In a world increasingly defined by the noise and rapid pace of mainstream culture, a growing number of people are choosing to forge their own paths and embrace simpler, more ethical lifestyles that diverge from societal norms. I call this contemporary wayfaring, and...
Recently, in the weekly online sitting group, we've been exploring a series of ordinary words - words we use all the time - and contemplating how they may relate to or describe aspects of our practice, both on and off the cushion, chair or mat. The list of words was...
The image above was created by Dall-e (a wild new AI image generator), which I had fun playing with in the first few days after it was released to the public. I got an email invite, clicked on it, and was amazed at the possibilities... and then I started reading news...
The mountains around this beautiful old world are real, no doubt. The sky is spacious, and no arguments can make it otherwise. Water flows and ice stays still, period. We humans are part of nature, regardless of what we think, create or destroy. In the heart of our...
Winter Solstice Reflections: The beauty and benefits of turning inward.
Often, if you go to a mindfulness meditation class, the guidance will be to allow your breath to be natural. In other words, don’t control it. If you go to a yoga class though, you will likely receive instruction to intentionally lengthen and control your breathing,...
“The starting place for a radical re-imagining of love is mindfulness,” according to renowned author and pioneering meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg. These days, both mindfulness and love, as in compassion or loving kindness, receive significant attention....
I've been thinking lately about how practicing mindful awareness supports me in handling the many complexities of modern living. In a way, this might sound like a mental leap, to consider how mindfulness practice – the cultivation of awareness that arises from paying...
Recently, at the end of a mindful yoga session, a student stopped on her way out of class to tell me that directly feeling the relationships between her different muscles and how they moved was really helping her. Curious about what exactly she was finding beneficial,...
What is mindful yoga (or any kind of mindful movement) all about? I have been contemplating this question through practice and in discussions with fellow practitioners for years. Folks in MBSR classes, for example, often ask why they are being encouraged to pay...