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Jan. 30
Be still and meet that soft, terrifying place in your heart. “I go among trees and sit still. All my stirring becomes quiet around me like circles on water. My tasks lie in their places where I left them asleep like cattle. Then what is afraid of me comes and lives a...
Jan. 29
Mindfulness is not about mindfulness. It’s about freedom. I’ve never been passionate about mindfulness because it’s mindfulness. I’m passionate about mindfulness for it’s potential to cultivate freedom of mind. I think it’s important to periodically step away from the...
Jan. 28
You must feel the hurt before you can move through it. In spirituality, we often talk about Relative Reality vs Ultimate Reality Relative reality is the mundane, the tangible, the superficial. It is the level of the “self.” You and me. “I.” Labels, concepts, ideas....
Jan. 27
One moment at a time. You do not have to live your whole life in this moment. You do not have to live all of your pains in this moment; you do not have to live all of your joys in this moment. Just live what is here.
Jan. 26
Keep your heart open. As soon as your heart shuts down, you create the conditions for numbing and disconnection. Nelson Mandela talked about keeping compassion for his captors, and how if that were lost, he would then truly be captured. Other people may hurt you, but...
Jan. 25
You do not need to clear your mind. About 3 months into my retreat in Burma, I went through a period of very intensive thinking, rumination and distracted mind. My mind was ALL OVER the place. I couldn’t settle down. I would try to come back to the breath, but it was...
Jan. 24
I am not I. “I am not I. I am this one Walking beside me whom I do not see, Whom at times I manage to visit, And at other times I forget. The one who remains silent when I talk, The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate, The one who takes a walk when I am indoors, The...
Jan. 23
Relationships are the gateway to deeper awakening and growth. There is a lot you can learn in solitude. A LOT. In fact, I believe there is certain kind of wisdom that can only be found in silence and solitude. And I also believe there is certain kind of wisdom that...
Jan. 22
This moment is enough. This moment is enough because it’s all you have. You can keep trying to get to different moments, but no future moment will offer lasting satisfaction. If we are interested in attaining peace that transcends the temporary satisfaction of getting...
Jan. 21
It’s important to touch into the space of non-striving. What is it like to just be? To not be caught in the story of who you are, where you’re going, what you need to accomplish? If we never touch into this space of being, to experience what it’s like to live beyond...
Jan. 20
Love the space between stimulus and response. Stop, feel the energy in your body. Feel it wanting to express itself. Don’t condemn; just be curious. Let it be there. Get to know it. Stay with it. Dance with it. Watch what it does. Make friends with that space and that...
Jan. 19
“Sit. Feast on your life.” –Derek Walcott “The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your...
Jan. 18
When was the last time you did something for the first time? New experiences light up different parts of our brain than when we’re just going through the motions. We’re more engaged and less on automatic pilot. It’s exciting and enriching. However, new experiences can...
Jan. 17
There is no separation between meditation and life. In mindfulness meditation, you’re deliberately taking time to tune in. There’s an intentional awareness that you’re bringing to your experience, being present with your full experience, cultivating a mind and heart...
Jan. 16
Be playful with your thoughts. It can sometimes be difficult to manage repetitive and negative thoughts, specifically imagining scenarios in the future that haven’t happened yet and may never happen. Mindfulness helps, for sure. Not judging these thoughts, watching...
Jan. 15
“Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die.” -Mary Elizabeth Frye “Do not stand at my grave and weep I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripened grain. I am the...
Jan. 14
Mental health is not the absence of mental illness. And mental illness is not the absence of mental health. According to the World Health Organization: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or...
Jan. 13
Maintain your boundaries. Being open, loving and compassionate doesn’t give people the right to take advantage of your time, energy and space. In order to continue offering yourself fully to others and the world, you need to have boundaries. It’s not “unspiritual” to...
Jan. 12
Nothing Matters. Everything matters. On one level, we could argue nothing matters--That the universe doesn’t have an agenda for the earth; that we’re all just star dust; that everything is just unfolding as it’s unfolding and we’re just going along for the ride. On...
Jan. 11
We’re bad predictors of our happiness. In his book, Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard Psychologist, Dan Gilbert, starts with the bold assertion that we are the only animals with the ability to predict our future. We’re able to imagine scenarios, good and bad, that may...
Jan. 10
Do you have a warm-up routine for your meditation practice? When we’re experiencing deep loneliness or depression, meditation can sometimes make things worse, especially if we’re not working with a teacher. In that more intimate space with our minds, we can further...
