Over the past year, I’ve been exploring and researching different meditation modalities around the world to deepen my own practice and learn new techniques to share through my work. In January, I headed off to Bodh Gaya, in India’s Bihar state. It’s where the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree. A descendent of the original…
I just returned from a 7-day silent Chan meditation retreat at Dharma Drum Mountain in Taiwan, focused on the Silent Illumination technique of meditation. Basically, Silent Illumination or “just sitting”, is about, well, just sitting ? It might differ from some other types of meditation you’re familiar with in that we’re not doing things like…
If you’re new to the practice of mindfulness, these ten tips can help you incorporate the practice into your daily life. Any moment can become an opportunity to return to the present!
Accepting silence is an advanced recovery skill. Learning how to be happy with silence and maintain your focus in silence takes practice. That’s because silence leaves our brains unoccupied, and when unhealthy brains are unoccupied, they fall back on all of the compulsions that have become so easy for them, like ruminating and catastrophising. Your…
It’s not possible to be awesome at focusing unless you practice focusing and push your limits, just like it’s not possible to be awesome at running unless you practice running and push your limits. Here are five ways to practice focusing that have really helped me get my mind to stay in one place at…
A meditation journal can be a helpful way to spot patterns in challenges you’re encountering while meditating and that can help you figure out ways to support yourself in overcoming those challenges. I started a journal last week to track the experience of going through the eight weeks of meditation exercises for our Full Catastrophe…
Don’t get into the habit of thinking there are good places for meditation or bad places. Like many things we do in the hope of making a task easier, we only create barriers when we insist we require something before we do something else. If you find you have trouble meditating in certain places, meditate…