A Few Minutes, Week After Week mtift Tue, 10/13/2026 - 05:15 For many years, I’ve led meditation groups in various settings. People come for a while, then stop coming.For instance, earlier this year, a colleague and I started a daily meditation group called the “Daily Reset.” I personally found it to be a nice break...

What to Do with a Number mtift Tue, 10/06/2026 - 05:25 I started going deep into yoga and meditation after my wife Marnie’s cancer diagnosis, and these practices have felt uniquely empowering for me. For almost a decade now, she has had tests every six months. In the last round, one number changed from 0.2 to 0.3....

Attachments, Good and Bad mtift Tue, 09/29/2026 - 08:43 I subbed a Tuesday morning class at The Marsh last week. I’m not usually up and teaching at 6:45am, but another teacher needed a sub and I don’t have any “conflicts” at that time. Except, perhaps, my own yoga and meditation practice.The class went well....

The Highest Practice, Not the Only One mtift Tue, 09/22/2026 - 07:03 I remember standing in front of the display case outside the elevator on the 3rd floor of the Kripalu Center, reading the quote above it. “The highest spiritual practice is self-observation without judgment.” Below the words, in a glass case, was...

What Am I Adding to This? mtift Tue, 09/15/2026 - 08:12 On Saturday, twelve people joined me at Lake Fellowship for Take a Load Off, a daylong retreat about setting down some of what we carry.We practiced gentle yoga, sat, walked, talked, shared a potluck meal, and spent time outside in the woods. We couldn’t have...

Two Kinds of Wanting mtift Tue, 09/08/2026 - 07:05 Last week I wrote about the wanting that comes with a promise attached, the kind that says “just this one more thing and I’ll be set.” In class last week, a woman asked me whether there’s a good kind of wanting. Good question, and the answer I gave is “yes.”When I...

Just This One More Thing and I'll Be Set mtift Tue, 09/01/2026 - 08:14 When I was in high school in the 1990s, I remember standing in my bedroom telling my mom that if I just had a CD player, I would not need anything else. I meant it. I had worked out something about my life and I was reporting the finding to my...

Not Taking What Is Not Given mtift Tue, 08/25/2026 - 07:24 Last week I published episode 100 of Pretty Good Meditation. It did not involve much fanfare.When I first started recording these, I had intro music, I said the date and the episode number, and I sometimes mentioned my website or newsletter. There are no ads...

Two Experiments in Steadiness and Ease mtift Tue, 08/18/2026 - 08:59 In August last year, I wrote about what I might do “when family logistics settle down.” I called it “later” thinking. I wanted to be available to my kids if they needed help. I believed that a more spacious time was coming, but looking back I’m not...

Three Questions for When Your Practice Is Stuck mtift Tue, 08/11/2026 - 07:42 Out on my bike last week, I realized I had forgotten to disable notifications on my phone, which I use as my bike computer. Part-way into my ride, someone messaged me about work, and suddenly my mind started deliberating. My biking...

Two Things Instead of a List mtift Tue, 08/04/2026 - 08:03 During the summers in Minnesota, just about everyone I know gets busy. We have a few glorious months to go outside in shorts and sandals, and we use them. For my family, with both kids in town from college, that means more weekends at the cabin, swimming,...

Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow, Repeat mtift Tue, 07/28/2026 - 09:18 The first time I heard one of my Kripalu teachers say “BRFWA,” I thought it sounded kinda like a sneeze. Not the tidy acronym RAIN, which rolls off the tongue when you want to remember “Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture.” Most of my...