Every night on the property you can hear two owls. One has a deep, slow hoot — a steam engine finally pulling into the station. The other is higher pitched, questioning. We’ve never seen them, but they have pet names anyway: Bert and Ernie.

That’s the preamble... 

Now the sun is setting and 9-year-old Micah runs into the kitchen shouting, “There’s a stuffed animal on the steps, but when you get near it moves!”

We troupe out into the garden and find this young friend:

A concerned call to the Ojai Raptor Center reveals:

1. She (or he) is a juvenile Great Horned Owl
2. It’s not uncommon to find juveniles on the ground. At this age they can climb trees but can’t fly.
3. We should clear the area and she’ll climb back up. And after about 30min that’s exactly what happens.

Bert and Ernie, all that time hooting… we now know what you were really doing! 

P.S. For those non Sesame Street folks out there

What feathered...

Is COVID 19, the meme, more replicative than COVID 19, the virus? 

The very idea of COVID-19 has precipitated an unprecedented shift in global behavior: quarantines, cessation of travel, remote work, personal hygiene, a return to the local, more cooking, less driving, more family time. 

It’s not like the world wasn’t already suffering from a variety of large-scale "dis-eases”: global warming, homelessness, famine AND obesity, cancer, diabetes, drugs, anxiety and loneliness. Government obfuscates. Nothing much changes.

It’s different this time. Why? What is it about COVID-19 that has broken the dam?

In times of collective grief and crisis, we are called to naturally do what we were born to do: to connect and give each other comfort. The irony is, as much as we want to hold each other now, we can’t. The best way to take care of each other is to physically separate. 

Here’s a simple Metta meditation that I have been practicing to send love and comfort to those I love (including myself). 

We’ve all been wronged, sometimes even by people we love. And, in the fog of betrayal, we plot our revenge. We scheme through the night, holding an ember in our hands waiting for the moment to throw it. But all this time, it is you that is getting burned. When you’re angry, you’re the one that is angry. You’re the one suffering.

There is only one answer: forgiveness. Because while forgiveness can be a gift you give someone else, it is also a gift you give yourself. 

There are quite a few behaviors that we can engage in (right now!) to bolster our immune system. Things ranging from utilizing apple cider vinegar, meditating more, getting ample sunlight, and limiting sugar, alcohol and caffeine intake. 

Bolstering our immune system is integral not only for our own personal health, but for our families, our communities and our society at large.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay home! Sending lots of love from the Commune family.

We know our emotions greatly effect our overall well-being, but we aren't always in touch with our heart's true desires. Enter Danielle LaPorte — a poet, speaker, author, and creator of The Desire Map, a method that helps you identify how you really want to feel day to day.

In this conversation, she and Jeff discuss the nature of divinity, the importance of connection, and what it means to live from the heart. Danielle's Desire Map Course is FREE on onecommune.com from May 20-29. Sign up now!

Danielle: I learned to love myself unconditionally through that, my most brokenness. I learned to heal myself hatred with love, and I got connected to God through all of that. It's so humbling. I was stripped of all judgment. Now with people I'm just like, "Yeah, what's ... I see you, I love you. I see myself in you. I see you in me, even the worst parts, the best parts." Just while I'm here, like incarnated. I just want to be loving.

Jeff: Welcome to Commune, a global...

In this special Mother's Day episode, guest host and "Commune muse" Schuyler Grant interviews her three daughters (ages 9, 11, and 14) on motherhood. Consider this your extra sassy insight into the Commune family.

Schuyler: Welcome to Commune, where each week we explore the ideas and practices which bring us together and help us live healthy and purpose filled lives. You've probably figured out that I'm not your host, Jeff Krasno. No, this is Schuyler Grant, and I'm Mr. Krasno's better half, and I've deposed Jeff this week in honor of Mother's Day.

Now, my own mother, Ann, bequeathed many things to me, a whole slew of questionable personality traits which seem to be manifesting with increasing frequency the older I get, and one of the things I definitely inherited from my mom is a distaste for holidays like Mother's Day, which appear to have been concocted by the chocolate and greeting card industries. In fact, I don't think I've ever called my mom on Mother's Day and I don't...

Welcome to Commune, a global wellness community and online course platform featuring some of the world’s greatest teachers. We’re on a mission to inspire, heal, pass down wisdom, and bring the world closer together.

This is the Commune podcast, where each week we explore these ideas and practices to help us live healthy, connected, and purpose-filled lives. You can learn more about our courses, our community, and everything else we do at onecommune.com.

Addiction hits close to home for so many of us. More than half of all American adults have a family history of problem drinking or alcohol addiction, and the growing drug crisis in the US is deadlier than gun violence, car crashes or AIDS, none of which have killed as many Americans in a single year as in 2017, when more than 70,000 people died from drug overdoses.

No area of the United States is free from this epidemic—most of us know a friend, family member, or loved one devastated by addiction.

This crisis...