Jan. 9
“You do not have to be good.” -Mary Oliver “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours,...
Jan. 7
Trust life more than your ideas. A friend recently dropped this nugget of poetic wisdom: “I’ve learned to trust life more than my ideas.” I love this. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone has a story. Everyone has an idea for how this life should unfold. And never in...
Jan. 6
What does it mean to be a human? Where do you begin and where do you end? What amount of your body or mind would need to be compromised before you stopped being you? Would you need to lose your arm? All of your limbs? Your face? Your sight? Hearing? Taste? Capacity to...
Jan. 5
Meditate longer than you think you can. In the past, when people tell me they don’t have time or are too skeptical to meditate, my suggestion has been to practice for just one minute a day. It’s easy to opt into, and can help start and sustain a practice. I still...
Jan. 4
If you don’t learn to control the mind, it will control you. One of the most common frustrations I hear from people is how their minds get caught in ruminative cycles of self-judgment, questioning, worry, chaos and confusion. So how does meditation help with this? The...
Jan. 3
Breathe Deeply. How do you redirect to mindfulness when something has triggered you? Why is it so hard to be mindful when you’re in emotional overload? When you’ve been triggered, your nervous is often too hijacked to employ areas of your prefrontal cortex,...
Jan. 2
Real peace comes when the mind let’s go of trying to change this moment. The mind’s conditioned way of relating to life is push/pull. Like this, don’t like that. Want this, don’t want that. Pretty/Ugly. Right/Wrong. Good/Bad. It’s evolutionary wiring, and it’s OK. You...
Jan. 1
Every moment is a new beginning. One of the precious things about focusing on your breath in meditation is that you slowly start to understand that every breath is impermanent, coming and going. It’s here and then it’s not. But with every ending is a new beginning....
Dec. 31
Define your truth, THEN live it. We hear the usual platitude, “Live your truth.” But first, you may need to define your truth. And given that different people hold different truths, and most people’s beliefs change throughout their lives, don’t worry so much about...
Dec. 30
Stress is not bad. It’s how we grow. Stress is not bad. Stress is necessary. Stress is how we grow. If I think back to the biggest turning points in my life, they were all preceded by moments of intense stress, discomfort, confusion and doubt. Those moments offered...
Dec. 29
MOVE. According to Harvard research, Dr. Jon Ratey, our brains are most engaged when we’re moving. The relationship between exercise/movement and the brain is Dr. Ratey’s passion. And in his book, Spark, he cites research for how exercise improves focus, emotional...
Dec. 28
If there’s secondary pain, there must also be secondary joy. In the mindfulness world, we often talk about the distinction between primary pain and secondary pain. Primary pain being those pains we cannot control, the secondary pain being the negative thoughts and...
Dec. 27
The moment before release is when we grip the strongest. The first time I saw the truth of this came in Burma. My teacher encouraged me to extend my sitting meditation to 2 hours at a time, 7 times per day, instead of just 1 hour. Sitting for that length created huge...
Dec. 26
The more you fuel something, the stronger it grows. The more you fuel something, the stronger it grows. An emotion, a belief, judgment, hate, love. As the Native American legend goes: We have two wolves in our heart, one of love and one of hate. Which wolf will win?...
Dec. 25
There are many forms of love and connection. There are many forms of love and connection. Family, friends, animals, the universe, yourself. It’s ok to feel the tenderness of longing for what’s not here, but spend more time celebrating the sources for love and...
Dec. 24
The amount of people “living the dream” seems to be highly correlated with the amount of people trying to get out of the dream. I see many people suffer because they want to be in a relationship and have a family, but they don’t. I totally get the allure and pressure,...
Dec. 23
Sometimes you need to shift your life from 5th gear to 1st. I like to think of managing my energy like driving a car. Assuming a car has five gears, you will need to navigate gears 1-5 based on the conditions in front of you and the speed you need to get there. As you...
Dec. 22
There are four ways to respond to someone sharing good news, and only one is correct. Let’s say someone tells you they just got a new job. Here are a few ways you could respond: Passive Destructive: Huh, yeah, well I got a new job the other day (turns focus inward,...
Dec. 20
Meet sadness with kindness. Think back to a time when you were struggling, and you were met by someone with compassion, love and kindness. How did it feel? How did that impact your pain? What sort of healing did that offer? Developing that relationship with yourself,...
