Serve and Savor

EB White once said,  

“I wake up each morning torn between a desire to serve the world and to savor it. This makes it difficult to plan the day.”  

I’m just back form a nine-day intensive with co-director Larrisa Carlson, our great staff and a gathering of amazing teachers, practitioners and adventurers.  

We did a lot of heavy lifting in this retreat. We cranked up the heat by practicing strict social silence for a number of days and each day was packed with hours upon hours of deep yoga, breathing and meditation.  

And in the midst of the falling away, the letting go, the transformational journey, something arises that is both light and deep.  

It’s a sense of connectedness and a quality of presence that is effortless.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Teaching Pranayama and Meditation at Kripalu Center

I’m in deep immersion here at Kripalu Center in Western Massachussets.  Nine solid days.   This is the “Teaching Pranayama and Meditation" module for yoga teachers working toward their 500-hour professional certification.   

We start at 6:15 and go till 9:00PM most nights.  The “Kripalu approach” is to teach from the inside so we do intensive practices, particularly for the first half of the retreat before we move into practice teach.  Each day, we do hours of yoga practice, intense breathing practices (pranayama) as well as a variety of core meditation techniques.   

Two things make this training extraordinary. One is the power of community - skilled and dedicated practitioners who are really on for transformation.  Another is this amazing setting.     

The Berkshires were the playground of the ultra wealthy.  The Kripalu property, in fact, was the site of the largest private residence in North America.  For about a year, that is, until a neighbor built their summer home the next year, just a wee bit bigger.   

The aftermath of this wealth is an area dedicated to culture and a nature.  Half the county is preserved land. This is the home of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony.  You’ll also find the Shakespeare and Company, Jacob’s Pillow and a host of alternative communities.   

Of all this, though, I  think I like the middle of the lake best.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Seasons and Change

I've had this trip with friends to the Rockies planned for months, am happy I can be here, but it's an adjustment.  

I came from the swamps of northern Virginia to 11,500 feet of dry Rocky Mountain air.  

The contrasts are delicious.  

 

A few days ago Tara and I were lounging in a kayak in the sun soaking in the summer heat. Yesterday we were hiking in a snow squall, sliding off the hard-packed snow into melting snowbanks.  

Last week I started setting up for the hummingbirds. This morning it was 23 degrees and I'm wearing everything I packed.  

Today we'll again hike up on the pass, wearing down coats, hats and gloves. I'll be back in the steamy woods of the mid-Atlantic shortly, most probably trying to remember the feeling of biting wind and lashing snow against my face.  

Robert Frost said he could summarize life in two words: "It changes."
 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

The Art of Mindful Photography

I often find myself acting out a similar pattern: as soon as I see an especially poignant scene, I reach for my iPhone to capture it.  

Photos can be a wonderful way of sharing meaningful experiences with others, but I worry that my attempts to document the moment make being present in it a challenge. Does photography support awareness of my immediate experience, or detract from it?  

I thought immediately of my friend and teacher Jonathan Foust, a world-renowned meditation instructor and the former president of North America’s largest yoga center, Kripalu. A few decades ago, before his career as a meditation and yoga teacher, Jonathan worked as a freelance photographer for the Rockford Register Star in Illinois.  

Who better to address the question of mindfulness when it comes to photography? Here’s what I learned from Jonathan’s unique perspective on the relationship between two of the great passions of his life.  

  Awareness of Seeing and Attitudes of the Mind

For Jonathan, the most obvious way that photography encourages mindfulness is by heightening our awareness of seeing.  

National Geographic photographer Jim Brandenberg has been an inspiration for Jonathan ever since Brandenberg experimenting with the idea of taking only one photo a day for 90 days. When a world-class photographer who is used to snapping thousands of shots a day limits himself in that way, you can imagine how mindful comes into play.  

About four years ago, Jonathan took his Canon G12 with him on a month-long retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center with the intention of imitating the experiment–with a slight amendment; he would allow himself to take three photos a day.  

And though Jonathan’s hope was to bring more consciousness to how he sees things, he found that the practice also offered powerful insight into the habits of his mind.  

“I’d look out over a beautiful sunset and my mind would say, Nah, I got a better one yesterday. Or I would take a shot from a far distance of someone doing qigong with the fog behind them and think, Damn it, if they were only 20 feet higher on that hill they’d be better silhouetted,” he said. ”[I’d] just be noticing–noticing the aversion, noticing the clinging, noticing the judgment.”  

