This series of 15–20 minute guided meditations explore cultivating a profound balance of ‘chitta and prana,’ or awareness and energy. As you attune you to the presence and flow of prana—the life force energy—you may find your body, mind, and spirit renewed and refreshed. These meditations will enrich an ongoing meditation practice or assist you if you are looking for more well-being in your life.
High Energy Living
Great mystical traditions teach that our true nature is passionate, vibrant, and filled with abundant energy. Unfortunately, day-to-day stresses and challenges can create physical and emotional blocks which build up over time draining our natural passion, purpose, and vitality. In this original audiobook, you’ll explore how to release physical and emotional restrictions in order to experience a more profound relationship of your body, mind, and spirit.
High Energy Living includes a companion musical reflection CD created by award-winning composer Mark Kelso called In the Moment. This soothing soundtrack will provide a harmonious foundation for your inner experiences, keeping you awake, present, and in the moment.
A Formula for Transformation
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores how meditation can help you feel more present and alive and cultivate emotionally sensitivity and a more refined sense of intuition.
You'll learn how to use mindfulness strategies for working with physical, emotional and mental pain and how four essential questions can help you move from feeling stuck to accessing more creativity and resilience.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
Snow Day
Waiting for Mammals
On Death and Happiness
Dr. Sherland Nulan, who wrote the groundbreaking book How We Die, said that the myth of the octogenarian dying at home, surrounded by family, uttering words of wisdom is just that - a myth - and extremely rare.
In our case, this scenario happens to be true. Tara's mother is in hospice care at home and the process has been poignant, rich, filled with laughter and deep insights. Fortunately, she is not in a lot of pain and is often overwhelmed with ecstatic appreciation.
Being in the presence of impermanence always changes the frame from which I see the world. There is sadness, for sure, but also access to a deeper sense of this shared life journey. No one gets out alive, and our dignity, as Dr. Nulan says, is not so much how we die, but the life we lived.
This week's talk dives into some of my experiences and memories on death and the happiness that can arise when we embrace the moment.
The blurb:
Joy and happiness only arise in the present moment. Remembering that everything changes helps cultivate the rememberance of this precious moment.
This talk reflects on my experiences with death, ranging from the hospice care in our house right now, a friend who died in my arms and my own near-death experience.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
The Three Reasons I Meditate
Breathe, Relax and Pay Attention
Being around like-minded, inspiring people is the best game in town.
I am back after nine-days teaching with co-director Larissa Carlson at Kripalu Center with a collection of inspired yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour certification.
The title of our training is "Exploring the Energy Body: Teaching Pranayama and Meditation."
Imagine nine days, each starting with depth practices at 6:15 and full days with talks, practices, practice-teach sessions and a three-day intensive in silence.
The "Kripalu" approach to teaching is to guide from direct experience and knowledge. To that end, we took a deep dive.
Through a fair bit of churning and burning, the result was a lot of lit up hearts and minds and a lot of fortunate students out there to have passionate teachers in their community.
Teaching at Kripalu I like to say is like playing the violin with the London philharmonic behind you. I joke that I stopped in for lunch and stayed for 24 years. It's an amazing place with dedicated staff in a beautiful setting.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
Red Tailed Hawk
The Heart Practices: Equanimity and Steadiness
Way back when I lived in an ashram I think our teacher started getting fed up with people sharing their personal drama.
He developed what I thought of as a mantra. When someone would go on and on about some revelation or insight, he'd listen politely for awhile, then start to get agitated. After awhile he'd interrupt and say,
"So What?"
It was hilarious - and quite to the point.
I started to apply this new mantra when I'd get upset or feel slighted and even sometimes when I'd have what felt like a great revelation. "So What?" It was liberating.
Equanimity is the capacity to be steady in the midst of change. We are driven by the 'eight wordly winds,' as they are referred to in Buddhist psychology.
- Gain and Loss
- Praise and Blame
- Honor and Disgrace
- Pleasure and Pain
I know a lot of extremely successful people who have been deeply driven by their fear of failure.
How full would our lives be if these forces did not have their grip?
This talk dives into the practices that cultivate equanimity.
The blurb:
This talk explores both the qualities of steadiness as well as the 'near-enemies,' states that look like equanimity but fall short. You'll explore some practices and hear some stories that can help you remember, no matter what arises, a transcendent quality of presence.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, stitcher app here. The sound is pretty low so you'll have to crank it up a bit. Sorry about that.
Who Are You and What Is Your Path?
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores how meditation is never a 'one size fits all' technique.
You'll learn how understanding the formation of your unique character structure can help you understand who you are and what practices are the best match for you.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
The Heart Practices: Joy
One of my best friends from high school and I recently reconnected. We touch base every few years. "I just finished my third book," he said, "and this is the one I like the most."
"That's fantastic!," I gushed, aware that in reality, my happiness for him was actually about 80%. The 80% was thrilled for him. He's brilliant and his book looks amazing. The 20% was all about me, struggling over the outline for my first book.
Sympathetic joy is all about your capacity to experience joy for yourself as well as joy for others. Like all of these practices, they are challenging and cathartic.
