I’m excited to share good news about the growing access by ALS patients to the benefits of mindfulness and meditation. As readers of this column likely know, I’ve been on a quest to increase awareness in the ALS community about these wonderful mind-body practices. Being mindful…

Every few months, I stop and check in on what’s working in my life and what’s not. It’s a personal wellness ritual that’s served me well in the years I’ve been living with ALS. Today, I’m evaluating how well I’ve been following my intention for 2022 to “simply…

Anyone up for setting their New Year’s resolutions? Not me. Normally, I’d use these days in January to conjure up resolutions, create new daily routines, and set personal goals for the year ahead. But after the past two years of roller-coaster events that blew holes in my resolutions, I feel…

Ten years ago, if you had asked me how I was feeling when I woke up in the morning, I would’ve ignored you and disappeared beneath the blankets. That was during my first year with ALS, a time when I felt the weight of worry and having a life…

“The world will little note, nor long remember …”  These words of Abraham Lincoln were his prediction that the speech containing them would have no permanence. Ironically, the Gettysburg Address would become one of most enduring elements of Lincoln’s legacy.

Here’s a fun challenge. In the spirit of celebrating ALS Awareness Month, I invite you to play my A-L-S word game. It’s a simple game I created to help me cope with the stress and anxiety of being newly diagnosed with ALS. It goes along with the strategies…

A zero-sum game is a situation in which the accumulation of gain is accompanied by a sum of loss of equal value. The net result is always zero. From the get-go, ALS seeks to make that outcome an impossibility. It strives to force a plunging and irreversible deficit. In the…

An eight-week mindfulness-based meditation program improved the quality of life and psychological well-being of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a study reported. The randomized, open-label, controlled clinical trial covered 100 patients recruited between November 2012 and December 2014. All were diagnosed with ALS at least 18 months before the…