability, and healthy living.

One recent Awaken.com piece, “Mystical Experience of Jane Goodall, PhD,” brought focus to a formative experience in the life of a pioneer in the conservation movement. A central mission of Dr. Goodall’s life was 55 years spent within Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park studying wild chimpanzees’ family relations and social interactions.

As Dr. Goodall recounted it, returning from an extended six-week US trip that centered on conferences, fundraising, and lobbying efforts, she again found herself in the wild place she loved and entered into a “state of heightened awareness.” The sheer beauty of what she saw around her, with no price tag attached, brought her to a state where sense of self was nonexistent. Rather, she found herself one with the earth, trees, and chimpanzees, and imbued with “the spirit power of life itself.”

This mystical experience, which lasted a single afternoon, had a profound impact on Dr. Goodall’s entire way of looking at life. From that moment on, she drew from the wellspring of a timeless truth, of which she felt mainstream science captured only a tiny part. This became a source of strength which she could always draw on when life turned “harsh or cruel or desperate.”

States Stand at the Forefront in Transition to Clean Energy

Based in Southern California, Henry Gellis emphasizes entrepreneurship with a purpose and is a founding investor in Awaken.com. Topics covered by Henry Gellis’ website span natural health, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, and the environment.

A recent article in Awaken brought focus to the increased importance of state efforts in promoting and commercializing clean energies. This is critical, given that the federal government has become less aggressive in this area since 2017.

With forward progress achievable due to the decreasing cost of clean energy technologies, 29 states have set in place renewable portfolio standards (RPS). These mandate generating or obtaining an increasing amount or share of electricity from clean energy technologies each year.

Thirteen states have also set in place 100 percent clean energy goals, often in tandem with an RPS standard. Unfortunately, not all of this legislation is enforceable, and some standards could be overturned through executive order by future governors.

With a handful of states bringing focus to energy storage as part of their mandates, California stands at the forefront in its residential solar photovoltaics (PV) standard. This requires that a majority of new homes have either rooftop PV systems in place, or community solar installations that homeowners can readily access electricity from.