PICK UP ONE SMALL STONE

When our minds are especially busy - or our thoughts are especially "sticky" - a somatic meditation can be helpful. A somatic meditation simply means being mindful of the body and using the body as a stronger anchor for the mind. Here's a 24-minute somatic meditation:

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." - Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Psychologists who study the climate change movement – and social justice broadly – think that one reason we don’t do more to make things better is that we, as humans, are incredibly uncomfortable with uncertainty. We’d rather “know” that things are going to be bad, than be unsure that they could be good.  A little crazy, right? And, I can also see it.  Uncert

A meditation for taking our seat, standing our ground, and being compassionate, wise warriors. Bodhisattvas are open-hearted warriors who transform the world through compassionate wisdom. For many Buddhists, the ultimate goal is to become a fully enlightened Bodhisattva -- a Buddha. Fortunately, we don't need to be fully enlightened to be Bodhisattvas. All of us can practice becoming open-hearted warriors in our own lives. I love the image of being a baby Bodhisattva! In this

Meditation builds the habit of being present -- literally builds new neural pathways. When we practice with gentleness, we can also build the habit of kindness. Two-for-one! And who doesn't love a bargain? 22-minute practice recorded 1/6/26: Go to 3:05 to skip the intro. 16-minute practice recorded 1/7/26: Stringed instruments need to be adjusted so that the strings are at the "goldilocks" of tightness -- not so tight that they snap and not so loose that they can't be played.

Over the holidays, I got to chat with family and friends that I don't see very much and often in the catch-up, my work as a meditation teacher came up. When it did, I often heard something like, "oh, I'd love to start meditating so I can be calmer." Amazing! Meditation does help us be calmer. But, it doesn't take away the external stressors and it also doesn't turn us into unfeeling zombies. So, how does it make us calmer? In my experience, it helps us find space. As Viktor

Meditation is a practice of coming home to ourselves. It's not about fixing ourselves -- because we aren't broken. In meditation we shed the layers of habitual reactions and stories so that we can live more fully, as ourselves, in the present. This meditation starts with a poem by May Aygun: This New Year,  don't make resolutions. Instead,  take something apart. A habit, a belief,  let it crumble. Live without it for a while.  Feel the quiet it'll bring, how raw, how open. Th

A meditation for the period of transition between 2025 and 2026.

Today is the new moon. Sunday is the winter solstice. Do you, like me, find it comforting, and also a little awe-inspiring, to note nature's cycles? I find that tuning in to the rhythm of nature helps me feel held and connected -- to feel my place in the world. There is a similar sort of awe and comfort that comes from sonder. Sonder, to quote the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, is: "the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—po

"The way out is in." - Zen proverb

For some writing on karma, please visit yesterday's blog post . To practice shifting our karma, please check out: This 17-minute meditation And, this 26-minute meditation And, this 16.5-minute meditation that uses both of these great quotes: "Of course our families press our buttons; they are the ones that installed them." (In fairness to Adreanna, this might be a paraphrase and she might have said it more eleqountly.) And, Viktor Frankl's quote: "Between stimulus and respo

Self-Compassion is a really powerful way to help yourself (heal yourself) during moments of suffering. Our go-to behavior (I'll just speak for myself) might be to beat ourselves up when we make mistakes or things go wrong. But, in fact, negative self-talk and belittling actually keeps us small, scared, and unable to move forward. I have loved self-compassion as an antidote and a way to find resilience. The 3 components of self-compassion are: mindfulness, acknowledging common

The Buddhist story of "The Second Arrow" is a metaphor for the way in which we add on to our own suffering by piling assumptions and stories on top of whatever actually happened. Listen to the (short) story and then practice it for yourself. If you want to skip the story, go to 3:27 and you'll get right to the meditation.

Our natural human tendency is to fragment things. We push away things that are "bad" and we cling to things that are "good." This isn't a modern phenomena but you can see it in the way we organize information by labeling, sorting and filing. The mandala is an older way of organizing information that encourages us to make space for all over reality -- to more clearly see everything in our life rather than putting up walls against some things and desperately grasping at others.

The holidays have big feelings. These practices are an invitation to make space for all of it. The more we nurture stability and presence, the more we can savor the precious moments and choose how to respond to the difficulties in a way that is best for us and those around us. The first (17:30 minute) meditation starts with a poem from Karen Salmansohn and provides a gentle landing spot for however we are feeling: https://youtu.be/_E1_sUOJu50 And, a slightly longer -- even m

Exercises to reset the vagus nerve and shift our nervous system into a lower gear - followed by a mindfulness meditation. Give it a try and see how you feel after doing these exercises. If you notice a "downshift," you've got a 5-minute tool you can use anytime to move out of overexcitement, overstimulation, and "fight or flight" and into a more centered, capable place. PRACTICE 1: This meditation includes the vagus nerve exercises as well a poem from Octavia Raheem:...

Meditation is a practice of non-judgment. Meditation is also a practice that leads to discernment, which is defined as "the ability to judge well." How does the practice of non-judgment lead to "the ability to judge well"? An analogy that is often used in meditation can help to square these two, seemingly opposing concepts of non-judgment and discernment: A cup of water is scooped up from the edge of a pond. The water is muddy, containing sediment, twigs, leaves, maybe a bott

Yoga Nidra is a type of yoga, but instead of moving the body, we move awareness. Yoga is a journey into spacious awareness. Enjoy this 28-minute practice as often as you like. After each session, if you have time, try journaling answers to these 4 questions: What clarity or insight arose? Where do I feel resistance? What do I feel called to move towards? What can I release? If you do the practice - and journal - multiple times, look back and see what themes emerged. As always

Mor Keshet ( www.morkeshet.com ) shares a wealth of information on "emotional biomimcry."* These meditations - one a shamatha (or "calm abiding") meditation, one a contemplation meditation, and one a combination - all borrow from Mor's teachings and invite us to learn from trees and their network of mutuality. Version 1 - Shamatha meditation: Humans co-regulate with the other humans (and animals) in their space. The calmer, more grounded and present, we can be, the more we

Today is Halloween and I hope it is glorious for you! Also, I know that Halloween, and all holidays, carry a triumvirate of unhelpful lenses: expectations, assumptions, and "should's." In meditation, we can practice removing these 3 lenses and just being with things as they are. This helps us show up move fully in our lives, without distortion, so that we can better see what's really happening -- responding with more wisdom -- and maybe even joy -- to what is really there. Go

"Biomimicry" is when humans mimic nature to invent solutions to our problems. A simple example is when George De Mestral, in 1948, noticed burrs stuck to his clothing as he walked through the woods and invented velcro. Mor Keshet ( https://www.morkeshet.com/ ) coined the concept of "emotional biomimicry," mimicking the metaphorical example of animals to better regulate our own emotions. For example, the snail carries her home on her back. She has enough within her, just as s