Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Some Things Just Hurt
Sharon Salzberg
,
December 1, 2023
It’s inevitable that by simply living a life, there will be times of adversity – like now. It’s not because of our attitude that times like these are uncomfortable or heartbreaking. Some things just hurt.Perhaps surprisingly, I find this truth to be liberating.
Read More →
November
Some Things Just Hurt

How Are You?
Jay Michaelson
,
December 31, 2020
How are you dealing with the radical unreliability and impermanence of life these days?
Read More →
December
How Are You?

This Lonely Winter
Yael Shy
,
December 23, 2020
In the present moment, loneliness is just a feeling. Often, the most painful aspect of it is how hard we fight to push it away—which, this year, may just not be possible anyway. If we let it be, it can just be a feeling. Maybe not a pleasant one, but one that is still less difficult.
Read More →
December
This Lonely Winter

Good Snowflakes
Stephen Batchelor
,
November 20, 2020
There is a Chinese Buddhist kongan – rather like a Zen koan – in which a figure known as Layman Pang points to the falling snow and says, “Good snowflakes: they don’t fall anywhere else.”
Read More →
November
Good Snowflakes

Admitting When We're Afraid
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
,
November 13, 2020
It’s okay to feel afraid right now. Meditation can help you feel it safely, so that you can begin to let it go.
Read More →
November
Admitting When We're Afraid

One Word to Reduce Post-Election Stress
Jay Michaelson
,
November 6, 2020
If you’re on edge right now, good news: you’re normal!It’s hard to see how 2020 could get any more stressful, but that’s exactly what’s happened with the election and its contested aftermath. So, like clockwork, your genetically-programmed nervous system is probably responding with heightened anxiety, fear, tension.
Read More →
November
One Word to Reduce Post-Election Stress

The Power Of Equanimity
Ruth King
,
October 29, 2020
In today's society, “equanimity” probably doesn't describe what people are striving for. But what power does embracing equanimity through mindfulness hold?
Read More →
October
The Power Of Equanimity

Whose Thoughts Are You Thinking?
Sebene Selassie
,
October 20, 2020
I love this quote by the great, late Indian spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti. He said (paraphrased by Jane Fonda, who popularized it): “You think you’re thinking your thoughts. You are not. You are thinking the culture’s thoughts.”
Read More →
October
Whose Thoughts Are You Thinking?

Mindfulness of Cortisol
Jay Michaelson
,
October 14, 2020
Cortisol is your best friend and worst enemy.It’s probably saved your life, if you’ve ever had to make quick decisions in danger. It’s your “fight or flight” hormone, secreted by your adrenal gland (just above your kidneys) when the brain tells it that peril is near.
Read More →
October
Mindfulness of Cortisol

Two Ways of Meditating with Anxiety
Narayan Liebenson
,
October 6, 2020
These are turbulent times: the pandemic, the election, catastrophic climate change, the reckoning with racial injustice. Naturally, many of us are feeling anxious. Which, after all, is why many people turn to meditation in the first place: to relieve anxiety and stress, to build our capacity for resilience.There are, however, two distinct approaches to anxiety in mindfulness meditation. And they lead to different kinds of results.
Read More →
October
Two Ways of Meditating with Anxiety

What Compassion Looks Like Today
Ruth King
,
September 29, 2020
The purpose of this reflection is to see clearly and experience directly racial suffering. It requires us to feel into the experiences of those who are suffering without turning away, and offer our wish that everyone, without exception, be free from pain and suffering.
Read More →
September
What Compassion Looks Like Today

Making Anger Your Teacher
Norman Fischer
,
September 24, 2020
Instead of fighting with anger, we have to turn toward it, to experience it without affirming it and waving it around, and to investigate what it really is. It turns out, the closer you look, the more anger can teach us.
Read More →
September
Making Anger Your Teacher

