meditation

Why Starting Each Day with a Poem is ‘As Necessary as Bread’

Eight years ago, afriend and I discovered that reading – or listening to – a poem has a hugely beneficial effect. Here’s the backstory, the poets we rely on, and some poetry.

A Quieting Alternative to Meditation (Walt Cotten, Franz Kafka, Mary Oliver)

There is a very old, very simple practice that can do much to restore balance in our ever-on times. Franz Kafka described it perfectly over 100 years ago; Mary Oliver did recently…

4-7-8 Breathing: “most powerful anti-anxiety measure I’ve found” (Dr. Weil + Rumi)

Andrew Weil demonstrates a simple breathing technique he calls “the single most powerful anti-anxiety measure I’ve found”. We don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit from it.

Where to Go with Hope or Anxiety

A Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful at NYC’s Rubin Museum is a powerful interactive display of visitor’s anxieties and hopes. As is this strategy for navigating them.

Unexpected Mandalas To Take With You (Meg Hitchcock)

Meg Hitchcock’s assemblages of letters cut from sacred texts remind us of mandalas: harmonious images designed to create a calm, meditative feeling.

Whale Songs For Calm and Dreamy Sleep

When a friend mentioned that she often calmed her wakeful daughter by playing whale songs to her, I had to try it myself.

DIY Anti-Anxiety Medications (Paul Klee, Austin Kleon)

After we wrote about John Franzen’s “one line, one breath” art works, we heard from quite a few artists that use breath as a sort of meditation when they make their art. And others who use it to quiet their anxieties, as Austin Kleon does when everything is NOT fine…

Writing Reading Dreaming Room in a Closet (Ocean Vuong)

Reclusive poet Ocean Vuong discovered that a closet can make the perfect writing space. So we hunted down examples for a tiny room that can serve many unexpected purposes.

every inhalation triggers inspiration (John Franzen)

Artist John Franzen uses an intriguing practice to make his drawings composed of many parallel lines: Each line, one breath. We wondered what would happen if we tried Franzen’s method.

A River’s Natural Ice Circle (Mandala)

Photographer Kaylyn Messer’s wondrous, tiny video of an ice circle on a near Seattle is a divine 20 second meditation: you hear the sound of the river and watch the circle slowly spin. Mandala.

A Wondrous Dragon in A Single 2-Minute Stroke w Haiku

This truly astonishing tiny video is a perfect morning mediation with a inbuilt lesson: The ease of this miraculous single stroke-that-became-a-dragon is the result of intense practice and many failures.

Gift: The Essential Rumi’s Poetry and Wisdom

The Essential Rumi is a beauty of a book, one that you can open anywhere, even mid-poem, and find a perfect bit of illumination. It makes a fine gift. Here’s a taste with a new way to read poetry.

Pauline Oliveros: Deep Listening is My Life Practice

“Deep listening” was sonic pioneer Pauline Oliveros’ life practice. Here is her simple instruction for doing it yourself (with music).

A Blessing for Creatives for All Kinds (John O’Donohue)

A gift via email has fueled us ever since we received it: a blessing from poet and philosopher John O’Donohue’s superb book Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. We find it to be the perfect first-thing-in-the-morning reading, and deeply heartening and calming anytime, so we’ve made a pdf you can download.

Awaken the ‘Skylike Nature of the Mind’ (Parking Lot Tree)

We recently read: The purpose of meditation is to awaken in us the skylike nature of the mind…Beautiful. We can think of no better inspiration for that idea than these images, poem, music…

A Mindshift for When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed and Lost

At illustrator Monica Ramos‘ website, we stumbled on a section called 🙁 “Sometimes I want to fall off the face of the Earth” A solo show about about feeling overwhelmed and lost. Overwhelmed and lost is a feeling we know well, and hear about frequently from friends. Ramos’ image vividly describes the dual nature of…

Reminder: Turn Everything OFF Once in a While

Our friend Karrolyn Belkis, who went skydiving when she turned 80, clearly has a forward-thinking view of life. Still, she isn’t crazy about what technology and our always-on lifestyle is doing to us, making it difficult to just BE without always having our eye on a screen. Although she uses a cellphone and a laptop, she believes that sometimes…

Bill Murray’s Surprising Wish + Meditation

(Video link here.) How did we miss this surprising clip of Charlie Rose asking Bill Murray: “Tell us what it is that you want that you don’t have?” His answer in the first two minutes are truly wonderful, as he talks about “being really HERE“. When Rose asks “What’s necessary for you to get there?”, it get’s really…

Stick your Head in the Clouds!!

One of the most wondrous website’s we’ve seen lately is Cloudreporter, a site of cloud images that readers have submitted, with an unobtrusive sliding note that tells who took it, the location and date. Some of them have titles like Clouds Hanging Low or Summer in SF, or a poetic notation like “evening sky over…

Peace Practice: Viewing the Glass as ‘Already Broken’

At Zen Habits recently, Leo Babauta shows ways to apply a compelling daily practice from Achaan Chah, the Thai meditation master, described by Mark Epstein in Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective:

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