In The Princess Bride, one of my favorite movies, the evil prince Humperdinck has dragged Princess Buttercup to the altar. There’s a great deal of noise outside the castle, and he knows that her true love Westley is coming to save her in a matter of minutes.
Only a week later, my inner yoga teacher shows up again; she too, has gone on retreat. She reminds me of the definition of the word mindful, as used by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the originator of MBSR in the West. Mindfulness is about paying attention in a non-judgmental way. I can pay attention mindfully, I like to think. I have a much harder time paying attention without judgment. So my inner yoga teacher says: What if your discomfort isn’t something for you to analyze away? What if you don’t need to do anything about your discomfort? What if you just noticed it?
November 2023 When big things happen both in our life and in the world around us, we might struggle to make sense of them and wrestle with how to respond. If you spend any time online (ahem, who doesn’t these days?), you are seeing the events of the world filtered...
August 2020 I learned a new word recently – a word that perfectly described something I was doing that...
LAST CALL FOR LATE WINTER/EARLY SPRING RETREAT WITH ERIN JOOSSE February 29th-March 3rd, Harmony Hill Retreat Center Kalyāṇa-mitta is a...
I just returned from a 7 day meditation retreat, nestled in the moss and green of a beautiful Pacific Northwest forest. This was the first in-person retreat that I have participated in in more than 2 years, and it felt like a welcome relief. At the same time, after such...
“It takes boldness, even audacity, to step out of our habitual patterns and experiment with a quality like kindness...
“Mindfulness, cultivated even for a few minutes, draws the heart toward itself. It invites the intimacy we yearn for and...
One of the conversations we have been having in our current Yoga Teacher Training is about the value or detriment of mindfulness hitting the mainstream. When Jon Kabat-Zinn introduced the word and concept of mindfulness to health care in the 70’s, with the creation of the Stress Reduction Clinic at...
March 2023 Yoga is a practice of embodiment. Which makes perfect sense to most of us when much of our...
June, 2023 Creativity and Renewal: Summer Retreat with Erin Joosse Harmony Hill Retreat Center July 22nd-24th For more than...
When we first begin to meditate, we might notice that there is very little space inside our minds. It might seem like just as we are trying to sit down and settle down, our brain goes into hyperdrive. We might be making to do lists, we might be replaying something...