When individuals try to maximize their own benefits, systems collapse. When individuals are committed to optimizing their communities, they thrive. This requires a world view that understands that all of life is part of an interdependent system, and only when we infuse that system with compassion for all life will it progress through the current global trends. At a recent…
Jay Michaelson led a retreat at the Garrison Institute entitled “Jhana Meditation,” on November 12 – 17, 2016. The diversity of our emotional lives—especially difficult emotions like sadness, concern, and even anger—is both the context and the content of liberation. On the one hand, life as it is, not as we might wish it to be, is the place where we…
In the video above, filmed during her recent Garrison Institute retreat, Joanna Macy discusses the poetry and spirituality of Rainer Maria Rilke. She talks about how the young poet found the sacred in ordinary life, how he had an incredible sense of what the 20th century had in store, and how he tells readers to “let everything happen to you, both the…
Embodied listening is listening with the whole body, a kind of deep listening in which we are fully present for others, giving them space and support to share their experience fully, without interrupting, judging, shifting the topic to ourselves, or even trying to be helpful before help is asked for.
I’ve been seeing an adorable nine year old boy, Max, in my clinical practice for about three years now. A sweet, sensitive, and anxious child, he took to therapy and then to mindfulness almost immediately, using some classic breathing and sense practices from our first session in his home and school life to help calm and center himself. One of…
Winter is fast approaching the North Dakota plains where an unprecedented gathering of Native American tribes intends to remain at Standing Rock, continuing their protest against the Dakota Access pipeline as long as needed. Those gathering there call themselves “water protectors,” noting that running the pipeline under the Missouri River just upstream from the reservation puts their source of water…
The following is an excerpt from Dr. Dan Siegel’s book Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human. Along with the New York Society for Ethical Culture and the Blue School, The Garrison Institute co-produced a conversation with Siegel about his new book at the New York Society For Ethical Culture in New York City on November 3, 2016. [Note: In the excerpt…
Sylvia Boorstein’s next retreat at the Garrison institute is “Integrity as the Path to Happiness,” on December 7 – 10, 2017 which she is coleading with Sharon Salzberg. “One of the things that’s true about me is that I laugh a lot,” says meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein. Find out why in this short video.