Meditation
5 posts. All writing →
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Yoga Nidra, iRest, NSDR
On the weekend before PNW Climate Week I attended a Beginner’s Mind retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery. The combination of mindfulness while working in the kitchen and garden was exactly what I have been looking for, but the hours in the car and on the cushion were hard on my body. While I know that a sitting practice is important for my mental health, and still find walking meditation very useful, what I keep returning to is meditation I can do on my back. Yoga Nidra, iRest, and NSDR are three names for roughly the same thing, arrived at from very different directions. Each of them has become a real alternative to sitting for me.
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Meditation
I’ve written more about yoga than meditation, but both have been vital for my well-being over the years. Yoga was an easier path for me at first as an active person, since it’s hard for me to sit still (and I could do it at the gym!). I’m using “meditation” here rather than Buddhism because to me it implies putting that system of beliefs into practice.
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Breath & Presence
I just got back from a Transformational Breath Essentials 6-Day Seminar at The Clearing Center in North Fork, CA. The land and people there are amazing! I would highly recommend anyone who is interested to go and check it out. I’m super grateful for people like Eddie Ellner and Juliet Wilkins here in Santa Barbara who have helped me down this path. Over the last several years I have found breathwork to be theraputic, insightful, and a useful guide post toward being more present with sensations and emotions in my body.
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Teaching Yoga
It has been nearly 4 years since my last blog post! In 2019 I had left a job I loved teaching software development in Colorado and moved back to California. After living in New York City from 2007-2012 and then Boulder until 2019, I felt like I was holding my breath in between surf trips, and formed an intention to plant roots on the California coast.
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Notes on The Yoga Sutras
“If you can control the rising of the mind into ripples, you will experience Yoga.”