Scrambled Eggs: Mindful Parenting in a Pandemic
Sumi Kim
,
September 15, 2020
During this pandemic, many of us parents are spending a lot more time with our children. With more contact, there's often more conflict. The last half year may have seen some of your worst parenting moments—but also some of your best. Certainly, both hold true for me. How can mindfulness practice help us over the coming months?
Read More →
September
Scrambled Eggs: Mindful Parenting in a Pandemic

Lean Back
Jay Michaelson
,
September 10, 2020
One of the best “wisdom-reminders” I ever received was from Sharon Salzberg, when I was on retreat with her in 2004. We spend a lot of our time leaning way forward into life, she said: with anticipation, excitement, anger, worry. We don’t have to turn these emotions off, but we could just lean back a little bit.
Read More →
September
Lean Back

Meditation and the 2020 Election
Sharon Salzberg
,
September 2, 2020
The next several weeks, as we enter a highly contentious election season in the midst of an ongoing pandemic, will ask all of us some challenging questions.
Read More →
September
Meditation and the 2020 Election

The Myth, and Truth, of Belonging
Sebene Selassie
,
August 26, 2020
For most of my life, I longed to belong. I longed to fit in, I longed to achieve success, and I longed to have a soul mate. And yet, also for most of my life I felt I did not belong anywhere.
Read More →
August
The Myth, and Truth, of Belonging

Your Fear is Sacred
Ethan Nichtern
,
August 20, 2020
Almost everyone I know is experiencing heightened fear right now, with Covid-19, the upcoming election, greater national attention to systemic racism and police brutality, and tremendous uncertainty about the future. Does experiencing all that fear when we sit mean we’re failures at meditation?
Read More →
August
Your Fear is Sacred

No Mud, No Lotus
Yael Shy
,
August 12, 2020
The lotus flower, a symbol of awakening in Buddhist and other spiritual traditions, blooms in the muckiest, muddiest swamps. Its roots begin under the swamp water and its buds reach their way to the surface where they burst forth into stunning pink or white flowers. If you want the beauty of the lotus flower, there is no getting around the mud.
Read More →
August
No Mud, No Lotus

Why Masks Give Me Hope
Jay Michaelson
,
August 5, 2020
Masks suck.They’re hot and uncomfortable, especially for people who have to wear them for hours at a clip. To most Americans, they look threatening, weird, or both. And they make communication, verbal and non-verbal alike, difficult.
Read More →
August
Why Masks Give Me Hope

We Will Get Through This
Dr.Rick Hanson
,
July 29, 2020
This is a scary time. The pandemic, as well as this period of societal and political tension, is testing all of us – as individuals, families, and communities and countries. And we are not always passing the test.Yet we will get through this. There will be another side. Even after the worst events in human history, there is always eventually another side.The question is: how do we get there?
Read More →
July
We Will Get Through This

How Contemplating Death Can Improve Your Life
Anushka Fernandopulle
,
July 23, 2020
In recent months, death has suddenly become more visible.The Covid-19 pandemic has confronted us worldwide with the fragility of our existence. We’ve lost loved ones, gotten sick ourselves, or just spent months indoors trying to slow the spread of this potentially fatal disease.But death has always been there.
Read More →
July
How Contemplating Death Can Improve Your Life

Three Steps to Refresh from Tech Overwhelm
Dr.Susan Pollak
,
July 14, 2020
Feel exhausted after a long Zoom call? You may not be breathing enough. Here’s a three-step remedy for ‘Zoom Apnea’ from Dr. Susan Pollak.
Read More →
July
Three Steps to Refresh from Tech Overwhelm

How to Heal Yourself in Nature
Mark Coleman
,
July 7, 2020
In the midst of an ongoing pandemic, being outside in Nature is perhaps the safest way to find healing and solace. The unsurpassed stillness, tranquility and wisdom of the natural world offer the possibility of renewal and resilience.Adding mindful attention to our time outside can greatly enhance these benefits. Here’s one way to do that, which you can try on your own.
Read More →
July
How to Heal Yourself in Nature

