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"Meditation is the truth, the truth is meditation." "Meditation is a journey ... into the deep, living, beating heart of life." What is meditation? Meditation, as I teach it, is two ways of training your awareness. The first factor, called "shamatha", is to concentrate, focus, and calm your mind, letting go of all distractions. The second, called "vipassana", is to be aware of whatever is, exactly the way it is, being deeply aware of the way your mind perceives the internal and external worlds without trying to change anything. These two factors synergize in meditation to take one deeper into the depth of being alive. How do I get started with meditation? Sit down in a manner that you feel you could comfortably hold for a few minutes without straining. Extend and straighten your spine, lift you chin so that it is parallel to the ground, and relax your face, your shoulders, your hands, and your belly. Calmly bring your awareness to the feeling of your respiration rising and falling in your lower abdomen, a couple finger widths below your navel. Intentionally choose to fill your awareness with the feeling of your breathing. Try to notice subtle sensation as you breathe - tiny muscular expansions and contractions, tingles, feelings of heat and warmth. Various things will pull your attention away - plans, ideas, sounds, things you see, preoccupations, aches and itches, and other phenomena. Each time they do, however, without fighting or straining, patiently bring your awareness back to your breathing. After sitting for a while, see if this simple exercise shows you something valuable about the way your mind works. Can meditation help me to calm down? Yes, meditation can, and will, help you to mellow out, chill out, and feel relaxed. Calmness is only one of many factors on the meditative path, however. As one develops in depth, calming down ultimately becomes less interesting and relevant than other deeper and more "spiritual" aspects of the meditative journey. Is meditation an escape from life? No. Meditation is a journey from the spinning hamster wheel on which we are often caught, into the deep, living, beating heart of life. It is the exact opposite of an escape. Do I have to sit on a cushion or on the ground or can I use a chair? I consider sitting on the ground in a traditional meditative posture to be the most stable and therefore preferable way to sit for long periods of time. But I do teach a wide variety of meditation postures for people will all sorts of body types, including how to sit in a chair with spine straight and limbs open, and work with students individually to find a posture that suits them. Can anyone meditate? I would be wary in teaching these methods to someone with an active psychosis, or is otherwise unable to mentally function in a remotely normal manner. Other than that, the content of this class has been and can be helpful for any and all sorts of people. The class has been enjoyed by men and women, a grandmother and a pre-teen, people of all races, all sorts of different vocations, and with wildly different levels of antecedent experience in meditation and other forms of personal growth. 
How much time will meditation take?
People typically experience positive benefits with even tiny amounts of seated meditation; some students sit for just ten minutes three days a week, and positives open up for them. The more time one gives to formal seated meditation practice, however, the more benefits that the meditation practice gives in return. Some students start to sit for forty minutes every day, and find that the sitting is vital for their daily mental health. And many meditators also find that time invested in meditating is returned many times over during the rest of life. One benefit is being more focused, efficient, and concentrated during all hours of the day. Also, meditation helps to drop the infinite number of unimportant things that grab at our attention and that we fill up our time with, and focus instead on what is deeply and truly important. In sum: the amount of time spent in a meditation practice is up to you, and devoting more time to sitting sometimes paradoxically has one feel like one has more time available in the day. Is meditation a religious practice? Do you have to be a Buddhist to do Buddhist meditation? I teach meditation from the perspective of the Buddhist tradition, and some comfort with that is probably helpful. The practice of awareness and mindfulness, both in general and how I teach it, are however compatible with any religious or belief system, or none at all. All are welcome. Is there chanting or praying involved? Mantra and Metta (loving-kindness) meditations are two of the practices that we learn and practice in the class, and both involve repeating or resonating with certain phrases. Both practices are somthing all students so far have been comfortable with, and both can be tailored to your spiritual tradition. What happens in your class? The class consists of eight three hour sessions. In each typical three hour session, there are three meditation periods (two of twenty minutes each, and one of ten minutes), ten minutes is devoted to breaks, and the other two hours are devoted to lectures, Q and A, and class discussion. What do you teach? For a specific listing of the subjects covered in lectures, as well as of the nineteen meditation techniques that we learn and practice over the eight weeks, please see the class description page. What lineage does your class derive from? My teaching mostly is derived from Thai Theravada Vipassana meditation and Japanese Soto Zen Buddhism, but I mix in ancient Indian Buddhist teachings, Tibetan Vajriana Buddhist teachings, as well as teachings from other religious traditions and from western psychology. I enjoy using anything that will help you to develop the practice of being deeply self-aware and self-accepting. What are some good introductory books to read about meditation? Please see the top section of my resources page. What can meditation do for me? Meditation sometimes brings up aspects of mind and soul that we have been avoiding, before clearing them out - similar to physical surgery, things sometimes get worse before they get better. In the long term, however, what meditation provides for many people is : |