Jun 10, 2025
If you’ve spent time with me in the classroom, you know that I open every offering with the following words: All of you is welcome.All of your identities, seen and unseen, known and unknown.All of who you are is welcome.All of HOW you are is welcome!Your mood,...
May 27, 2025
Instead of words and phrases, this loving-kindness practice uses imagery and a felt sense in the body. It’s a short, simple practice that you can take with you and use throughout the day. Radiating Loving-Kindness - 9 minutes by Carolyn McCarthy...
May 27, 2025
Loving-kindness stengthens the natural human desire that you and others be well. A core part of our Mindful Self-Compassion program as well as other compassion cultivation programs, loving-kindness meditation uses a combination of imagery and language to open the...
Apr 13, 2025
You are so excited to prepare dinner for three of your friends. You’ve planned a menu, gone grocery shopping, and spent several hours slicing and chopping, sauteing and mixing to bring forth a delightful meal. Your guests arrive to share your culinary efforts. They...
Dec 13, 2024
by Carolyn McCarthy Photo by Judy Beth Morris On a recent morning in early November, my stomach was in knots. My head was spinning, a thought storm tumbling through. I’d managed to get myself out the door and was walking to yoga class, mat tucked under my arm. But my...
May 3, 2024
I hear it all the time, especially at the end of a class or workshop: how do I keep this going? Daily practice, finding community, and doing a retreat come to mind. But how about books and movies? For this list, I’ve skipped the many wonderful “How To”...
Feb 2, 2024
In our classes, when we turn toward difficult emotions, we often say, “This is where the rubber meets the road.” In other words: This is where it gets tough, but also, this is why we’re doing this practice. I have five parents: two in-laws, two birth, one step. In the...
Sep 29, 2023
Think of Mindful Movement as a "body scan in motion" where we practice deeply feeling the sensations in the body as we move it and as we hold different postures. We offer a few suggestions for getting started as well as diagrams of our standard full mindful movement...
Sep 12, 2023
Open Awareness is the practice of stabilizing attention with a broad, wide-open focus that allows mental objects, sensations, and sensory experiences to come and go. All mindfulness-based practices are oriented towards stabilizing attention. Sometimes a stable...
Aug 4, 2023
I invite you to become like a bee, moving from flower to flower. In this case, the “flower” being anything beautiful or interesting that draws your attention. Engage your senses to connect with delight: the sun on your cheek, the grass on your feet, honeysuckle in...
Mar 29, 2023
Roses are red, Violets are blue, Happy National Poetry month To you! If you’ve been in our classes or attended our retreats, you know that we celebrate poetry every month of the year. As Lucille Clifton says, “Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of...
Dec 2, 2022
Have you ever had a wet nose interrupt your meditation? My friend and I have circled this lake for years. It’s about three miles around, with a swimming area, baseball diamond, dog run, and huge old firs and cedars. We’ve walked and talked our way through our kids...