What I’ve Learned from Teaching Mindfulness in NYC Public Schools
Brian Simmons
,
July 1, 2020
You might say that the goal of mindfulness is to change our perspective by seeing thoughts, emotions, body sensations and outer events more clearly.And yet, how do we do this under the stress of a pandemic? And how can we “see clearly” while a collective outrage over injustices that have remained hidden in plain sight for centuries, is now erupting in cities, suburbs and screens across the globe?
Read More →
July
What I’ve Learned from Teaching Mindfulness in NYC Public Schools

Taking Pride in Humility
Rae Houseman
,
June 26, 2020
My acceptance of self is motivated by my love for others; I can’t advocate for change in a world in which I am too scared to be myself. I am strengthened in knowing that by living and sharing my truth I am not conceding to pressures to conform to a norm that limits all of us in expressing ourselves. There is a reciprocal relation to me living my truth while simultaneously advocating for others to live theirs.
Read More →
June
Taking Pride in Humility

How Mindfulness Can Help You Break Your Unconscious Biases
Anu Gupta
,
June 19, 2020
The global anti-racism uprisings have ignited a much-needed reckoning among many mindfulness practitioners about what they can do to address systemic racism. For me, one of the most powerful responses is to transform our own biases as an extension of our mindfulness practice.
Read More →
June
How Mindfulness Can Help You Break Your Unconscious Biases

How I Continue to Mess Up Being an Ally (And How Meditation Helps Me Mess Up Slightly Less)
Oren Jay Sofer
,
June 12, 2020
“There, do you see?” she said. “You just did it again. It’s all about you.”Ignorance is so humbling.Here I was, a proud would-be ally in the cause of racial justice. I’d read books on anti-racism, learned to see my own white fragility, attended workshops and classes, served on diversity committees. Not to mention that I’d taught thousands of people how to meditate, how to communicate better, and how to live more in line their values.
Read More →
June
How I Continue to Mess Up Being an Ally (And How Meditation Helps Me Mess Up Slightly Less)

The Grief Inside
Leslie Booker
,
June 5, 2020
There is a deep grief inside my body. And there might be in yours as well.Because of street crimes that have shown us a new face of xenophobia, and because Black men are still being hunted down and shot for jogging. Because Black men are still being accused of being sexual predators, while bird watching on a weekday morning, and because another black man couldn’t breathe under the knee of a policeman.
Read More →
June
The Grief Inside

What the Pandemic Can Teach Us
Pema Chödrön
,
May 29, 2020
The basic foundation is to have a meditation practice in which you become increasingly self-aware. You're able to self-reflect, you're conscious of your own habitual patterns and your own tendencies towards fear or aggression or whatever it might be. So you can acknowledge what's happening with you.The point is not to make yourself feel bad. Don't turn the mind into some kind of enemy. Instead, cultivate a kind attitude toward your own habitual patterns.
Read More →
May
What the Pandemic Can Teach Us

How to See Strangers as Allies, Not Threats
Jay Michaelson
,
May 19, 2020
Many of us are entering a new phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. As some restrictions are eased, even as social distancing remains essential for protecting public health, many of us are venturing outside more -- and seeing people in public more than we have in months.Many of us also live in places where people strongly disagree about whether businesses should open, whether people should travel or not, and whether we need to wear masks all the time, or some of the time, or not at all.It’s natural, in this fearful and uncertain time, to sometimes view other people as threats.
Read More →
May
How to See Strangers as Allies, Not Threats

Feeling Stir-Crazy? Try this.
Sharon Salzberg
,
May 12, 2020
If you’re feeling stir-crazy right now, you’re not alone! Social distancing and quarantine have caused many of us to feel restless, cut off, and very fragile – not to mention all of the anxieties about our health, our families, economic insecurity, and so many other things. This is entirely normal.Here are two practices that may be helpful to you: reflection and meditation.
Read More →
May
Feeling Stir-Crazy? Try this.

