Caren Osten shares her thoughts on travel, writing, and life balance in her Blog

Let’s Embark

While the definition of embark relates to boarding a vehicle, it also means to begin a course of action. As we go from moment to moment, day to day, year to year, new beginnings emerge as new phases, mindsets, commitments, relationships, and perspectives change and vary. This blog is a place to share my thoughts and insights on the various adventures and daily journeys on which I, and we, will embark.

When Silence is Playful

When Silence is Playful

I recently went on a silent retreat for seven days. The kind where you don’t talk at all and do little other than meditate, alternating between 45-minute sessions of sitting on a cushion and walking mindfully back and forth as if you’re Ricky Ricardo pacing in the...

read more
Strategies to Start Savoring

Strategies to Start Savoring

All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the movement vital and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused. ―Martha Graham In the last month, I have watched my middle child graduate from college and my youngest graduate from high...

read more
How Do We Move Forward after Losing the People We Love?

How Do We Move Forward after Losing the People We Love?

Caring for ourselves and holding onto memories may hold the key. It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change. –Charles Darwin. In 1938, Harvard University began a...

read more
Here’s to Dogs, Peace + Positivity

Here’s to Dogs, Peace + Positivity

Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear you path. ―unknown Companion, yes. Exercise partner, big time. Cuddles, always. These are the more obvious benefits of dog ownership. But after doing some research, I learned about a number of scientific...

read more
Nature + Nurture: Travels in Chile

Nature + Nurture: Travels in Chile

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. –Lao Tzu   Getting to Chile—a narrow strip of land that sits between the Andes mountains to the East and the Pacific ocean to the West—is not quick, direct or easy. But even after three flights and a...

read more
Welcome to my New Website

Welcome to my New Website

Welcome to my first newsletter and my NEW website! In the last several years, I have taken on new projects as a certified positive psychology life coach. The year-long training I completed in 2014 with the Wholebeing Institute has been life changing—inspiring me to...

read more
Are You Really Listening?

Are You Really Listening?

"Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings...a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get...

read more
No Texts, Please, We’re Meditating

No Texts, Please, We’re Meditating

If you are either a resident or visitor in New York City, you won't have to search very hard to find one of the growing number of centers, classes and public spaces where you can drop in to meditate. In my latest piece for The New York Times, I explore the who, the...

read more

Archives