Life has a way of leaving us a little bent out of shape from time to time, a bit less clear and whole than we might like to feel. Sometimes we need a little help finding our way back to easy peace. Just a few moments of quiet presence can bring us right back home to our selves, reminding us who we are and how we want to be in the world.

This gentle 14-minute movement practice offers just such an opportunity. It is practiced on the ground, lying on the back, although a cozy bed might work just fine, too. A little lying around, a bit of easy breathing, and a small helping of gentle movement helps us shed tension and reclaim ease. I hope that you, too, find that these few moments of grounded presence can reshape the contours of your day and your life.

My website includes many more opportunities to return to a fuller sense of being, to a sense of clarity and ease in each moment. This exploration lies at the heart of my many years of exploration of body, mind and spirit, which began nearly 30 years ago when I wandered into a yoga class in Washington, DC.  This long-ago essay tells the story of how yoga captured my mind and my heart. I hope you smile in recognition as you read, and maybe will be even lured into joining me on this never-ending adventure of embodied presence in the world.

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Meditation can be an ally and a good friend as we navigate the ups and downs of life. The practice is simple: we train our mind to behave in wholesome and supportive ways. Refining the practice can be a lifetime’s journey.

In this 19-minute guided meditation, we’ll explore the fundamentals of mindfulness meditation. We’ll settle into the body, steady the mind and then spread our awareness outwards into the world around us. We’ll watch what happens when we rest with loving awareness in the embodied experience of life as it passes through.

There are lots of ways to meditate, and it’s worth exploring a range of approaches until you find one that works well for you. Typically, I begin with an anchoring practice - a deep focus on just one thing - until I sense my mind growing calmer and steadier. On good days, I am then able to relinquish my mind’s hold on my chosen anchor and allow my awareness to spread outward in all directions, awash in the vitality and vibrancy of the here-and-now.

An anchor can be any object of awareness that holds your mind’s focus: the breath, sounds, a mantra or phrase, and more. The classic meditation anchor is the breath, but it’s just one of many possibilities. Consider your anchoring meditation to be like a chew toy for the restless puppy dog of the mind: It keeps the mind occupied with a more wholesome activity than it might otherwise engage in. After a while, the anchor coaxes the mind to quiet enough that we can see more clearly and rest with ease among the vicissitudes of life.

This guided practice can be practiced in any position you might like. You may hear some rhythmic rumbling sounds toward the end of the practice. That’s when my cat - a meditation master for sure - settled into my lap and began purring. So, feel free to purr right along!

My website includes lots more about meditation. This is my landing spot for those wanting to learn more. And here’s the story of how I finally got the meditation habit to stick.

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Here’s another opportunity to settle down close to the earth, to discharge tension and to reclaim your inner balance and ease. These moments of quiet tenderness can help each day flow just a little more smoothly, leading us in the direction of wholeness and wellbeing.

This 22-minute practice - practiced on the ground on the back - offers a few gentle movements, a little bit of quiet, and an opportunity to rest deeply. The movements in this sequence are again inspired by SATYA yoga as pioneered by yoga and meditation teacher Tias Little.

As always, I hope you enjoy what you find here. Please let me know if you have any questions, requests or recommendations. I appreciate your input!

My website offers many more opportunities to practice ease and peace. A friend just reminded me of this essay, an offering to the season of summer. Enjoy!

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Here’s another opportunity to settle down and settle in, to enjoy resting in the peaceful pause of the present moment for just a little while. Perhaps this practice will help smooth out the wrinkles of your day and bring you a little rest and restoration.

In our go-go modern world, our nervous systems are easily thrust into overdrive, causing stress and unease. Downshifting into a quieter mode can offer calm, balance and peace. Practices like this 12-minute guided relaxation can help nudge us in that direction.

So lie down, settle into the here-and-now, and invite your mind to rest. Perhaps you, too, will discover the manifold gifts hidden in the folds of the present moment. All that is required is that you show up with an open mind and a tender heart.

I have lots more to share on my website in the here-and-now department. This essay offers a little insight into the lovely ways the present moment can nurture happiness in our lives. And I wrote his essay when my kids were young, when I finally realized that sometimes the only way to find peace in the moment is in small, secret sips . Enjoy!

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One of my very favorite instructions is to move like water. I love to soften the sharp edges of my being and let my body shift and slip and swirl in soft and liquid ways. I love to bob and sink on the ebb and flow of the breath, as if I were floating on my back in the deep, blue Caribbean Sea. I love to watch life ripple through the energetic rivers within me. Somehow this quiet and yielding movement convinces my mind to grow a little softer and easier, too.

In this 25-minute guided practice, we’ll stay close to the ground and invite the body to unravel and undulate in soft and gentle ways. We’ll let this liquid movement erode away our harsher beings, leaving us softer and perhaps a little more receptive. And perhaps we’ll re-emerge feeling restored and rinsed clean.

This quiet, reclined practice is inspired by the brilliant and blissful movements of SATYA, or Sensory Awareness Training for Yoga Atunement, offered by master teacher Tias Little. These practices fuse yoga, meditation, Feldenkrais and other somatic disciplines into a rich and fortifying exploration of inner ease and wholeness. I highly recommend them!

I have more practices on my website that speak to the healing power of fluid movement. This practice article written long ago offers a structured way to move like water in a few familiar yoga poses. It’s still one of my favorite watery body prayers. And fluid movement makes an appearance in this long-ago essay that was written while gazing at my very favorite body of water in the world, the Caribbean Sea.

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Amid the busy-ness of life, we all need reminders to take occasional time outs, so that we can give our minds and our bodies an opportunity to return to the healing balm of the present moment.