What Being At Home Really Means
Dr.Rick Hanson
,
May 6, 2020
Right now, many of us are spending much more time at home than we are used to. And yet, paradoxically, many of us are also feeling less at home.That’s because our true home is not a physical location but our fundamental nature as human beings, the resting state of body and mind.
Read More →
May
What Being At Home Really Means

Feeling Your Emotions in the Body
Jay Michaelson
,
April 23, 2020
Since the Coronavirus pandemic began, all of us have struggled with a wide range of painful emotions: anxiety, grief, fear, extreme stress, you name it. And for many of us, myself included, they’ve been harder and stronger than ever before in our lives. I, personally, have had many very, very rough moments.
Read More →
April
Feeling Your Emotions in the Body

Courage in a Pandemic
Oren Jay Sofer
,
April 14, 2020
How can we resist giving in to overwhelm, letting panicked thoughts take over, or allowing the sirens of the news media infect our mind? We know intellectually that these kinds of reactions don’t help—but how can we actually prevent ourselves from falling under their sway?
Read More →
April
Courage in a Pandemic

You Are Not Alone
Dr.Susan Pollak
,
April 7, 2020
For many of us, being confined to quarantine because of the Coronavirus has been the most challenging time in our lives. The very scaffolding of our world, all that we had depended on to sustain us, has come tumbling down—work, school, friends, family, travel, places of worship, gyms, meditation centers, bars and restaurants. So much of what structured our lives and kept us happy is gone.
Read More →
April
You Are Not Alone

How to Stay Kind
nico hase
,
March 31, 2020
These are difficult times: frightening, painful, groundless. There are plenty of reasons to feel tight and scared right now.Still, speaking for myself, I know that I still want to find ways to be kind, helpful, maybe even joyful at times. And I know from mentoring meditators from all over the country these past weeks, I am definitely not alone in this.
Read More →
March
How to Stay Kind

"I Feel Afraid All the Time"
Yael Shy
,
March 24, 2020
“I can’t breathe again,” I said in short gusts, as my chest constricted. I felt lightheaded and dizzy, and I was covered in a cold sweat. It was my third panic attack that month.Sasha told me to focus on what was in front of me. “Touch the clothing,” she said, “How does it feel?”
Read More →
March
"I Feel Afraid All the Time"

Don't Try to Avoid the Mud
Arnie Kozak
,
March 18, 2020
In Vermont, where I live, there are six seasons—the usual four, plus stick season (that long stretch from mid-October to the first snows, when the trees are bare and the landscape grey) and mud season, which is now.
Read More →
March
Don't Try to Avoid the Mud

Meditating With Anxiety
Diana Winston
,
March 18, 2020
When my daughter is upset, anxious, or angry, my job as a parent is to hold her in a loving presence. I don’t have to fix her emotion, give her advice, tell her not to be sad, or take the pain away. My job is simply be there for her.The same is often true in meditation—except for myself.
Read More →
March
Meditating With Anxiety

Meditation and Coronavirus
Jay Michaelson
,
March 16, 2020
Meditation and mindfulness can be valuable allies at times like this. Of course, they don’t keep you free from disease. But they can help you be free-er from panic, more able to protect yourself, and more in touch with your own inner wisdom and resilience. Here are three examples.
Read More →
March
Meditation and Coronavirus

How Oppression Hardens Us -- and How Meditation Can Help Us Grow Tender
Zenju Earthlyn Manuel
,
March 4, 2020
If we were to simply walk past the fires of racism, sexism, and so on because illusions of separation exist within them, we would be walking past one of the widest gateways to liberation. It is a misinterpretation to suppose that attending to the fires of our existence cannot lead us to experience the waters of peace.
Read More →
March
How Oppression Hardens Us -- and How Meditation Can Help Us Grow Tender

