Sign up here. Happy New Year! Today is Tibetan Buddhist New Year and a great day to start fresh and celebrate the fact that you exist. Come to think of it, every day is worthy of such celebration–and nothing creates the quality of a fresh start more than meditation practice. With each breath, you begin again and all... READ MORE
Marianne is a writer, a human rights advocate and a yoga teacher based in New Zealand. Her beautiful blog is about her experiences teaching yoga in Afghanistan, teaching other people to live authentically, and writing her very first book, Zen Under Fire: Learning to Sit Still in Afghanistan. (Not out yet.) We became friends on Twitter, had drinks in Brooklyn,... READ MORE
Love this post from Apartment Therapy (a blog about home design and dec0r) about how a meditation retreat changes the way you look at this world. And comments reveal the many (understandable) misconceptions and (not so understandable) judgments people have about what such a retreat is supposed to look like. The Best Fresh Start… Vipassana & Design
Did an interview with Michele Rosenthal for her site, Heal My PTSD. Here is a link to the audio interview, if you’d like to listen. myths about meditation how to begin a simple meditation practice the benefits of meditation in PTSD recovery inner growth from trauma benefits of creativity in healing posttraumatic stress (ever heard of the word ‘vibing’?) the... READ MORE
Is this you? 1. You check email obsessively throughout the day with a mix of hope and dread. 2. You panic when you’re stuck waiting and don’t have your phone, a book, music, something. 3. The idea of driving to work in silence makes you feel queasy. 4. When you awaken to 30 new emails rather than the requisite 50,... READ MORE
Courtesy of The Here & Now Project.
Perfect advice from 16-year old reincarnation of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. “…If your mind is going all day, I must tell you frankly that is not something you should be worried or upset (about), because that really happens all the time.”
Recently appeared in Huffington Post… By now, many of us have heard of the extraordinary, scientifically proven health benefits of meditation. It relieves stress (by lowering cortisol), improves focus and memory (by raising the level of gamma waves), prevents relapse into depression by 50 percent (according to studies by Jon Kabat-Zinn, M.D. and Zindel Segal, Ph.D.), boosts immunity (in one... READ MORE
(Photo: Vanessa Pike-Russell’s Flickr photostream) When your heart is broken or you’re otherwise dealing with strong painful emotions, the idea of feeling genuine loving kindness for anyone can seem far-fetched, much less yourself or the one who broke your heart. Loving kindness is soft and gentle, but your heart feels cold and numb or enflamed with rage—not loving at all.... READ MORE
I and Twitter pals Hiro Boga (@hiroboga), Mahala Mazerov (@luminousheart), and Jennifer Louden (@jenlouden) all wrote on the same topic today: The process of writing. For a kaleidoscopic view of this issue (storytelling vs truth telling), check them out. Hiro Boga: Tsunamis in the House of Wholeness Jennifer Louden: How to Be a Writer Who Loves the Gap Mahala Mazerov:... READ MORE
This post first appeared on the Huffington Post. Check it out for all the cool, wacky, sweet comments. Meditation has been getting a very good rap lately. Very good. Scientists have proven that it actually makes you happier. It is included in mental health programs. It is being taught at gyms, schools and in the workplace. It has stopped being associated... READ MORE
There are some things I’m good at, if I do say so myself. I know about generosity. I know from patience. I know how to try really, really hard. I’m devoted to the search for wisdom. However there is one skill that I truly suck at and, without it, all these other good qualities are considerably weaker than they could... READ MORE
Get a new meditation from me every Monday morning