Whether meditating on your cushion, practicing savasana at the end of a yoga session, or just settling into a cozy chair, a few moments of peace and calm can help us return to our more balanced and steady selves. And when we grow quieter within, we are able to see more clearly the truths of our lives. And that, in turn, allows us to act in the world from a place of deeper love.

In this 10-minute guided relaxation, we’ll take a beautiful time out. Or, as some like to call it, a time in. Just settle into a comfortable position, exhale deeply, and just let everything go. Let the world spin off as it likes, as you practice self calm and self care.

If you’re looking for additional resources in the peace and calm department, please visit my website. If you practice yoga, you might enjoy this essay about the ways we can grow “as tension free as we can be,” as yoga teacher Erich Schiffmann says. Or, perhaps you’d like to let go while resting in one of my very favorite yoga poses, viparita karani, or legs-up-the-wall pose, as offered here.

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Every spiritual practice, one way or another, eventually brings us back to our own good hearts and to the love the shines forth from within. We may not join a yoga class because we want to soften our hearts. We may not begin meditating because we want to cultivate goodwill. But in some lovely and mysterious bit of spiritual magic, practitioners often end up saying that the greatest gift of their practice has been the lovely ways it has transformed them into kinder, more compassionate human beings.

The Buddhist practice of lovingkindness, or metta meditation, offers an explicit pathway to cultivating good heart. In lovingkindness meditation, we call up images of people, creatures and even places we know, and then we send wishes for happiness and wellbeing in their direction. We may not know for sure whether these wishes change others, but we very quickly learn that they can change us in profound ways.

In this 19-minute guided practice, we’ll explore a variation of the traditional Buddhist practice of lovingkindness meditation. This contemplation is a little more improvisatory and free-form than the traditional practice, but I hope it brings a smile to your face nonetheless.

So sit or lie down, and settle into your own good heart. Rest and breathe and be. And then follow along as we befriending the world, one heart to another.

I’ve written lots about the gifts of lovingkindness on my website, and I hope you’ll find something there that deepens your understanding of the practice. Several years ago, I wrote this essay about how metta helped me through a hard parenting moment. And this essay offers a gentle reminder of ways we can live each moment from a place of tenderness. And finally, this letter to my friends shares how lovingkindness can serve as a secret superpower, during the pandemic and beyond.

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Gravity is our friend. And yet so many of us spend so much of our lives fighting this primordial pull toward the earth. In this fight we miss the opportunity to cultivate deep connection, soul-satisfying rest, and a slow and unshakeable sense of vitality.

In this 22-minute practice we’ll explore the possibility of befriending the earth in ways that help us both release tension and cultivate renewed energy. This practice of befriending the earth can help nurture feelings of balance, well-being and ease.

The earth receives us and holds us. It offers us a place of deep rest and steadiness. By settling into its arms we are invited to let tension melt off of our bodies so that we may soften and settle into ease.

The earth also has the power to gentle energize us, to offer us slow and steady vitality that can buoy us upward and outward into the world in a calm and balanced way.

And somehow, magically, with just a little nudging from us, the earth knows just what we need in order to slip toward a more balanced way of being in the world.

I wrote about befriending the earth in this essay about one of my very favorite survival strategies. And you can find many more articles about the power of connecting with earth energy on my website. I hope you find something in these offerings that brings you happiness and inspiration!

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Look outside your window. What’s the weather like right now?

Now, look inside yourself. What’s the weather like in there right now? Are you running hot or cold? Is the sun shining within or is this a rainy day? Are your thoughts stormy or serene? And is your heart shining brightly or hiding behind a few clouds?

In this 14-minute guided relaxation session, we’ll consider our inner weather patterns. We’ll let our bodies become the earth, and then we’ll watch the energetic weather pass through us. We’ll sharpen our powers of perception to see more clearly the sensations, feelings, thoughts and energies are passing through the inner world of our beings.

At heart, this is an awareness practice, helping us see more clearly what is true in our lives. Seeing clearly helps us to make wise decisions about how to respond appropriately - how to tend to the world with both intelligence and tenderness.

For example, when we know the sun is shining within us - when we are brimming with bright and clear energy - we might choose to tackle the to-do list and take on the world. And when we sense that our inner weather is a little unsettled, we might decide this is the perfect day to tend to quieter pursuits, to not tangle with others, to wait out the rainstorm at home.

Most of the wisdom teachings, as far as I can tell, are at heart about cultivating awareness both within and without, so that we may live and act out of wisdom and love. I love exploring the many shapes and colors of this understanding, and most of what I share on my website touches upon awareness one way or another. If you’re interested, here’s one short essay to get you started.

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Even the Dalai Lama agrees that the purpose of life is to be happy. But what exactly does that mean? What constitutes happiness, and how do we find our way there?

Does happiness come from savoring a fresh raspberry as it bursts on the tongue? Does it come from a sense of mission in one’s broader life? Or does it come from sensing a deep and radiant connection between our small self and the vast Self of the world? Yes, yes and yes!

In this 19-minute practice, we’ll explore three important pillars of happiness: pleasure, purpose and peace. This is a restful and meditative practice that could be explored sitting upright or perhaps tucked into a cozy chair with a cup of tea.

Spending a little time contemplating the experiences, actions and relationships that bring us alive can incline our minds toward a deeply embodied sense of happiness and wellbeing. This sort of contemplation can also cultivate clarity about aspects of our lives that might need a little tending and care. My hope is that returning to this practice from time to time might shine new light on the pillars of happiness in your own life.

I consider all that I share, in some way, to be an investigation into the ways we can cultivate happiness in our lives. Perhaps you’ll find a few more glimmerings of happiness on my website. While there, you’ll also find my very favorite essay about happiness - an experience picking blueberries with my sons. Enjoy!

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