PICK UP ONE SMALL STONE

"The way out is in." - Zen proverb

One Small Stone is rooted in 3 beliefs:  We all make a difference...  “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you... You have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." - Jane Goodall …because we are all interconnected.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” - Martin Luther King, Jr. Mindfulness is key to making a hea

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

There is a saying that “the hysterical is historical.” The things that really strike a nerve – that get us going from 0 to 60 in 3 seconds flat – are rarely fresh wounds. More often, the things that feel the most overwhelming, the most painful, are chronic emotional injuries, bruises that keep getting pressed, cuts that never fully scar over. Karma, that old Buddhist concept, is a system for taking charge of the things that we can control to stop the reruns of historical pain

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

I'm guessing that you wouldn't mind a little more calm in your own life - and a little more equity, justice, and peace in the world.  Have you tried Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's Climate* Venn Diagram ( based on the Japanese concept of Ikigai ) a as a framework for achieving all that? It's a framework for how to make the world better in a way that feels doable, grounded, and even joyful. Give it a go!  Set your phone's timer for 10-minutes and jot down answers to 3 questions

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

As the nights continue to get longer in the northern hemisphere, I've found myself thinking about light - literal and metaphoric. A few questions I've been sitting with - and am sharing here, in case they are also helpful for you: 🕯 What lights me up?  🕯 What provides a beacon of safety and hope in my community — and how can I add fuel to its energy?  🕯 Who illuminates my path? Can I hold the torch for someone else?     🕯 What - and who or with whom - do I want to turn to

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

The way we show up changes the world around us. Meditation helps us show up in the way that we want -- in a way that shifts the world around us for the better. I appreciate you being here and practicing -- because it creates more goodness in the world that is contagious. Here's the 18-minute meditation . Go to 3:41 to skip the intro.

The benefits of meditation are cumulative, like practicing a musical instrument. After 6 months of routine practice -- of either meditation or an instrument -- you'll see progress. You'll also likely see where you'd like to keep growing. Even with regular practice, our mind will still wander in meditation. We'll still have habitual patterns that don't serve us well. This practice is just one more session of sitting, resting with reality as it is, noticing when our thoughts go

“When you walk, arrive with every step. That is walking meditation. There’s nothing else to it.” - Thich Nhat Hanh This walking meditation can be done indoors or outdoors. Pick a spot where you can walk in a straight line for roughly 20 to 30 feet -- it's also okay if the distance is shorter and/or curvy. Go to 4:30 to skip the instructions and get right into the practice. https://youtu.be/iwfkrbhT4-k

When we're busy (which is almost all the time), it's easy for our worlds to get smaller, more myopic. Stress pushes us into tunnel vision, which isn't the wisest or easiest place to live. Can we (and it's a real question - because it's not easy), take some time to "unplug" and give ourselves some space to reboot? Here's an 18-minute guided meditation , with a body scan, to give "unplugging" a try.