Meditation Timer: The Number You Pick Before You Start
The lodge in Peru had four rounds in it. I didn’t know that going in, because nobody had said so, and nobody…
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The Body Scan Feels Like Nothing Is Happening. That’s Not Evidence
Around minute nine, the verdict arrives. You’re on the floor with your attention somewhere near your left knee, a recorded voice is…
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Meditation Teacher: The One Thing an App Can’t Do
My first temazcal was in Peru, in 2018, at the back end of a plant-medicine retreat. A Lakota-style lodge, Mexican hands running…
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You Can’t Clear Your Mind — and That Was Never the Point
The first time most people try to meditate, they fail within ninety seconds, and they fail at something nobody actually asked them…
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Night Meditation: The Hour the West Gave Away
Night meditation is the older arrangement, and I didn’t get there by reading about it. I got there by noticing, years later,…
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Meditation Apps Work. The Streak Counter Is the Part That Doesn’t
Open the meditation app and it hands you a number before it hands you anything else. Fourteen. Forty. Two hundred and six.…
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Group Meditation: Nobody Meditates Alone Out There
Every practice I was taught outside the West happened in a room with other people in it. Every one. The Putumayo, the…
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Meditation for Sleep: Why Trying to Fall Asleep Keeps You Awake
It’s 3:40 in the morning. Something woke you — a noise, a dream, nothing you can name — and now you’re lying…
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The Singing Bowl You Feel Instead of Hearing
The eco-village sat on a shelf of terraced land below Annapurna, an hour or so out of Pokhara, where the road gives…
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You Don’t Have to Sit Still. Walking Meditation Works When Sitting Won’t
You sat down to meditate, once. Maybe more than once. You set a timer, crossed your legs, closed your eyes, and waited…
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