Dec. 19
Your worst traits may also be your best. When you’re at your worst, how might people describe you? Obsessive? Bold? Scattered? Now, what are the positive opposites of these descriptions? Obsessive à Passionate Bold à Confident Scattered à Creative There’s a good...
Dec. 18
Respect the Journey. It’s big. It’s uncertain. It’s ambiguous. And there’s no way to know how it will unfold. You can’t fight the ocean. Just flow with it.
Dec. 17
98% is hard. 100% is easy. -Peter Cook There’s a freedom and flow that comes when we are 100% committed to something, without doubt or hindrance. All of our energy can be directed fully. The mind states of doubt and hesitation are exhausting and draining. For the...
Dec. 16
Mindfulness and Flow are not the same thing. Mindfulness and Flow are two hot topics that people mistakenly conflate. At the most basic level, Flow involves losing self-awareness, and mindfulness involves maintaining self-awareness. An article by Sheldon et al....
Dec. 15
We’re all at different stages of wisdom. We’re all at different stages of wisdom in our lives. A child will likely not have the same understanding of social cues that an adult has. An adult will likely not have the same level of freedom and inhibition that a child...
Dec. 14
Embrace the little openings to make a change. When I look back on my life, I’ve found that positive change happened in big moments and also the accumulation of small moments. The big moments garnered quick change, shifted my mindset and helped me see things...
Dec. 13
Life is worth the fight. Why is life worth living? When Viktor Frankl used to work with people who were deeply suffering and considering suicide, he would sometimes ask a highly provocative and startling question: “Why haven’t you done it yet?” It was jarring and...
Dec. 12
What we want is different from what we need. The brain plays tricks on us. It’s evolved to associate pain and pleasure to certain things. It’s why public speaking can be so daunting and sugar can taste so good. But just because we may want to avoid public speaking or...
Dec. 11
Don’t just be authentic. Be authentic to the best version of yourself in this moment. What is authenticity? I’m always confused by what it means to “be authentic.” Authentic to what? Authentic to how I’ve acted in the past? Authentic to what I perceive I am capable...
Dec. 10
You need to love your “self” before you can transcend it. Many spiritual communities emphasize transcending the “self” or “ego.” The notion is often coming from a place of wisdom and compassion, but it can cause great harm without further explanation and individual...
Dec. 9
What if a break up wasn’t the end of the world, but a learning in a much larger journey? Relationships, specifically marriage, seem to be one of the few things in life that we expect to remain constant. Most other things we expect to change—job, friendships, house,...
Dec. 8
Focus is a lost art. With technology at our fingertips, multiple tabs on our desktop browsers, and increasing technological stimuli, the capacity to focus is becoming a lost art. Yet, being able to sustain attention on what is most important to you, professionally or...
Dec. 7
To attract new people into your social sphere, become the person you’d want to hang out with. Are you looking to surround yourself with people you appreciate and admire? Well, let’s reverse engineer this. First, think about why you were attracted to spending time with...
Dec. 6
You’re ok, and it’s time to change. The process of growth often holds this paradox. On one level, we’re ok exactly as we are. On another level, we need to make some shifts. When you’re born, there’s no idea of anything that’s wrong with you. That’s your essential...
Dec. 5
The comfort of thinking something COULD work can keep us from seeing if it ACTUALLY works. I had a friend who finally started meditating after years of talking about doing it. When I asked him what took so long, he mentioned that there was fear that it might not work....
Dec. 4
“Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.” -Lily Tomlin Perhaps you’re ready to hear these words, and perhaps you’re not. Wherever you’re at is ok. But at some point, if you’re looking to loosen the shackles of the past, some degree of forgiveness is...
Dec. 3
When you shut down lines of communication, you lose the potential for truth. This was a spontaneous quote that came to me in a dream. I have no memory of the context or what sparked it, but I woke up with these words resounding in my mind. I didn’t understand it...
Dec. 2
Acceptance comes when the pain of non-acceptance is greater than the alternative. Acceptance, in all its many forms and depths, can be tough. Our minds don’t want to accept certain realities. Even though we may know we need to accept something in order to move...
Dec. 1
Fill yourself with love, and let it spill over to the world. Lovingkindness meditation is a form of meditation that aims to cultivate “heart qualities” of mind. Specifically, one develops an unconditional compassion and care toward oneself and other beings. I hated...
Nov. 30
Seeing new possibilities for the future starts in the present. How does mindfulness prepare us for the future? As we pay attention to what’s happening in the present, we learn the nature of things to come. We learn that an emotion is impermanent. We learn how thoughts...
