It’s tough to acknowledge our distress and admit our vulnerability. Instead, it’s so much easier to allow ourselves to fall into whatever story we have been telling ourselves on repeat than to stay with our experience. The way you speak to yourself matters. What are the messages you've been sending to yourself? Take responsibility for the […]

If we meditate regularly and we do not take care to pull out the weeds on a regular basis that are rampant in the garden of our minds, the spiritual seeds we are attempting to plant won’t likely thrive. 

Since we were very young, we’ve been taught to want to achieve fortune, fame, recognition and all of the material riches that might go along with it. But that path doesn't bring lasting fulfillment.

If meditation becomes something we think we have to DO, we are missing the point of meditation all together. Use your life as your practice.

When we meditate, what we are practicing is learning how to remain in a permanent state of consciousness. We’re trying to break our old patterns of running from the present moment or being hijacked by our thinking mind. 

I recently returned from a life-altering trip to Europe which included a week-long retreat with spiritual leader Eckhart Tolle. I’ve been a student of Eckhart Tolle’s for about a decade now and he, as well as Deepak Chopra, has been the primary reason I now teach meditation and marry my meditation teaching and guidance with […]

Within the Japanese Buddhist community, this week marks a special Zen Buddhist celebration across Japan called Obon.

Have you experienced times of deep hardship and suffering? It's in those moments that peace can often feel elusive, leaving us asking: can peace and suffering coexist?

Like most of us, you probably find yourself scrambling to catch up to your life. It doesn’t matter if it’s with your job, the kids and all of their activities or even the laundry. There never seems to be enough time in any given day to feel somewhat accomplished. And then I realized the importance of […]

Where in your life are you holding on for dear life thinking that if you let go, somehow things will either fall apart or that you will never obtain whatever it is you are searching for? 

Some of us mistake setting intentions with goal-setting. There’s no time like the new year where that becomes more glaringly apparent.  As we move further into the year, we may have noticed that those things we wanted to change about ourselves or our habits this year haven’t yet begun to materialize.  Why is that? Goals […]

Here’s a great practice to incorporate to bring mindfulness into your daily life. Essentially, it’s “meditation in action.” I like to say that when we meditate on the cushion each day, it’s more of our “formal practice” but that the rubber hits the proverbial road when we are out in the world practicing mindfulness and […]

How can we access love, compassion and wisdom? I always tell my practitioners and clients that the entry into this is already within us. But what about when we aren’t feeling particularly compassionate, wise, or loving? How can we go about accessing these parts of ourselves that seem distant and somehow “out there” and unattainable? […]

Part 4 of 4 If you’ve been following this series over the past three weeks, we’ve been taking a very rudimentary look into the first three of the most basic and most fundamental of all Buddhist teachings: the Four Noble Truths. This fourth post brings us to Buddha’s prescription for how we embark on the […]

Part 3 of 4 In this third part of the Four Noble Truths, we’ll explore the truth of how to cease suffering. It’s in this third Noble Truth that we can find hope! You might remember from the First and Second Noble Truths that we begin to understand that life involves suffering. It’s only then […]

Part 2 of 4 Last week, we discussed the very foundation of Buddhist teachings, the Four Noble Truths (see Part One of this series to get caught up!). We explored the reality that life includes “suffering.” It’s simply part of what it means to be human. In essence, our suffering can only be caused by […]

Part 1 of 4 It's your soul that's hungry, not your body. Many of us are curious as to what Buddhism is all about. In my view, Buddhism is not a religion but rather a way of life.  In this four-part blog series, we'll explore the foundation of Buddhist teaching, the Four Noble Truths. Over […]

One of the greatest gifts we could ever give to our family, friends, co-workers, and even our pets is the gift of presence.  What does that mean? The gift of presence? You know the typical scenario we can find ourselves in: emails galore, text messages that need to be returned, kids, work, and family obligations […]

How many times when we’re feeling a bit “off” does someone ask, “What’s wrong?”. What about instead we ask “What’s good?” and working on noticing what's right? Is it possible for us to begin to notice the actual experiences we're having instead of our thoughts about the experiences? Notice the experience, not our thoughts about […]

You don’t need me to tell you that what is going on around many parts of the world is destructive, chaotic, unkind, and even sinister. All we need to do is turn on the news for five minutes to feel the weight of despair. Disease, war, oppression, discrimination, climate change, violence, intolerance, and unrest. What does […]

Are you feeling stuck, unmotivated and uninspired? Take your ego mind out of the equation! In Buddhism, all of the physical and emotional obstacles can be very powerful teachers.  If we allow ourselves to get caught up in the daily minutiae and stressors in our daily lives, it can almost be impossible for us to […]