<![CDATA[

]]>

SANTA MONICA, Calif., Sept. 14, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Arianna Huffington received a resounding standing ovation at UCLA's Royce Hall on Sunday, August 30, 2015, after delivering the commencement speech at the Graduation Ceremony for the University of Santa Monica's class of 2015.

When Huffington took the stage, she acknowledged how many of the Principles and Practices of Spiritual Psychology she uses in her own life because her sister, Agapi Stassinopoulos, graduated from the University of Santa Monica and has been her "spiritual mentor for years." The topic of her speech was about how our unsustainably busy lives demand transformation.

She charged the student body, saying, "We are living under this collective delusion that burnout and climbing faster and faster is the only way to succeed. You know better and you can help the world realize there is another way and another path. … You've been given so many incredible tools. I want to add one tool to your toolbox, and that's sleep." Huffington shared, "I learned that lesson the hard way when I collapsed from sleep deprivation burnout and broke my cheekbone on the way down. But it was probably the best thing that could've happened to me, because as we learned, as you learned at USM, as we learn through life, Rumi was right: 'Live life as though everything is rigged in your favor.'"

Huffington was also entertaining, delighting the audience with her wit and humor. Anecdotes to illustrate her own and USM's philosophy that everything in life is a blessing —  included reflections on relationships. On her first serious relationship, with late, esteemed British journalist Bernard Levin, she said, "a man who was twice my age and half my size … but love is blind." She called her trademark Greek accent "a little bit the bane of my existence" and shared that before splitting up from her husband, Michael Huffington, he bought her sessions with the dialect coach who helped Tom Hanks with his Oscar-winning role in Forrest Gump. Huffington revealed the coaching didn't work. "So that was the end of marriage," she said, pausing for effect. "And the end of my trying to change my accent." She said she finally and thankfully came to terms with her Greek-inflected English, "when I met Henry Kissinger … . He said to me, 'Arianna, relax about your accent. In American public life, you can never overestimate the advantages of complete and total incomprehensibility.' "

She concluded by saying that the tools that a USM Soul-Centered education provides, are "not just the way to lead a happy life, but are actually transformational in the world around us. Now, onward and upward is no longer enough. Now it's onward, upward, and inward!"

Addressing the Class of 2015, University of Santa Monica President Dr. H. Ronald Hulnick quoted the poet and educator, Eli Siegel, who said, "All beauty is a making one of opposites." He went on to say, "USM is all about resolving what we call 'unresolved issues.' Every time we resolve one issue, we move from a perspective of war into a perspective of peace. We resolve enough of them and those two things come together. They come together in the place that is peaceful...and we can bring this peace to our interpersonal relationships, families and businesses."

Arianna Huffington's commencement speech is available online at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZR_jq_nDkU

The subject of Huffington's next book, The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time, is about the science, history, and mystery of sleep and is to be published April 2016.

The University of Santa Monica has provided educational programs in Spiritual Psychology for more than 30 years. USM is launching a new 10-Month Program in Spiritual Psychology, Soul-Centered Living I, beginning October 2. For more information, visit universityofsantamonica.edu.

To view this video on YouTube, please visit: https://youtu.be/WZR_jq_nDkU

Media Contact: Danielle Schoenecker, University of Santa Monica, 310-829-7402, [email protected]

News distributed by PR Newswire iReach: https://ireach.prnewswire.com

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150912/265908

SOURCE University of Santa Monica