PICK UP ONE SMALL STONE

This 10-minute practice is a little bit mindfulness, a little bit somatics, and a little bit therapuetic art. Thanks to Mor Keshet for the original practice. Written instructions for this practice were published in the January 2026 issue of Mamaroneck Living and can be found here. Let me know how this practice works for you by leaving a comment below or emailing me at katy@onesmallstone.net!

Babies belly breathe when they are born. As we get older, many of us unknowingly shift away from belly breathing and into chest and shoulder breathing -- our body's natural reaction to stress. Belly breathing (also sometimes called diaphragm breathing) lowers heart rates, blood pressure, and cortisol levels in the blood stream -- it moves us out of "fight or flight." But, as we get older and experience life's stresses, it is something that many of us need to practice - both

This article from January is feeling very apropos as the new (school) year starts. If you have 10-minutes, try this exercise. I know the doodling might feel silly and not "productive." But give it all a try! ...and then let me know how it goes! Thank you at Mamaroneck Living for publishing this article in their January 2026 issue: New Year’s Resolutions often feel like a whole lot of “shoulds” — like we need to tighten up, buckle down, and push harder. If your resolutions fe

Wendell Berry passed away on Monday, leaving us with so many amazing poems, including "The Peace of Wild Things," which is instructions for mindfulness meditaiton in poetic form. This group has read a bunch of his poems over the years and we donated $580 to the Berry Center at the end of June to support the Center's environmental work. Today's meditation is another expression of gratitude for him and his legacy. Go to 2:10 to skip the intro and jump to where the poem starts:

Thanks Mamaroneck Living for publishing this article in your September 2026 issue! With the return to routine, September is a great time to build in moments of fun family conversations, which can have big mental health benefits for everyone involved. Use the questions below during the drive/walk to school, at mealtimes, or any other part of your daily routine, to make connection part of your regular schedule. Get the conversation rolling with these tried-and-true questions,

Visit https://www.instagram.com/p/DW9X0sQEUCa/ for this poem and more good ones at Joseph Fasano's instagram account. This meditation starts with Fasano's poem, Night Swimming. Go to 2:12 to skip the intro and get right into the practice. But what I say in the intro that might be helpful to hear: you deserve joy; it's not weak to need a gratitude practice; our gratitude practices foster connection, compassion and care which makes the world a better place. xo

Go to 2:04 to skip the intro. With the intro the video is 16-minuntes. Without the intro, the meditation is 14-minutes.

Sympathetic Joy is one of "4 immeasurables" in Buddhism. Sometimes also called the "4 limitless ones," sympathetic joy, along with compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity, cultivate an expansive heart, open to an immeasurable, or limitless, degree. Counterintuitively, sympathetic joy is usually harder than compassion or loving-kindness. Joy may seem easy - but actually our negativity bias and scarcity mindset make joy harder than you'd think. Sympathtic joy -- the abilit

Mindfulness: Paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally. - paraphrase from Jon Kabat-Zinn

This 16-minute practice is a variation on the traditional Buddhist compassion meditation, Tonglen.

Thank you to Mamaroneck Living for publishing this article in their August 2026 edition. Like the “Sunday scaries,” August can be hard to enjoy. If your mind is already focused on what’s next instead of what’s here, you’re not alone. Try one, two, or all three of these quick techniques to build your capacity to savor summer. Each takes only a few minutes and uses simple neuroscience to pull you out of your head and into the moment. THREE SIMPLE STRATEGIES: Count 10 cycles of

Loving-Kindness changes the way to talk to ourselves, as well as those around us. It decreases our knee-jerk reactivity and lets us speak and act with more compassion.

The Matrix movie is often used as a metaphor for the practice of meditation. When we start to see our thoughts as thoughts, we realize that we don't have to believe everything we think. This is a practice for waking up:

"What is meditation? It involves choosing an object of attention (e.g., breath, an image, or a mantra) to focus on instead of thoughts." - Susan Piver Drawing Meditation uses the feeling of our hand making the mark as the object of our attention -- a helpful variation for many people.

Tonglen is the traditional Buddhist Meditation for compassion. Today's variation is Tonglen for self. We can't give what we don't have and this practice offers an accessible way to support and empower ourselves.

Sitting meditation can be frustrating because we're given the instruction "let go of your thoughts" ... but there isn't much to do in sitting meditation and we can become very aware of our thoughts! This is a feature not a flaw. Here's why.

Meditation often gets pushed to the back burner during the summer. These two meditations are invitations to connect back to YOUR "why meditate."

Thanks for being here! I normally write these moonly missives twice a month, with each New and Full moon, 🌑🌕 happily connecting to the ongoing spiral of beginnings, endings, and beginning again. But, June's New Moon came and went without a newsletter. I started several times. I wrote many words – in fact, I wrote too many words. Ideas were sprawling out in different directions, expanding recklessly like the morning glory vine that threatens to take over my garden. I left th

Three times a week, a small community gathers together to meditate. These acts of mindfulness help the world. The more we practice seeing clearly during meditation, the more we can move through the world seeing clearly, with wisdom and compassion. Echoing that embodied helpfulness, this community also make a financial contribution to support people and organizations stopping climate change. Community members make donations, ranging from $5 to $20/month. We pool that money t

A somatic practice to counter summer's fiery, expansive energy. This 15-minute practice helps you land in this moment before intentionally moving forward.