Nov. 29
There may come a time when you grow out of certain friendships and relationships. You can appreciate the people who were in your life, for what they did, and how they served you. We’re constantly changing, though. And the people we once chose to surround ourselves...
Nov. 28
It’s easy for our hearts to harden. Trauma, betrayal, stress. Or maybe we were just conditioned to not feel into that space. This seems to be especially true for men (myself included). There is a tenderness that comes from keeping the heart open, and it’s often...
Nov. 27
What can we trust? Can we trust our thoughts? Can we trust our emotions? Can we trust our intuition? Can we trust other people? Can we trust our beliefs? All of these things can betray us. So what can we trust? Perhaps we can trust that there’s learning in all...
Nov. 26
Abundance seems to be the hot word these days. “Live the life you deserve. Have abundance of wealth, joy, spirituality.” This is well and good, and there are certainly psychological barriers we need to break through to help us be open to this level of abundance....
Nov. 25
Mindfulness is not about being present for the sake of being present. It’s about being present for the sake of understanding reality. As mindfulness becomes mainstream, it gets further reduced to “just be present” and “live in the moment.” For many, that’s enough of...
Nov. 24
Every moment of mindfulness is a moment of letting go. Any time that you bring non-judgmental awareness to your experience, whether in meditation or daily life, you are practicing the ability to not be “caught” by your experience. You are training yourself to observe...
Nov. 23
In the space of mindful awareness, we’re ripe for creative insights. Research by Lorenza Colzato in 2012, shows that mindfulness meditation, specifically open-monitoring meditation (just watching all thoughts, emotions, sensations, and experience come and go)...
Nov. 22
In the space of mindful awareness, we’re ripe for creative insights. Research by Lorenza Colzato in 2012, shows that mindfulness meditation, specifically open-monitoring meditation (just watching all thoughts, emotions, sensations, and experience come and go)...
Nov. 21
How much different would your life actually be if you got everything you thought you wanted? I was driving through the Hamptons on Long Island recently. I went to a local beach and saw some of the surrounding houses, all of which were 20 million dollar+ homes. I...
Nov. 20
How much different would your life actually be if you got everything you thought you wanted? I was driving through the Hamptons on Long Island recently. I went to a local beach and saw some of the surrounding houses, all of which were 20 million dollar+ homes. I...
Nov. 19
Stop trying to be confident. We’re often under the impression that we need to be extremely confident in something in order to do it, but unless you’re a complete narcissist, you’re not going to develop that confidence until you do that thing over and over and over....
Nov. 18
Self-loathing requires a “self” to be loathed. So who is doing the loathing, and who is being loathed? Sharon Salzberg, a great meditation teacher in the west, once asked the Dalai Lama what his thoughts were on self-hatred. He didn’t understand the question. His...
Nov. 17
You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you. -The Minimalists There may come a point in your personal journey where the people around you become too toxic. Perhaps your life is headed in a different direction than theirs, or their...
Nov. 16
Sometimes we’re just in survival mode. Moments of intense pain, trauma, chaos. It’s just survival mode. There’s not going to be peace; we’re just trying to get through it. What we may be able to do in these moments is minimize the suffering. Working with the breath is...
Nov. 15
You do not need to be fixed. You are not broken. You do not need to be fixed. You are, and always have been, whole. It's mostly fair to assume that when you were in your mother's womb, there were no ideas of what was right with you or wrong with you. You weren't...
Nov. 14
There is no way to know what the best decision is. All you can do is make the best decision in this moment based on the understanding, evidence and intuition you have. To certain people, you’ll be wrong. And to others, you’ll be right. And whatever happens based on...
Nov. 13
Pain is a biopsychosocial phenomena. New research by Lorimer Moser suggests that physical pain is a biopsychosocial phenomena. If you walk through the woods and feel a pinch on your foot, when you look down to see that it’s a twig, the pain will often subside....
Nov. 12
A habit is a 3-step loop: Cue, Routine, Reward In the book, “The Power of Habit”, writer Charles Duhigg discusses a three-step loop involved with every habit: A cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue is the trigger that makes the brain start searching for the right...
Nov. 11
Who do you need permission from to be who you are? Whose permission are you waiting for to be ok with being you? Parent, friend, mentor, therapist? You don’t have a chance of being anybody other than yourself. Master that. Refine that. Grow into that. You can’t...
