When I set out to blog about how my meditation practice changed after marriage and motherhood, I started with some stories from after the wedding and early pregnancy. In this post I’m picking up where I left off, a few months before our...
Every day, my high school art teacher would walk around the classroom to inspect each student’s progress on their project—but mostly to make sure people weren’t goofing off. I never goofed off. I was there to make art—and to escape from my problems...
A new study finds that lovingkindness meditation makes your vagus nerve more responsive. That's meaningful because it is involved in cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and immune responses.
Traditional Buddhist teachings tell us that we should love all beings because -- over the course of many lifetimes -- everyone has been your mother in one of them. In traditional Buddhist southeast Asian cultures, this is a valid metaphor for...
Gender generalizations make me uneasy. But after practicing psychotherapy for many years with women from diverse racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds, there’s one that is unfortunately consistent: most women struggle with genuine self-...
" If we're willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation" -- Pema Chodron.
Mark Sanford, who on Tuesday was elected to Congress by South Carolina voters, reveals he turned to meditation after the spectacular implosion of his political career as governor of that state after the revelation of his trip to Argentina in pursuit...
My non-practicing Jewish grandparents used to come to synagogue on Friday nights just to hear me sing in the youth choir. “You were the littlest one up there, but you had the biggest voice,” my grandma tells me. That might be true, or it might be...
When I began practicing Buddhism, I started attending a local Tibetan center because it was the only local center in which practices were conducted in English and where I, as a teenager from a poor family, didn't have to shell out much for...
Good morning or afternoon or evening, Contemplation Station travelers. We took advantage of current research into warp drive technology and got the train ready for space travel. Now, as you can see, we are orbiting Tau Ceti — we are like another...
People consider conscious rap now, in hip-hop circles, to feel condescending or feel like not a part of the mainstream. So the challenge for me is, "How do I be as good or better than these rappers out here?" and "How do I stay relevant with my...
The April 24 building collapse in Bangladesh is now the deadliest garment-factory accident in world history. The death toll as of Friday was 547, the New York Times reports, and was expected to climb. By contrast, New York's Triangle Shirtwaist...
Daily Sit invites you to practice meditation with a live online community tomorrow morning. Each week there will be an opportunity for anyone who wants to participate online in a community sit.
In an analogy either too obvious or too subtle - I haven’t quite figured it out, but it’s there somewhere - I carry my one-year old child on my back. A lot. He prefers the backpack carrier where he’s at adult level rather than the stroller...
If someone were to go fishing to catch a good fish (insight), they would need to bait the hook and put it in the water (placing attention on the breath or another object) and leave it there in a good spot(keeping attention settled on the chosen...
I've been trying to explore my relationship with perfectionism. When I was a kid I loved getting straight A's, being the president of whatever club, being the perfect daughter. Lately I'm noticing my perfectionism in terms of being a "good spiritual...
Lots of schools are using mindfulness meditation to help students improve their focus and ease stress. There's both empirical and anecdotal evidence that it works. But one Ohio school system is moving the other way, dropping mindfulness instruction...
At the Interdependence Project, we support all types of mindfulness—mindfulness of mind, mindfulness of breath, mindfulness of emotions, mindfulness of eating tacos, and, yes, mindfulness of poop.
Pooping is an age-old art that almost all humans...
Financially speaking, I'm quite poor by many standards. I'm not ungrateful for many extraordinary experiences I've had and some of the unearned privileges I've benefited from (for example, attending top notch public school, being male, White,...
