PICK UP ONE SMALL STONE

Gom is a Tibetan word for meditation. It translates as "to familiarize." During the razzle-dazzle of summer, it's easy to be distracted from our own life. This meditation is an invitation to re-familiarize ourselves with ourselves and give ourselves a little love because, as Thich Nhat Hanh says, "understanding is love's other name."

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.

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

In honor of Women's History Month, I wanted to pass on this proverb. Kathy Casey shared it with me. I think there is something lovely about the chain. Feel free to also share it. "When sleeping women wake, mountains move." - Chinese Proverb Meditation is a practice of waking up, of seeing reality clearly without the interface of our identities, our opinions, our fixed ideas. As we wake up, mountains move. Please enjoy this 17-minute meditation recorded Friday morning (3/13)

These meditation practices are designed to help us become an observer of our thoughts, rather than identifying AS our thoughts. Both practices use the technique of labeling our thoughts as "thinking" and then returning back to the breath. In this 16.5-minute practice , go to 1:38 to skip the intro and get right into the practice. In this 24-minute practice , go to 2:00 to skip the intro and get right to the meditation.

Meditation instruction is so simple to say: notice when your mind wanders and come back. Meditation is can also be tricky to practice. Sometimes the place our mind wanders is very alluring. Maybe something big (positive or negative) is happening in our lives. Or, maybe, the place our mind wanders is just very familiar - and in its familiarity, it may be a very comfortable place to hang out. In fact, they might even seem part of our identity, so that to let them go would be to

A Shamatha (or peaceful abiding) meditation. Go to 2:11 to skip the intro and get right into the practice.

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

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

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

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.

"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand their shining." - Anne Lamott // Can we be like the lighthouse Anne Lamott references? Grounded and of benefit? This meditation uses a traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice to encourage us to embody the lighthouse.

Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of a rider galloping by on a horse. A person standing at the side of the road yells out "where are you...

We meditate not to get better at meditation but to get better at being present in our lives.