I began my own practice of intense meditation in 1995, in part to help me cope with my father’s death. I began by training in the Vipassana tradition with Shinzen Young, a Zen Buddhist monk. After studying with him for six years intensely, I started to study traditional Japanese Zen meditation at the Mount Baldy Zen Center with Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi. During a period of time I taught meditation to executives at Sony.
I approach meditation as a way to drop into your center to find clarity no matter what is happening in the outside world. No matter what you are doing in life, the ability to slow down and focus on one thing at a time carries huge impact. There are formal and informal ways to experience the benefits of meditation; it’s not necessary to hold a lotus position for hours. Instead, it’s a matter of training your mind with as little as 5 to 10 minutes of practice at a time.
When I work with people on meditation, we help the mind to come back to whatever we choose at that moment to be the focal point, whether breath, the birds outside, or the contact of your legs with the chair. We call attention to different bodily sensations and continually guide you back to your meditative awareness. If you are interested in learning meditation techniques, I can work with you privately, in groups, or refer you to classes.