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE FROM JARED GOTTLIEB and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. Also, the link is: http://intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com/2014/06/06/mindful-photography-jonathan-foust/  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Even More on Letting Go

Special AUDIO: This talk explores even more on the essence of spiritual practice: the art of letting go.  

You'll learn how letting go happens in the mind, but also (and especially) in the body.  

You'll explore through a guided meditation some inquiries that will help you sense who you are not limited by contricting beliefs and what your life might be like if you truly let go of what's between you and feeling free.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Letting Go

I had the good fortune to be with my father when he passed. It was interesting to write this obituary by his side:  

 

E. Earnest (Earnie) Foust, died on June 4th, 2014 in Whitehall, Pennsylvania at the age of 89.  

He was a professor of English at Kutztown University and active in a variety of initiatives to create a more peaceful world.  

Earnie Foust was born on February 4th, 1925 to Earl and Arlie Foust in Montoursville, PA.  

He served in World War II and as a member of a rifle company, was wounded twice, once on the Anzio Beachhead in Italy, site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war and again, when his assault boat was sunk crossing the Rhine in the invasion of Germany. At the end of the war he was stationed in Dachau just after the liberation of the concentration camp. Of the 20 men with whom he joined his company, at the end of the war he was the sole survivor.  

His experience in the European theater dramatically altered his life by allowing him to pursue higher education and inspiring him as an activist for progressive causes and as a proponent of peace.  

Through the GI Bill he earned his BA in English at Lock Haven State College in Pennsylvania and his Masters at the University of Iowa.  

He met his wife Barbara while in college and they settled on a 73-acre farm while he taught at Kutztown University. As a professor of English for 31 years he also served for many years as ombudsman. He developed a course called “The Literature of Peace” which is still being taught.  

Earnie and Barbara joined the Reading Friends Meeting (Quakers). He was active in the Meeting and when they retired to Maine, they were among the founders of the Quaker Meeting in Damariscotta.  

Renowned for his kind nature and sparkling wit, he will be missed by many.  

He is survived by his four children: Virginia Louise Mutti and husband Larry, William Foust and wife Linda, Jonathan Foust and wife, Tara Brach, Matthew Foust and wife, Karen, grandchildren Laurel Mutti and her husband Kaustubh Patwardhan, Johanna Mutti and her partner Curtis Rockwell, grandchildren Matthew Foust and wife Lori, Jason Foust and fiancé Jackie Einfeldt, David Foust, Sarah Foust, Hannah Foust, Allison Foust and great-grandchildren Molly Foust, Ryan Foust and Sailor Rose Foust.  

A memorial service will be held in the fall.

By My Father's Side

It’s been almost a week since my father has taken any fluids. He’s no longer urinating and his fingernails are starting to turn blue as his body is abandoning the extremities and rallying around the core of the heart and lungs to keep life going.  

Yesterday I wrote his obituary bedside and recalled how after being wounded twice and MIA in WWII he told me that “everything after that was gravy.”  

On the farm with my dad, cutting slab wood for the wood furnace.

He’d seen a huge amount of death early in his life. Of the twenty guys who joined his rifle unit with him, he was the only guy to make it out alive after seeing some of the most intensive action in Anzio, through southern France and in the final push into Germany. After being patched up for the second time he was at Dachau right after the prison camps were liberated.   Now he’s again in his personal relationship with death, this time washed and shaved, medicated with morphine and Haldol, tilted to one side so his freed up lung can breathe.   I thought he’d be in a coma by now, but he still focuses his eyes, mostly his right one, and sometimes tracks me when I talk to him. I’ve read him Keats, who was his specialty as an English professor, and read him some advice from the Tibetans, specialists in the art of letting go. I’ve guided him through a few meditations, told him the story of this life and all he’s given and all of his kids have told him it’s OK to go.   One breath at a time, we’re all letting go.

Having Tea with Your Demons

Someone once said, “In this life you spend most of your time either trying to dominate or trying to avoid domination.”  

In that same way, when you are visited by old, undigested memories, feelings and neurosis, chances are you either try to dominate them by making them go away or avoid being dominated by spinning off into anger and blame, distracting yourself with planning and fantasy, getting sucked into depression or paralyzed by doubt and fear.  

When these situations arise there is a counter-intuitive approach. Have a cup of tea with the experience. Sit down together and hang out a little bit. Listen. Learn what you can learn from this experience.  

