Meditation Practices

Stopping Unconscious Behaviors in Their Tracks

Last month, a week after my partner left for the States, I was standing at the kitchen counter making lunch when my fingers landed on something sticky. “Gross!” Disgusted, my thoughts ran down their habitual rails, “Damn it, Benoit! Why don’t you ever clean the counter?! You don’t care about keeping the kitchen clean!” As I unstuck my fingers, a mortifying realization dawned, “Oh no! He’s been gone a week! This mess is mine!”

Cue guilt, shame… “God, why do I always blame him? He’s not even here! I can’t believe I’m so mean to him! I’m so unconscious! There must be a million things I’m not taking responsibility for! How am I ever going to fix this?!”

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Your Quiet Depth Under Your Distractions

If you’re in the mood to connect with yourself,
take a few quiet breaths, and let’s dive in…


I think about containers a lot, and while one of my ultimate explorations is, ‘what (kind of a container) am I?,’ I’ve just been sitting in the quiet noticing the impact of what I’m choosing to contain… what I’m inviting in, what I’m entertaining…
and how that distracts me from my ability to notice my deeper self, to notice what I am underneath all of that.

Simply, I’m sitting here noticing my daily thoughts…
and how they are a lot of static,
a lot of interference,
ultimately, just a lot of noise.

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When Pushing Through Isn’t The Answer

I was home recently, and a family friend and I started discussing how she gets tired quickly in situations that are stressful. She starts to get overwhelmed and then very, very sleepy.

While we’re both introverts in the sense that we need time alone to feel whole and resourced, her tiredness is beyond that. It’s very linked to stress, and it comes fast. It’s a trauma response, in that her existing emotional overwhelm is being triggered by the stressful situation. This pattern is very uncomfortable for her, and sometimes she gets so uncomfortable that it affects the entire group of people around her.

We were sitting in the living room, reflecting on it. “When you notice it’s happening and you feel the fear,” I said. She sighed, chiming in, completing my sentence with the obvious cultural trope, “…do it anyway.”

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Getting Comfortable with Our Emotions by Moving Our Bodies

Hello Beautiful Souls,

There are several steps to becoming comfortable with our uncomfortable emotions – and many ways to go about it!

First, we need to feel safe enough to even start. If we’re feeling really threatened, it’s hard to want to do anything other than defend or protect. So it you’re interested in this topic, congratulations, you’re already in a good place – you feel safe enough to even consider this! Bravo!

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Rock Your Body: 5min Guided Meditation

(5min47sec) This simple movement practice can be done standing or sitting. Once you learn the basic meditation, you can practice it for as long or short a time as you like. This is the same concept as Where’s My Center, only simpler, and they can be used interchangeably as basic movement practices.

Note that you are welcome to download and share this audio file as many times as you like, provided you do so in it’s entirety, and it is used for personal or educational uses only (no commercial uses).

Practice Giving and Receiving

Guided Meditation Recording (8m10s)

As social animals, giving and receiving are a daily part of life. We need each other for mental, emotional and physical support – on a daily basis, and those needs can sometimes be challenging to have and support. Often times we develop habits where one is easier than the other. Many of us are better at giving and others are better at receiving. It’s not so often that we feel equally comfortable with both. And that can change depending on the people we’re with and situations we’re in. Sometimes it just feels easier to do one and not the other.

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Field of Vision x2

Guided Meditation Recordings (8m & 5m)

Field of Vision is a practice I was first taught by a dear friend who practices Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve simplified it a bit and turned it into a mindfulness practice.

I adore this practice. If you like eyes open practices, or want to experience one this is a great one to play with. And you’re welcome to do just that, play with it and make it your own.

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Embodied Breath Practice

(14 min Guided Meditation Recording)

This meditation is adapted a Will Johnson practice he calls The Breath of the Unfolding Fern. You can listen to the entire Urban Retreat, and enjoy his magnificent teachings here: https://www.embodiment.net/audios. As he says, it is a very “deeply body-oriented approach to sitting meditation.” I love it.

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