Musings on
the Middle Path
Enjoy Eowyn’s Writings about Practice
Finding Sacred Balance
Mindfulness in community is about more than sitting in silence together. It’s about creating spaces where people feel welcome, supported, and connected. Renewal doesn’t always require grand gestures—it often begins with meeting basic needs with presence and care.
Mindful Yoga: Toward Inner Intimacy
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...
Difficult Conversations
Perhaps many in this forum can recall the “Communications Calendar” from the MBSR course in which participants write a few words each day for a week about their experiences of difficulties in ordinary communications. Then, in class, we explore ways that mindfulness...
Embodied Computing
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time at the computer, working on projects that depend on the many amazing powers of modern technology. A week or so ago, after many hours of peering at words and images on the screen, I noticed my heart feeling hard and stiff, my...
3 Simple Contentments
During the cold winter months, our woodstove becomes the focal point of our daily rhythms. We stack and carry logs, feed the stove throughout the day, and frequently clean up debris from the kindling. Today, while sweeping, the taste of contentment visited my heart....
Always A Choice; Never in Control
Recently, I spent some time in silent retreat and, as is often the case for me, came away with a phrase that encapsulates the theme life seemed to be teaching me there. “Always a choice; never in control,” are the words ringing in mind. Perhaps vignettes of a couple...
Practicing with Paradox
Years ago, a wise teacher shared with me that what she found herself most appreciating through her decades of mindfulness practice was the paradoxical nature of the human situation. At the time, this seemed rather obvious to me and not particularly helpful. A little...
Poetry and Science: My Course Correction
Today I’d like to exhale long and offer you all a poem. It’s one that I wrote, which is the reason for that long out-breath. Sharing from the heart feels vulnerable, and breathing out helps me with that. I’ve been writing poems for years. I absolutely love writing...
Living the Practice of Self-Study
One of the key tenets of Patanjali's yoga sutra is the notion of self-study. Together with devotion to what Chip Hartranft translates as “the ideal of pure awareness,” it forms the foundation from which practice grows. Recently, we've been exploring the topic in the...
Contemplations from Retreat
As many of you know, each year over the past dozen years or so, I have spent a month or more in silent retreat. 2013 was the longest period, a hundred days, and this past autumn I had the good fortune to spend nearly seven weeks in the quiet. This might seem like a...