It’s easy to say, but not so easy to do. In this talk I explore a bit how this works.   The blurb:  

Tea with Your Demons If you practice non-judging awareness in meditation or in your daily life, you are bound to encounter challenges and undigested experiences.  

Rather than fighting, avoiding, nuking or falling into old habitual patterns, you can, when the circumstances are right, explore what lessons might be encoded in your experience.  

This talk explores how to have tea with your demons and includes an open period for questions.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Spring on the Potomac

I live on a big, wild river and every spring I feel a certain tension.  

Waterfowl lay their eggs and the spring rains wash them away.  

This year a number of families got wiped out as we had the biggest floods in about three years.  

This merganser family made it. The image is rather dull as this was shot before sunrise but what I love about this image in particular is the little merganser catching a ride on it's mother’s back.  

The shot looks a little bit like the Loch Ness monster, but I assure you it’s made up of of six very intimate and interconnected birds.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Your Obstacles are Allies

I’m just back from from the IMCW Spring Retreat, a week of supporting folks in intensive mindfulness practice.  Days upon days of silence and rigorously paying attention to what is arising inevitably surface old scars, beliefs and undigested life experiences.  

Turning attention directly to what is between you and feeling free is a radical act.  It requires non-judging awareness, concentration, relaxation, energy, curiosity and determination.  

Naturally, when something unpleasant arises, you’ll want to nuke it or shift your attention to something else. It’s possible, though, to find new ways of being with these challenging situations.  

For example, many  people experience doubt.  Doubt can be paralyzing.  It feels self-limiting.  It reinforces the ruthless inner critic.  

Can you imagine on some level, though, that doubt is your friend?  

On some level, your doubt is an ally.  On a good day, it provides discernment and clarity.  It helps you remember what is most important and forces you to employ both intellectual rigor and some quality of faith.  

Any challenge you encounter, you might explore as to how that feeling or mental state, on some level, is doing it’s best to serve you.  

The Blurb:  

When you practice non-judging awareness you'll naturally begin to notice everything between you and feeling free.

 

There is a natural tendency to want to 'nuke' the issues that arise - to either not feel them or make them go away.

 

When you can remember that in some way what you are resisting in your life is actually, on some level, trying to support you, you might feel a shift in your relationship to it.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

On Forgiveness and Letting Go

Special AUDIO: This talk explores how the practice of forgivness breaks old cycles of separation that hold you back from feeling free.  

You'll also explore some of the blocks you'll encounter when you enter into an intention to forgive.  

You'll learn and practice two forms of forgiveness, one more classical and one practice that draws on more contemporary language.  

 

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Power of the Pause

I'm just back from a seven day retreat.  

Usually we lead a weekend  plus five days for those who want to extend but this time we decided to make it an entire uninterrupted weeklong intensive.  

We had 99 participants and it was a deep dive.  

It's always an honor to serve this retreat with my codirectors Pat Coffey, Eric Kolvig, Tara Brach and this time, Trudy Mitchel-Gilkey.  Our stellar managers, La Sarmiento and Janet Merrick, made the event seamless.  

I say this every time, but if you can possibly find the time to do one of these events, it is truly one of the best investments of time and fortune you can make.  

Every great tradition speaks of the power of the Pause. When you step away from all of your habits, routines, relationships and commitments and simply rest in silence, amazing healing can occur.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

How to Let Go

A lively class this week.  Despite the rain, quite a few folks came to meditate and reflect on the topic of the week:  “How to Let Go.”  

When you step into one of these human flesh units, suffering will inevitably be part of your journey. Suffering (which you can also think of as stress, unsatisfactoriness or unsteadiness) is a direct result of clinging.  

The good news is that you can let go of clinging. You’ve done this before. Somehow, you managed to let go of something that felt painful and experienced new possibilities that did not exist before.  

This week’s talk explores - in a pragmatic way - how you can let go of what is between you and feeling free.   I hope you enjoy it.  

Here’s the blurb:  

 Stress, unsatisfactoriness, unsteadiness and suffering all arise in relationship to clinging.  

We know we need to let go of that which holds us back from full aliveness, but how?  

This talk explores some of the philosophy behind how we cling, but also dives into experiential inquiries you can try on for yourself.

As the saying goes, "Let go a little and you'll experience a little freedom.  Let go a lot and you'll experience a lot of freedom."

