Kathleen Hall - Uncommon H.O.P.E.: A Powerful Guide to Creating an Extraordinary Life

Copyright 2010 by Kathleen Hall

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hall, Kathleen

Uncommon H.O.P.E. : a powerful guide to creating an extraordinary life /

Kathleen Hall.

p. cm.

1. Self-realization. 2. Hope. 3. Happiness. 4. Conduct of life. I. Title.

BF637.S4H3353 2009

170.44dc22

2009039308

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

BG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my beloved husband,

Jim,

and our daughters,

Brittany Anne

and

Mary Elizabeth,

and my soul mate,

Chloe

So many gifts from others made this book possible.

Thank you Dominique Raccah and Peter Lynch at Sourcebooks for your inspiration and guidance. You challenged me to journey deeper and further, and for that I shall always be grateful.

Thank you also to Judy Kirkwood for your grace and guidance in your editing.

I love you, dear friends, and am grateful for your encouragement and love: Pamela Hayling Hoffman, John St. Augustine, John Ratey, Joyce Newman, and Gina Niederhauser.

I am indebted to my patients and clients who have shared their joys, suffering, gifts, losses, life, and death. You have been my teachers, friends, sheroes, and heroes.

My dear media friends, you have challenged me and gifted me with a public forum, and for that I am humbled and grateful.

I love you and thank you for always being there for me on this life adventure, my dear sisters and brothers, Jon Mark, Jeffrey Dale, Theresa McNamara, and Susan.

I am grateful for the animals at Oak Haven who have been my four-legged angels that have guided me through many dark nights of the soul. You continue to teach me about love, play, and rest.

Chloe, my partner and soul mate of fifteen years, my devoted Jack Russell, you will always live in my soul.

Thank you to this mystical land of Oak Haven, where angels, saints, and mystics flourish and gift all who visit this ancient Cherokee land.

I am most grateful to my two daughters, Brittany and Elizabeth. Brittany, you have been my Buddha baby since conception. Your Divine gifts of love, tenderness, and healing have crafted you into an amazing physician, who continues to heal and love the sick. Elizabeth, my love for you is unwavering, tested, and true, angel. You have taught me that there really is freedom from suffering.

To Sister Mary and Sister Eleanor at Sacred Heart Monastery, thank you for loving me and teaching me the monastic gifts of love and healing.

Jim, my darling partner and the love of my life, we continue our great adventure together, and it gets more thrilling with each day. Each moment of our lives you make me a better person with your wisdom, love, and radical acceptance. I am humbled to be your life partner. You are a magnificent physician, who is a natural healer to our world.

Thank you, Holy One, for this act of cocreation. It is a sacred privilege experiencing life being present in the Presence in this ancient land.

I met Kathleen Hall at a think tank conference of world thought leaders that included Nobel Peace Prize winners, Pulitzer winners, CEOs, astronauts, medical pioneers, and other luminaries. She heard me talk about exercise as a stress inoculation, and I was riveted by her talk on happiness. This is different, I thought. Shes talking about truth and health and committing to being involved in creating a brand-new world.

She talked about how empty her life was as her career in finance soared, and what happened after she left that world to follow her own path, which took her to Emory University for a master of divinity degree and then on a world tour of monastic, mind-body medicine and meditation and spiritual centers. That eventually led her to establish The Stress Institute and The Mindful Living Network.

Synchronicity is the word I would use to describe our meeting and our work. We continue watering the seeds of our initial conversation as we talk about our discoveries and goals. Kathleen is both a conduit of ancient wisdom for perilous times and a spark for lighting the way home.

After reading Kathleens book A Life in Balance: Nourishing the Four Roots of True Happiness, I started telling people about the value of S.E.L.F., her acronym for self-care: Serenity, Exercise, Love, and Food.

My research in the science of exercise affirms its value not only for a healthy body but also for a healthy mind. As I write in my book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, The great thing about exercise is it leaves your body and your mind stronger and more resilient, better able to handle future challenges, to think on your feet and adapt more easily. Human bodies were made for movement, and if we dont get enough of it, we suffer both mentally and physically.

I have focused my work on the value of exercise, but the idea of serenity and ways of creating calmness in ones day was new for me personally, and its huge in mind-body balance. I was familiar with stress-management practices, but was not as serious about practicing things like affirmations, gratitude, and other calming techniques.

To be around Kathleen is to experience love because of her attitude of acceptance. At Oak Haven, the horse farm and home of The Stress Institute and The Mindful Living Network that she created, she fosters animals that have been abused. There may be fourteen dogs and several cats running around her household. The environment remains serene despite the high energy of the dogs (many of which are Jack Russell terriers) and their tendency to do what dogs do, because Kathleen accepts that cleaning up messes is part of life. Much of her wisdom has come from working with the worlds rejects, as well as the sick and poor, whether four-legged or two-legged.

The food Kathleen and her husband, Jim, prepare at Oak Haven is simple and nourishing. But what makes it special is the ritual involved in serving and eating each meal. They always sit down to meals. There is always a prayer by Kathleen thanking those who planted, harvested, and cooked the food and expressing gratitude for other gifts of the day, such as a guests presence. Food is more about the ritual of community and celebration than about merely consuming the food. Preparing the food and washing the dishes is preferably a group activity expressing the joy of cocreating and interdependence.