Getting Started

Interested in developing an effective meditation practice? Here are some simple resources to help get you started. You can find additional talks and led practices under the teachings tab.

These teachings are drawn from multiple sources within the Buddhist tradition. Those sources include the Anapanasati sutta, Satipatthana sutta, Pure Awareness practice, and the Brahmaviharas. I am deeply grateful to my teachers for sharing these teachings with me, and encouraging me to find my own way to work with them.

How to practice the radical embrace

This work is deeply somatic, and takes place almost entirely in the body.

The radical embrace can be understood in four stages, easy to remember as GROW:

Grounding – in what’s happening now, in the earth beneath us, the sky above, the space all around, this body as it can be directly experienced in this moment, and the awareness that holds it all.

Resourcing ­– with our own capacity to experience calm, pleasure, joy, love and happiness.

Opening – to the ways we experience ourselves, our sensations, thoughts and emotions, and to how we experience others.

Wondering – about the familiar habits and patterns that we strongly identify with and keep us locked in cycles of suffering, as well as how we may begin to unbind ourselves from these habits, and create new ones.

Finding a comfortable meditation posture

led Meditation practices

Here you’ll find some simple guided meditations to introduce you to breath and body awareness and kindness practices. Please forgive background noise, as these are recorded live and minimally edited.

Mindfulness of the Body - a 40 min long, luxurious meditation on the body, ideally done in a lying down position.

Body and breath awareness - a 30 min meditation practice beginning with grounding in direct sensations of the body in order to support a deepening awareness of the breath.

Coming back to the breath - a 15 min meditation practice supporting us to return to the breath again and again when we notice the mind wandering, as it will. What can we get curious about when we turn our awareness towards breathing?

Opening to the six senses (including the mind!) - a 25 min meditation practice exploring the rich texture of sensations coming in through the ears, eyes, nose, mouth, body and mind. Can we get curious about the fullness of our experience as its unfolding right now through sound, sight, smell, taste, physical sensations, and thoughts and emotions?

Mindfulness of Breathing - a 25 min meditation practice to help calm body and mind, focusing on the sensations of breathing, and not worrying too much about thoughts!

Meeting ourselves and others with kindness - a 30 min metta bhanvana, or cultivation of loving kindness, meditation practice using the traditional 5 stages, ourselves, a good friend, someone we don't know very well, someone we don't like very much (at least at the moment!), and eventually all beings everywhere.