I once co-created a weeklong retreat at Kripalu Center called "The Art of Joyful Living." It was all about getting centered through yoga and meditation, exploring creative expression through writing, movement, improv and dance. We were shocked when the participants arrived. Many were seriously burned out. Some were deeply depressed. Many felt no joy whatsoever.
Our program design changed dramatically as we spent time examining that which lies between us and joy and how to work with these issues. Identifying the obstacles to joy, bring non-judging awareness and compassion to that process, can open all kinds of doors.
The blurb:
An unrestricted heart effortlessly opens to kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. When you consciously explore any of these states, you may notice quite a few impediments to the actual experience.
Joy is felt through the senses as well as being an inner state not dependent on externals.
When the mind is quiet, seeking nothing, that transcendent state of joy can spontaneously arise.
Meditation: Movement, Slow Motion Release and Resting in the Senses
Here's an eclectic meditation for you, if you want to mix it up a little bit. Here's a little of what's in this session if you feel drawn:
- A pretty long holding with the arms overhead, focusing on building sensations
- Slow motion meditation as you release the hands, cultivating concentration and absorption
- An "open focus' inquiry into sensing into the hands and the intimacy of breath
- An inquiry into the "Three Characteristics of Reality" - Impermanence, Suffering and 'Not self'
- At the end, an inquiry into resting in presence and the practice of non-manipulation
This is definitely a 'non-standard' practice, but one that might be particularly helpful if your mind is restless. Focusing on the sensations of the arms overhead and the slow motion release is an excellent way to bring an over-active mind into the present.
The Heart Practices: Compassion
Compassion can be seen as your capacity to feel what another feels. Whenever you can successfully do that, you create a profound shift in your consciousness. You move from a tightly held sense of "I" and "mine" to a broader, more inclusive view.
I have to say that this talk is partially inspired by Peyton Manning. Could you not feel for the guy at the Superbowl While I imagine there was a fair bit of schadenfruede that evening, it was probably one of the more compassionate, emphatically shared experiences on the planet that evening.
The talk starts with some technical questions on meditation, then dive in. Here's the blurb:
This is the second in a series of four talks on the Heart Practices.After a few questions regarding meditation practice and technique, this talk explores cultivating compassion as a practice. The Heart Practices can be quite transformative and thereby challenging. Among the topics: working with what arises in the practice, how to work with 'compassion fatigue' and how to practice compassion on yourself in a grounded, embodied way.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here and stitcher app here.
No Paddleboarding Today
The Felt Sense of Awakened Presence
Special AUDIO:
This talk explores the 'felt sense' of embodied presence and how meditation leads to the flowering of Wisdom of Compassion.
You'll learn how meditation increases your capacity to see more clearly into the nature of things and how you can more embody the intimacy of your life.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
The Heart Practices: Kindness
As I'm teaching every week for the next month, I've decided to launch into an exploration of the heart practices.
It's one thing to develop your capacity for concentration - your capacity to notice what is happening as it's happening.
It's another to develop your capacity for mindfulness - for non-judging awareness.
And it's yet another skill to call on the qualities of kindness and compassion. When the heart opens, there can be a natural softening, an expansion from a tight sense of "I and Mine" to a more natural, embracing state. This talk dives into some of the original teachings and practices.
Here's the blurb:
Training in the Heart Practices can radically reframe your perspective on life and what is possible.This talk explores 'metta,' the essential teaching of cultivating generosity toward yourself and others.
In this training you can move from a small sense of a self-protective "I" to a more expanse sense of inter-connectedness. It's not necessarily easy, but a powerful training to remember your true nature.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here and stitcher app here.
Limited Resources
With these days upon days of sustained freezing temperatures, there is less and less open water on the river. It's quite stunning to see such a wide variety of birds all clumped together in the open areas.
The above is an early morning shot of one open area at first light. 16 degrees. My camera started freezing up, along with my toes.
iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.
What I Learned on my Ten-Day Retreat
I'm just back from 10 days of unstructured silence at the Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts.
Tara and I stopped in to visit my father in his Alzheimers unit on our way up. As I shared in my talk, I am getting more comfortable there with each visit. People sit in rooms together in silence and those who can walk, walk very slowly from place to place. There is a camaraderie in the silence, though everyone seems to live in their own inner world.
Once we arrived at this center dedicated to supporting people on long-term retreats, I could not help but notice:
- People sit in rooms together in silence
- Those who can walk, walk very slowly from place to place
- There is a camaraderie in the silence though everyone seems to live in their own inner world
Yikes!
I won't go into detail here, but a retreat like this is always deeply transformative.
If you'd like to hear more, you might listen to my talk from Monday night in Arlington. In it I share about the specific practices I used and some of the trials and insights that arose.
Here's the blurb:
This talk is fresh from my return from a ten-day silent unstructured retreat at the Forest Refuge in central Massachussets.We'll explore some specific practices I found helpful for developing concentration as well as how to look deeply into the the Three Characteristics of Reality. Along with techniques for arriving, we'll talk about strategies for riding the ever-changing waves and fluctuations of sensations, feelings, moods and mind states.
iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, stitcher here.
