This is an adaptation of the first talk of a five day retreat at the Art of Living Center in Boone North Carolina.   You’ll learn some practical suggestions for embodied meditation and how the body can be an ally in your practice.

This talk explores who you are free from the wanting mind.   You’ll learn about the nature of desire, strategies for working with a greed-filled mind, what can arise as desire lessens and finally, some thoughts on being desire-free and enlightenment itself.

This talk explores who you are in the absence of ignorance and confusion.   You’ll explore the nature of delusion, strategies for overcoming delusion and being more clearly into the nature of reality and what it means to be awake beyond the fluctuations of emotions, thoughts and beliefs.

This talk explores who you are beyond the reach of  aversion.   You’ll learn about how, in our relationship to hatred there can be a rush to premature transcendence and how, by turning toward aversion, what is possible when hatred ceases, namely the arising of inter-connectedness, compassion and love.

This talk explores who you are beyond the conditioned self.   You’ll learn about what arises with the dissolution of the ego:  A greater sense of interconnectedness, an increased flow of compassion and empathy and not least, a more tangible sense of freedom from stress and suffering.

This talk explores the seventh factor of awakening.   You’ll learn how this factor is the the complete expression of all and as you cultivate both spaciousness and steadiness, wisdom and compassion can flow unrestricted.

This talk explores the power of sustained attention. You’ll learn about the consequence of chronic distraction, the levels of concentration you can achieve in your meditation practice,  how to balance concentration with deep relaxation and how to bring more sustained focus into your life.

This talk explores how to cultivate a calm and relaxed presence.   You’ll learn how tranquility is critical to mindfulness practice and sets the stage for more and more intimate awareness of what is happening and how you are holding it.

This talk explores ways you can bring more joy into your life. You’ll learn about the two essential forms of joy and how practicing ‘yes’ to life can cultivate more aliveness, radiance and upwelling of well-being in your life.

This talk explores ways you can cultivate greater aliveness and vitality. You’ll learn how mental and physical energy, vitality and aliveness are integral to the process of being more awake, aware and present in your life.

This talk explores the power of looking closer at what is present. You’ll learn how cultivating curiosity, examining what is arising and how you are relating to it can lead to not only greater freedom, but profound insights into the nature of reality.

This talk explores the factors that go into not only waking up, but working with the most profound challenges in your life. You’ll learn how recognizing the filters through which you perceive is truly a key to liberation and how some specific techniques can sharpen your awareness of when mindfulness is slipping away.

This talk explores the impact of having your personal North Star. You’ll learn how helpful it can be to clearly articulate what you most want, to reflect on the good in your life, to acknowledge what grows you and what calls you. I share a bit from my own Year in Review and offer some time for your reflection.

This talk explores some tips and tricks for being more mindful during your day. You’ll learn the fundamentals of applied mindfulness, my morning routine, how I try to remind myself to be more mindful during the day …. and the importance of being mindful when you hit challenges.   Finding your optimal routines can make a huge difference in feeling more present and satisfied in your life.  My routines may vary quite a bit from yours!

This talk explores the dance of trust, faith and doubt. You'll learn what gets in the way of trust, three levels of maturing faith, how embracing and investigating doubt is integral to wisdom and and suggestions as how to navigate the leaps of faith in your life.

Please note there are a few graphic examples animal suffering from my experience working on farms that might make you uncomfortable.  This talk reflects on my journey with different diets and food philosophies. You’ll learn why and how I landed on a plant-based lifestyle to dramatically cultivate my health and vitality, support the environment, explore how to live as cruelty-free as possible and to explore what I call ‘eating as a spiritual practice.’  

This talk explores how to go with the flow.   You’ll learn how life is filled with constant challenge and how, when you learn to let go and bring full attention to the here and now, you can open to new possibilities in your life.

This talk explores to transformative power of generosity. You’ll learn how giving as a spiritual practice reveals what is between you and a truly generous heart, how generosity requires you learn how to fully receive … and the Buddha’s teachings on how fundamental generosity is to the experience of liberation.

This talk explores the art of engaging and disengaging. You’ll learn about stimulus / response and how your practice of meditation can open up more space for you to be more skillful as to how you respond to the moment — and to the challenges that arise in your life.

This talk explores moving from conceptual to non-conceptual awareness.   You’ll learn what gets in the way of feeling the mystery, how ‘the five aggregates’ make up each moment, the doorway into non-conceptual perception as well as the doorway of gratitude. How My Son Ruined My Life:  Selma Baraz:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojF-o_eWp-o

This talk explores the power of streaming thoughts toward love, compassion, kindness, joy and equanimity.   You’ll learn about the origin of the heart practices, how here love starts as a thought and moves into an experience, the system for loving kindness and what it means to be awake both in heart and mind.

This talk explores how to cultivate both wisdom and compassion.   You’ll learn how suffering is both internal and external, the keys to the release of suffering and how to foster your intention to be awake in the midst of turbulent times.

This talk explores how to increase your happiness level.   You’ll learn how stress and dissatisfaction can be transformed and how happiness is not only your birthright, but your greatest responsibility and contribution to others.

This talk explores the practice of Bare Attention and how suffering ceases in the experience of gratitude. You’ll learn about the distinction of the linear mind and the intuitive mind, the practice Bare Attention and a technique for opening to gratitude as a way of shifting the mind to a more fluid and intuitive state.

This talk explores how to deconstruct beliefs. You’ll learn about the origin of thoughts and beliefs, the art of interrupting the stream of thinking, the art of deconstructing beliefs and the importance, when you do this work, to err on the side of safety and self-care.