At the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment, he reached down to the earth goddess to affirm his triumph over Mara, the destroyer. He had seen through the house of sorrow that he had built around himself. The first teaching given by the Buddha after his enlightenment was the Four Noble Truths, which lays out the
What do you do when you first wake up in the morning? My guess is many of you start checking your phone for the news, swipe through all your social media accounts, and then go to email. And your mind might immediately get caught up in obsessive, ruminative thinking about something that’s not going well.
Almost our entire biology is geared toward protection and defense and our culture teaches us to grab what we want, even if it means taking from others. To work against this conditioning takes great courage and practice. The ethical and philosophical practices of yoga and meditation give us guideposts for leading a life in alignment with our values. When I practice them, they never fail. The key is remembering to wake up to our conditioning and make a different choice.
What do you do first thing in the morning? Do you turn off the alarm and snooze then must hurry when you finally get up? Do you check your phone for news and social media before you get out of bed? Do you grumble until you get your first cup of coffee? Do you skip
Complaining about being busy and working all the time is a widespread phenomenon. So much so that according to research by Silvia Bellezza, a professor of marketing at Columbia Business School, “seeming busy and “a lack of leisure” has become a strange status symbol in today’s world. The conditioning to work all the time is
Savor Every Bite is a book about possibility–the possibility of a life of happiness, beauty, and ease. It’s also about understanding the difficulties and painful emotions that we experience in life and how to navigate them with the skill of mindfulness. Join me at Omega Institute in beautiful upstate New York for a weekend of
I know you’ve heard that everything is changing all the time, change happens, and there is nothing but change. But, many people are fairly resistant to change. So, here’s another way of looking at it. Change is life being rejuvenated in every moment. Or, change is you being rejuvenated in every moment. Yes, you have
This is the season where we often give gifts to family and friends that we love and cherish. To that end, I would like to suggest my newest book Savor Every Bite: Mindful Ways to Eat, Love Your Body and Live with Joy, as a beautiful offering to those you love. It is an inexpensive
People generally want to be happy, but there seems to be a definite difficulty in achieving it. I don’t mean the kind of happiness that is absent the tapestry of human emotion. Our lives are filled with difficulty and challenge. No, the happiness that I’m talking about is the kind that embraces all aspects of
