Hope Martin and David Rome are co-leading an upcoming retreat at the Garrison institute entitled “Embodied Listening: Uncovering Our Bodies’ Natural Wisdom,” on December 2 – 4. No matter how we feel about it, we’ve all gone through a lot this election and continue to as we watch the aftermath. It might be hard to know how to handle our feelings, or what…
Welcome to episode nine of the Climate, Mind and Behavior Podcast. Each episode, we’ll explore groundbreaking intersections between climate change, resilience, contemplative practice, and human behavior. Kristin Barker is the director and co-founder of One Earth Sangha. The group’s mission is to bring the essential wisdom and practices from the Buddhist tradition to collective engagement on critical ecological crises. A native…
During his recent retreat at the Garrison Institute, we spoke with scholar and meditation teacher Alan Wallace about how to cultivate stillness, increase productivity, and determine whether an activity is worth doing. Many people have the sense that they are too busy or distracted in their daily lives. What’s on the other side of that? If a person practices meditation regularly, do…
Composer, singer, filmmaker, choreographer, and director Meredith Monk recently led a workshop at the Garrison Institute entitled “Voice as Practice: Instrument of the Heart.” We caught up with her before the workshop to discuss art as a spiritual practice and the pervasive sense of busyness that so many of us seem to feel these days. Monk was in New Mexico when we…
In the wake of last night’s election results, many of us are experiencing feelings of confusion, sadness, doubt, anger, and fear. Whatever we’re feeling, though, it’s important to allow ourselves to fully experience our emotions. As meditation teacher and author Ethan Nichtern says, “The point of meditation is not to suppress your feelings. It is to make friends with yourself.”…
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…
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…