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I’m rereading Pema Chodron’s book Start Where You Are. Pema is a Buddhist nun, meditation teacher, and best-selling author. She has a delightfully simple yet profound way with words. I feel she inspired an insight in my meditation practice today. She says that all the parts of...

Mindfulness means accessing the treasure of your physical experience

Ever feel like you’re not quite IN your body? Like your awareness is just outside it somewhere?
When you are new to the practice of meditation, or even if you’ve been practicing for a while, it can seem HARD to just...

Why is it so hard to get your mind to agree to sit quietly with you and meditate? I remember being befuddled by this reality when I first began trying to teach myself how to meditate many years ago. I would get up early, before the rest of my family, and sit in a comfortable chair and give my...

Recently I reconnected with an old friend over Facetime. We first met over ten years ago when we were both part of the same yoga teacher training. It had been quite a while since we had seen each other. As soon as I saw her face on my iPad I was instantly filled with joy! As we talked, we both...

I had always relied on my mind to solve problems, but that wasn’t working this time. Turns out, my mind was the problem.

Many years ago, I was a hot mess. I considered myself to be someone who had done all the right things in life to be “successful.” I was your classic...

In my stress reduction classes I often talk about the practice of meditation being a microcosm for the larger macrocosm of your life. The patterns you witness in your mind during meditation are often the same patterns that play out on a larger scale in day to day living.

Recently, I witnessed a...

None of us want to feel negative emotions any longer than we have to. Yet sometimes when they sneak up on us, it seems almost impossible to just let them go. Like sandspurs that stick to the bottom of your pants when you go out for a walk, negative emotions almost have a magnetic quality to...

One of the primary benefits of a daily meditation practice is that it enhances your ability to find a place of peace within. Yet there is a myth that to get to this state, you must strive to quiet your mind. It's not uncommon for beginning meditators to criticize themselves for not being able to...

“I’ll finally be happy when….” Feel free to fill in your next big goal.

Ever feel like no matter how much you achieve or how many items you check off your to-do list there’s always more? Perhaps you find that even as you solve a problem or complete a project, peace...

As I wrote about in a recent post, our sweet dog and my friend for the last 18 years, Peanut, passed away recently. For the last ten of those years, after my son went off to college, Peanut and I were, in the words of Forrest Gump, “like peas and carrots.” Given his age, I...