PICK UP ONE SMALL STONE

Reclaiming our attention is a radical act that lets us control our own time and our connections. Our time and our connections determine the quality of our lives.

The 3 Root Poisons cause our suffering. We filter everything in our lives through one of three lenses: attachment, aversion, and ignorance. We can practice meditation as a way to see these root poisons - and then gently clean the lenses - so that we can see a little more clearly and suffer less.

An invitation to embodied joy. Dance like nobody is watching under Mays Blue Moon.

✨ Thank you Mamaroneck Living for publishing this article in the June 2026 edition. As a meditation teacher, I often hear people say that they wish they liked meditation, but…they just don’t! I get it. When your thoughts are spinning, sitting still might be the last thing you want to do. The good news is: meditation isn’t the only way to cultivate mindfulness or regain composure in stressful situations. If meditation feels too “in your head,” give somatic exercises a try. So

This practice uses a somatic exercise from the Strouzzi Institute for Somatics that I learned from LaUra Schmidt of the Good Grief Network.

A good boundary protects our peace and allow us to remain in alignment with our values. This is easier said than done, especially if we've spent years developing defense mechanisms that rest in anger, detachment, or people pleasing. The Loving-Kindness meditation can help us put down our unhelpful defense mechanisms so that we can create healthy boundaries.

You're the expert on you. Use this easy framework to create your personalized self-care tool kit so that you can feel your best -- for yourself and everyone around you.

On Spring, “Speedy-Busyness,” and Finding Ourselves Anyone else have the feeling of being a little all over the place this spring? Buddhism has a very descriptive term for this energy of running around, doing a thousand things at once: “speedy-busyness.” I picture Looney Tune Tasmanian Devil energy. 🌪 It’s a little dizzying. The sense of being a spinning top - or maybe a drifting dandelion seed in spring - often feels even more acute at this time of year as the world blooms

A quick, powerful meditation for processing emotions.

Background: When she knew she was dying, Nora Ephron wrote the lists (below) of what she would and would not miss. As Brooklyn College English Majors pointed out, these lists exemplify Ephron’s writing style: giving attention to seemingly mundane details that allows worlds to come alive inside her writing. Instructions: This journaling invitation is to similarly give the mundane details of our own lives so much attention that they also come to life, creating glimmers of grat

The Merriam-Webster definition of orient is “to acquaint with the existing situation or environment; to ascertain the bearings of.” This meditation of "orienting" is a practice of locating yourself on a metaphorical map. You are here ❌ physically, mentally, emotionally. Knowing where you are starting, you can move forward with more awareness, intentionality, and ease. This 17-minute practices moves through three stages: orienting to our physical surroundings orienting to our

When a child is bouncing off the walls with energy, we might give them a challenge, like "see how many times you can run around the house." A Thought Party Meditation uses the same principle for our busy minds. When our minds are racing we can say, "great - let's see how busy you can get!" We let them run wild, exhausting their energy and, ultimately, creating some quiet. This 16-minute meditation was recorded on 5/6/26.

"Gratitude" can feel cliché. But, when experienced as authentic and embodied, gratitude can be transformative. Practicing gratitude allows us to feel joy, connection, and happiness -- without denying feelings of sadness, disappointment, or anger. As Nikita Gill references in her poem above, we can acknowledge an apocalypse and also turn to glimmers of beauty. Here's a 24-minute gratitude practice from 5/5/26 to help you connect to what you're grateful for right now. Before o

May 1st is Beltane, the midpoint between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. We are at peak spring! And I imagine there are lots of things marking your calendar this spring – maybe some fun, some stressful, some everywhere in between. I hope it feels like the right mix for you! My own spring calendar has also had a little bit of everything – but the biggest, by far, has been heart surgery for my husband, Jack, a few weeks ago. Jack is doing so (so!) great. Thank you

A Zen Koan: "Only one thing made him happy. When it was gone, everything made him happy." - Leonard Cohen

Meditation trains us to come back to reality as it is. During practice, we notice the stories and assumptions that we layer on top of what is actually happening. As we meditate, we build the habit of recognizing thoughts as thoughts, letting them go, and coming back to reality as it is in this moment. We do this because it is nice to be with reality directly. And, also, because we increase our own suffering with our assumptions and fixed ideas. As the story of "Good or Bad Lu

This spring seems like a real doozy of “both/and”: The world feels out of control AND the daffodils are coming up right on time. I’m sad my oldest will be leaving home soon AND I’m so excited for the next adventure. How would you fill in the blanks of oh no! AND oh yay! in your own life? How about the optical illusions above? What do you see? I think optical illusions are fun and I hope you do too! AND, I’ve been finding these two to be helpful metaphors for ho

Sympathetic Joy, or taking delight in other's happiness, is one of the four Brahmaviharas along with compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity. All four require a psychological expansion of self. Sympathetic Joy is said to be the hardest to practice -- maybe because of our natural negativity bias, maybe because of a scarcity mindset. But, when we practice it, we get to experience more joy! And, the practice of sympathetic joy also feeds into the other Brahmaviharas, increas

Both of these meditations incorporate James A. Pearson's poem, "Meanwhile," which landed like a gift in my inbox at a particular time in my life. It was a time when something so big was happening in my own life that, at first, I didn't understand how the world kept obliviously spinning. Have you ever had that feeling? Maybe with a birth, a death, some big life event -- your world is forever changed and you can't believe that everyone else doesn't also recognize the enormous