Keeping Anxiety in Perspective
Sharon Salzberg
,
February 25, 2020
Everywhere I teach, people describe how the mounting anxieties of modern life are exhausting them. They want help to remain calm and confident amid so much danger, real and perceived. But how do we do that? The first step in coping is to learn to distinguish anxiety from realistic fear.
Read More →
February
Keeping Anxiety in Perspective

Compassion, Rage, and the Amazon
Dan Harris
,
February 19, 2020
For the new ABC News documentary Guardians of the Amazon, Dan Harris traveled to the remote Amazon to follow a group of indigenous people from the Guajajara tribe who are fighting back against illegal – but government-encouraged – logging and destruction of their native lands.I asked Dan about how his two lives – tough journalist on the one hand, meditation guru on the other – intersected.
Read More →
February
Compassion, Rage, and the Amazon

What Parenting Has Taught Me About Mindfulness
Jay Michaelson
,
February 13, 2020
My daughter is about to turn two years old, but I still describe my partner and myself as “new parents,” since we still seem to be figuring everything out by the seats of our pants.Pretty much every day, I’ve had one thought in particular: I have no idea how people without a mindfulness practice do this. In fact, while mindfulness has taught me a lot about being a better parent, parenting has taught me even more about the value of mindfulness. Here are four things I’ve learned.
Read More →
February
What Parenting Has Taught Me About Mindfulness

Happiness Take Practice
Sonja Lyubomirsky
,
February 4, 2020
I’ve spent nineteen years researching these questions in my scientific career, together with my colleagues Ken Sheldon and David Schkade. Our research has shown that the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (which is ineffectual) but in undertaking daily intentional activities that promote it. Happiness is a practice.
Read More →
February
Happiness Take Practice

Meditation in Troubled Times
Norman Fischer
,
January 28, 2020
There’s an old Zen saying: “The world is topsy-turvy.” Who is not aware of this today? The state of the world is painful to everyone. The world careens onward in its topsy-turvy course, causing a pervasive sense of inward dread many of us can’t afford to entertain.
Read More →
January
Meditation in Troubled Times

How to Build Healthy Habits
Dan Harris
,
January 22, 2020
If you’re like me, you might have made a New Year’s resolution to exercise more, meditate more, sleep better, or eat healthier. But also if you’re like me, you’ve failed at this before, ending up on an endless treadmill of trying and failing, trying and failing.That’s why Ten Percent Happier has just launched a new course on Healthy Habits featuring bestselling author and Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal. Here’s a little taste of what Kelly teaches in the course.
Read More →
January
How to Build Healthy Habits

The Most Important Word in Meditation
Jay Michaelson
,
January 14, 2020
Having practiced meditation for around twenty years now, the most important word I’ve learned about it is: Intuitive.Here’s what I mean.Trying to be mindful is a lot of work. You have to remember, all the time, to notice your body, notice what you’re saying, notice your surroundings, notice notice notice.
Read More →
January
The Most Important Word in Meditation

Too Busy to Be Mindful? Try This.
Sumi Kim
,
January 8, 2020
Most parents (and most people!) have unbelievably full and fast-paced schedules -- we barely have time to fit in the basics. Not only are we quite busy, but most of the time we’re multi-tasking: getting dinner on, nudging one kid to get started on homework while listening to a story from another, keeping from stepping on the cat’s tail, thinking about how to respond to the text message that just came in… all at once.
Read More →
January
Too Busy to Be Mindful? Try This.

How to Maintain a Meditation Practice
Emily Horn
,
January 1, 2020
One of the most common questions I get from students is how to maintain a meditation practice. This is especially hard when you’re starting out. Once you begin to see the benefits of meditation, it’s easier to stay with it. The simple practice of noticing and sensing what is happening in a non-judgmental way makes a big difference in how you respond to the whole of life. You can notice in just a few conscious breaths that it’s possible to create a gap between the stimulation and response of our nervous system. We can get out of fight and flight. We can evolve into something bigger than always self-protecting. And we can feel this when we meditate.
Read More →
January
How to Maintain a Meditation Practice