To do this requires both courage and compassion.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Meditation - Relax and Pay Attention

The meditation follows the essential guidance to relax and to pay attention to what naturally changes in your experience.  

The blurb:  

You'll begin with some slow deep breaths and then move into a bodyscan meditation, intimately sensing into your inner experience.

After the scan you'll be guided to select an anchor in the senses and use that anchor as a way to come back when you find the mind wandering or lost in a dream state.  Throughout the practice you'll be reminded to re-relax and refresh your awareness of what is happening.

Do not operate heavy equipment or motor vehicles when listening to this!

 

Enjoy.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

Awareness, Truth and Love

This week’s talk explores the Three Refuges.  Rather than taking a philosophical route, I personally find it more interesting to explore how we can pragmatically apply the refuges of Awareness, Truth and Love in practice and in daily life.  

You’ll find a few truly marginal jokes and stories here and quite a few guided reflections.  I spent about ten minutes during the 30-minute meditation preceding the talk giggling replaying the imagery in the first joke. As someone once said, “If you laugh, that means it’s funny.”  

Tara’s book, True Refuge, takes a deep dive into these principles. It’s a lovely book.  If you’re interested in an experiential overview on the topic, you might enjoy this talk.  

Here’s the blurb:  

Delusion is believing something to be true that actually isn't true at all.  Waking up to what is real can be a challenging and sometimes humiliating experience.  

You can draw on three essential qualities to wake up.  Each element has practices associated with it and each element can be a refuge when you feel lost, stuck or feeling separate.

This talk explores the Three Refuges - Awareness, Truth and Love - through some marginal jokes, some stories and through guided meditations and reflections.

iTunes podcast here, online listening here, stitcher here, and Jonathan’s YouTube channel here.

What I Learned on My 10 Day Retreat

Special AUDIO: This talk explores what I learned after a ten-day retreat at the Forest Refuge in Barre, MA. You’ll learn practices helpful to develop concentration and to look deeply into the Three Characteristics of Reality.  

You’ll also learn strategies for riding the ever-changing waves and fluctuations of sensations, feelings, moods and mind states.  

iTunes podcast here, online listening here and stitcher here.

So What is This Not Self Thing, Anyway?

There are a lot of stories about the Buddha and what he purportedly said.  One is in reference to the  many public debates as to whether there is or is not a 'self'.'

The story goes that he was confronted in the street by someone who repeatedly asked him this question.  He finally responded like this:  "I won't say there is a self and I won't say there isn't a self.  I will say that I can't find one."

Check out some of the blogs written by philosophers and dedicated students on this topic of 'not self' and you'll see some real hand to hand combat.  Very strong opinions and not a lot equanimity.

To grasp this challenging principle and to sense who and what you truly are, I think we need to turn to the practices themselves.  They can guide us not to the concept, but to an intuitive understanding.

This talk dives into a few ways to consider this principle that can be so confusing.
  The blurb:

One of the "Three Characteristics of Reality," the principle of "not self," can be confusing. You can probably sense, though, on an intuitive level, who or what you are in the absence of 'I' and 'mine.'  This talk explores this principle through stories and direct experiences, including a meditation on what are referred to as the "five aggregates.'

Whoever you are, I hope you might find it helpful.

iTunes podcast here, online streaming here, stitcher here.

Body-Centered Inquiry

I am grateful to my friends at Sounds True for helping me create this product. A few words from Sounds True:

“Teacher Jonathan Foust presents a unique method for tapping our deepest wisdom through the body-combining mindfulness meditation, focusing, and intuitive inquiry into a practice he calls Body-Centered Inquiry. On Body-Centered Inquiry, he offers a complete course on accessing the “still, small voice within” to find answers to persistent problems, set free your creativity, and deepen the connection between your body and mind.”

A Touch of Grace: Bamboo Flute Meditations

Bamboo flute improvisations by Jonathan Foust. You’ll find these selections deeply restful and meditative. Perfect for meditation, yoga, massage and relaxation. You’ll enjoy four selections made up of simple flute, flute, voice and tamboura, flute and piano and flute and strings, accompanied by the wonderful artist, Todd Norian.

To view a video about this product, Click here.

The Art of Relaxation

Experience what meditators throughout the ages have always known: More profound rest means more profound activity.  Regular, conscious relaxation helps maintain clear, vibrant awareness and makes it possible to feel more fully alive.  Lying down or sitting up, use these guided meditations regularly to rejuvenate your body, mind, and spirit.