Nov. 10
Patience. Real change is less like a fire cracker, and more like an explosion deep in the sea. As you sit your meditation practice, just commit day after day. You’ll have pleasant moments and unpleasant moments. It’s just part of the process. But that is not what...
Nov. 9
In any difficult conversation, there is much more going on beneath the surface than you realize. In the book, “Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss what Matters Most” the authors describe 3 sub-conversations that a person is having with themselves when having a...
Nov. 8
Your nervous system seeks out what’s familiar, not what’s good for you. It’s a confusing thing. Why do we fall into the same patterns over and over again? We know “this kind” of person is not good for us, and yet we repeatedly date people just like them. It’s...
Nov. 7
There’s no ONE way to wellbeing. Many people purport to have the answer to what it means to live the good life. Philosophers, religion, and now academics. All contribute new ideas to this exploration based on their own lens of how this question should be approached....
Nov. 6
Instead of eradicating your weaknesses, maximize your strengths. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. The tendency can be to focus on and eradicate our weaknesses. However, research suggests that by identifying your unique strengths and applying them more...
Nov. 5
You’re not lost. Have you had the experiencing of feeling lost? You’re not sure of your next step or where your life is headed? Everything seems to be happening around you but you don’t know where you fit into it all? It’s uncomfortable. But perhaps you’re not as lost...
Nov. 4
Has nothing good happened yet? Maybe you’re just growing like bamboo. My jiu jitsu teacher, Milton Regis, used to liken our martial development to how bamboo grows. He told us that in the first 5 years after planting bamboo seeds, you don’t see anything. Nothing...
Nov. 3
Sometimes Plan A is not an option. Chris Feudtner is a pediatrician who focuses on improving the lives of children with complex chronic conditions and their families. He often has to have conversations with parents that he describes as the most difficult of their...
Nov. 2
If you need to tell people that you’re meditating for them to know you’re meditating, keep meditating. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, says that for the first years of meditating, don’t tell anyone you’re meditating. Every time you...
Nov. 1
One of the most painful things for me to hear about is how brutally people beat themselves up with their own minds. And it’s so common. Abrasive thoughts can have tremendous power over us if we have not trained ourselves to experience them differently. Next time you...
Oct. 31
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character and will.” –William James William James, widely considered by many to be the first American psychologist, said this back in the 1800s. And...
Oct. 30
Don’t dwell on your cant’s. Dwell on your cans. This may read as a basic, pop self-help quote, but there’s more wisdom here than meets the eye. The brain’s negativity bias will be more inclined to focus on what is not good in your life and what you can’t do. If the...
Oct. 29
If you self-sabotage, it’s because you associate more pain than pleasure to what you want. Have you ever found that when pursuing something good for you, you get to a certain point, and then you self-sabotage? Almost as if the closer you get to attaining what you...
Oct 28.
How can we have a mindful relationship to goal setting? When one is setting a goal, you can use mindfulness to check in with yourself to see what is it that actually inspires me about this goal? Is it a sense of what I’m going to get once I achieve it? Is it an...
Oct. 27
There is a delicate balance between being and doing. Another way to look at this is the relationship between mindfulness and getting things done. I strongly believe we must first understand what it means and feels like to actually “BE” before we have any chance of...
Oct. 26
Equanimity: When our mind lets go. Equanimity represents a moment when our mind ceases to pull or push. It’s completely at ease with what is here. Restful, awake, knowing. And from personal experience, it’s an incredible space of mind to inhabit. In this space of...
Oct. 25
Sometimes the best meditation is sleep. If every time you sit down to meditate, you fall asleep within 15 seconds, you may want to check in to see how much rest you’re getting. While some research suggests meditation can reduce the amount of sleep you need and/or...
Oct. 24
When you’re in a difficult situation that you cannot change, ask yourself: “What greater purpose might this be serving in my life?” Let’s say you’re working for someone who is rude, inconsiderate and hurtful. However, you need the job, and you don’t see an easy...
Oct. 23
What sparks joy in your life? I first came across this question in Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” The premise being, when attending to your physical space, instead of focusing on things you’re getting rid of, focus on things you get to...
Oct. 22
Finding your life’s meaning is another one of those things that can feel daunting and/or too big to tackle. Some people have a natural sense of their life’s purpose and meaning, and others develop this over time. And some people may never feel like they come to one...
Oct. 21
Trauma cannot be healed in a vacuum. Trauma happened at a time when there wasn’t someone there to help us process, integrate and understand what just happened. And often, it was the result of being betrayed by someone who was supposed to be that someone during those...