Journal
Here you'll find writing on mindfulness, neuroscience, mental health, physical wellbeing, and yoga.
These topics often overlap: attention, behaviour and embodiment are all part of the same ecosystem of experience, and the aim here is to explore those connections in a thoughtful and practical way. Some posts draw from research, others from lived experience and teaching. The intention is to share ideas that are useful, considered, and occasionally a bit different from what is typically said.
April 25, 2020
A candle's flame dances with easeful presence. By resting our attention on the flame, we are inviting the mind to gently focus. Through impartial observation, we notice what is in the visual foreground, and the other layers of experience blending into the periphery.
April 24, 2020
In this meditation you will work with gentle guidance to come closer to the edge of presence. The mind translates the present moment through language and images, but we can move closer to the boundary of reality vs perception by quietening the actions of our mind.
April 23, 2020
In this meditation, you are guided through a body scan of the hips, legs and feet. Body scanning increases your ability to be mindfully present with sensation, and hones your focus to help calm and clarify the mind.
April 22, 2020
In this meditation, we move through a body scan at our own pace, with a recommended map to follow. Karen gives guidances on how to meet sensation, feelings, and thoughts as they arise from the body, and how to return our attention to the practice when our attention gets diffuse.
April 21, 2020
In practicing body awareness, we hone our ability to pay attention to the finer details of experience, and to clear away the imposition of our ideas of what something should be, and let it just be. In this guided practice, we delve deeper into the First Foundation of Mindfulness of the Satipatthana Sutta: Mindfulness of the Body. Karen guides you through a body awareness technique, moving your attention from specific parts of your body from your head downwards.
April 17, 2020
When we pay attention to the body, we welcome back what has been forgotten; the most grounded and palpable qualities of existence. In seeing beyond our thinking minds, we naturalize the pulse of our nervous system, and reconnect with our senses in a non-reactive way. In this meditation, we begin to work with body scanning to steady our mental energy, and expand our sense of being.
April 17, 2020
Buddhist teachings tell of a mental maneuvering called dukkha dukkha, which means suffering caused by suffering. It is when we identify personally with a difficult or unpleasant inner experience, and strain to manipulate it through our thoughts, making it last longer and occupy more head/heart/body-space than need be. In this meditation, we will practice dissociating from the added layer of personal identification, and see our inner world to be what it is, an ever-changing space of instances.
April 15, 2020
Settle into gently guided meditation to explore our relationship with contents of consciousness. First we relax our body to the pulse of the breath. Then when our impulses begin to settle, we investigate our perspective on what arises in the thinking mind and feeling body. Does it feel like yours? Or are you simply aware that it is?
April 13, 2020
Settle into gently guided meditation to explore our relationship with contents of consciousness. First we relax our body to the pulse of the breath. Then when our impulses begin to settle, we investigate our perspective on what arises in the thinking mind and feeling body. Does it feel like yours? Or are you simply aware that it is?
April 13, 2020
Are you trying to catch up with your life; responsibilities, creative projects, relationships? It's hard to exist in the present moment when we feel out of step with it. But in meditation, we create space and time to zoom into our life as it is right now, to catch up with what is really going on, effortlessly. When our energy is not bound to task-oriented efforts, we can see with a wider perspective, and re-engage with our lives mindfully.
April 10, 2020
The field of consciousness contains everything we experience; it is an open realm with no natural boundaries. However, from our typical viewpoint, we compartmentalize it through what we dwell on, cling to, and ignore. In meditation, we often work to quieten the mind by concentrating our attention on a specific thing or process. But in today's meditation, we will open our attention to the wholeness of the field, and expand the boundaries of our attention beyond what is most salient, to the underlying glimmer of undivided experience.
April 9, 2020
Whenever a limiting belief arises in our mind (a judgement, a story...) a reflection of it shows up in our body. Limiting beliefs close the window on possibilities and personal or interpersonal growth. Sometimes they cause a stress response (flight, fight, or freeze), and sometimes they arise because we are under stressful conditions already. In today's meditation, we work with a universal mantra so-ham to help us see beyond limiting beliefs. The mantra so-ham translates from Sanskrit s "I am that", which reminds us that it is possible to know ourselves instead in a vaster sense of the greater whole.
April 8, 2020
Especially in difficult times, our mind readily builds walls to keep out what feels unwelcome, and protect what we rely on. These limiting beliefs narrow our viewpoint; they can be judgements, opinions, or even stories that frame our experience in a particular way. In this meditation, we begin to recognize the appearance of these limiting beliefs in our mind and body, and notice how the energy of holding a liming belief draws us away from the present moment.
April 5, 2020
Metta, or lovingkindness, is a powerful meditative technique and universal virtue. It opens our hearts and minds when we feel lonely, stuck, or turbulent. It attunes us to the foundation of interconnectedness between ourselves and others. It reminds us that there is beauty, strength, and vulnerability in giving without the hope of gaining anything in return. It calls us to recognize suffering, and to persevere in peace. In this meditation, we practice through one perspective of metta. To be continued in future meditations.
April 4, 2020
Within the constant motion of life, it is not easy to stop and sit in the flow. We compare our time in meditation against productive activities, and question -- Why am I doing this? Where is this getting me? The point is not what we are doing in meditation, but that we are creating space to observe what we are already doing: our habits, our reactions, our way of thinking. Today we explore a way to help stop, and observe, without turning instead to our distractions. This is a reminder to practice peace.
March 28, 2020
When we feel happy and at ease, meditation flows more smoothly. On days where we feel restless, sad, angry, frustrated, apathetic, or any difficult emotion, it is more difficult to sit, to be without our distractions and coping mechanisms for a little while. Whatever is going on in life, such is meditation. Today, we practice some preliminary tools to work with difficult feelings. We recognize that it is courageous to sit with difficult feelings.
March 27, 2020
Our meditation practice is a simple ritual. It is the intention-in-action to do less and experience more. But within the practice itself, there are small rituals that help us create safety, arrive in our bodies, and remind ourselves of this present experience. In this style of meditation, mindfulness, we keep the rituals simple (in terms of form); but the power of ritual is in the contemplation of these questions, to start: where am I? what am I doing (or not doing)? what does this feel like?
March 26, 2020
In this meditation, we will practice techniques to work with the thinking mind, in a friendly way. "Think" is a funny word. It rhymes with "blink"... which is a good reminder because thinking is even more involuntary than blinking; thinking is an inseparable part of the mind's function. The thinking mind serves consciousness with opinions, ideas, imaginings, concerns, narratives, associations... it's endless. But in meditation, the hard-working mind can feel like it's obscuring the act of meditating, producing feelings of frustration and discouragement. But herein lies the heart of mindfulness practice itself: observing the workings of the thinking mind, and getting intimate with the way the mind naturally is, allows us to step back from the minutia of thought and into more expansive wisdom.
March 25, 2020
Sleepiness can be one of the most difficult obstacles to encounter in meditation, but there are ways to work with it beneficially. In this meditation, you will learn how to help balance the force of sleepiness, and also to work with it mindfully if you encounter it. We will practice a breathing exercise to help prepare the grounds, then learn tools to support awaked-ness.
March 24, 2020
The field of sound is ever-changing, unpredictable, and diverse, rather like our conscious experience at large. In learning to meditate on sound, we practice equanimity (keeping an even and open mind) through the stages of sensation, perception, and association with sound. We learn to direct our attention back to the sonic field, strengthening the muscles of mindfulness, and clarifying our focus towards the unfiltered experience of the present moment.