From Microsoft to meditation – Why I became a mindfulness teacher | Part 1

Lighting up and flaming out

When the clock struck midnight to welcome 2017, I counted my many blessings. I had a good job with a supportive team, a loving…

From Microsoft to meditation – Why I became a mindfulness teacher | Part 2

Opening hearts and minds

Still wary from my first meditation flameout five years earlier, it took me until the Spring of 2017 to find the courage to lead a few…

From Microsoft to meditation – Why I became a mindfulness teacher | Part 3

Letting go

Finally, the true depth of my suffering started to become clear to me: deep anxiety underlay every moment of my life. And before I could begin to heal others…

Happiness is Here and Now

Lessons for the new year from Thai Plum Village

Happiness is here and now,

I have dropped my worries.

Nowhere to go,

Nothing to do,

An unexpected journey to freedom

It’s always darkest before the dawn

Turmoil in the depths

What I do when caught in the undertow

Last week we hopped on the MV Camic for a four-day scuba trip around Thailand’s Andaman Sea that we planned as the highlight of our honeymoon. World-famous reefs packed with enormous schools of dazzling…

Mindfully Meeting the Tao | Part 1

To Chi or Not to Chi

May the Force be with you.

-Mantak Chia

“What am I doing here?” It was a fair question to ask myself, almost every day last week. The Force that Chia was…

Mindfully Meeting the Tao | Part 2

An Orchestra of Organs

Even as I doubted the cosmological basis of Chia’s system and the goal of “immortality” that it drives to, I tried to keep a beginner’s mind for the practices themselves, to let the effects speak for…