Leslie Roberts: The headline reads: “How Childhood stress can knock 20 years off your life.” When we talk about childhood stress, we’re not talking about the most extreme, we’re talking about probably things that happen at your house and back in the day we didn’t realize what parents were doing to their kids, and I would say you know as I always do, parents do the best they can with the tools they have but a lot of toolkits were missing a few tools and as a result kids had some childhood experiences that could be affecting them later on into adulthood and I think that’s a conversation we have to have because a) you could have it and not know it and it could answer some of the questions about why you are the way you are why you react the way you do and b) there is something you can do about it

I was first introduced to formal meditation practice in a Zen dojo in 1994. At the time, my life was chaotic and it would remain so for another 10 years. On several occasions over these ten years, I tried to build a regular meditation practice. Although I never managed more than meditating intermittently, I have no doubt that what little practice I did manage helped me. It helped me by giving me a direct experience of distancing from my thoughts. I had previously experienced what I thought as being a part of my essence, as what was defining me, and thus of the utmost importance.