Blog: Notes on Healing and Awakening

Many years ago, after several years of experiencing a long chronic illness, I attended a six-week Vipassana meditation retreat. Given my struggles with sickness, I looked forward...

After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, as many people feared an ongoing and vicious spiral of retaliation and global violence, a wonderful and well-known Cherokee legend...

“We have been raised to fear…our deepest cravings. And the fear of our deepest cravings keeps them suspect, keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, and leads us to settle...

As one of the American pioneers credited for bringing Eastern spirituality to the West, Ram Dass had more than four decades of spiritual training to help guide him when he...

In the book My Stroke of Insight, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor explains that the natural life span of an emotion—the average time it takes for it to move through the nervous...

I’d gone into therapy during my sophomore year in college, and remember the day I brought up my current prime-time fixation: how to stop binge eating. No matter how committed I...

Here in this body are the sacred rivers: here are the sun and moon, as well as allthe pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body—Tantric...

Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you, as fish out of water hear the waves, or a hunting falcon hears the drum's come back. This turning toward what you deeply...

Meditation students often ask me what will help them remember presence in the thick of things. My first response: “Just pause.” My second response: “Pause again, take a few...

  During the years right after college, I was the director of a yoga studio at the ashram where I was living near Boston. One day, at a time when we were behind in promoting...

Whatever came from being is caught up in being, drunkenly forgetting the way back. -Rumi We are born with a beautiful open spirit, alive with innocence and resilience. But we...

My earliest memories of being happy are of playing in the ocean. When our family began going to Cape Cod in the summer, the low piney woods, high dunes, and wide sweep of white...

Ever since I was a teen, my drive to be productive has been a key strategy of what I often refer to as my “wanting self.” When I feel insecure, producing—whether it’s a finished...