what's my philosophy around how to teach meditation?

my online course, “meditation fundamentals: practicing for a free heart” is now launched and accepting participants! it’s an 8-week long program beginning april 12th designed to help beginners establish a regular meditation practice that is of benefit to their lives, and will also be helpful for anyone who already has meditation experience and wants the support of instruction and community as well.

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i don’t believe there’s any one correct starting point for everyone who wants to learn meditation. some will love the simplicity of focusing on the sensations of breathing, and others will find it intolerably boring. some will relish basking in the warmth of cultivating goodwill for themselves and all beings, and others won’t want to touch the phrase “may i be happy” with a 10-foot pole. some will be happy to dive head first into a 10-day retreat, and others will read meditation books for years before finding enough faith to try sitting still for five minutes.

for this reason, i am designing my class to introduce participants to a small variety of techniques, gradually, over the course of eight weeks. it seems less important to me what technique a student starts with, and more important that they find some kind of foothold, some way of practicing that is enjoyable for them and giving them benefits more or less from the get-go.

the challenge of this approach is that it could lead to a lack of any depth, without spending enough time to let a technique become familiar. i’m addressing this in several ways.

1. organizing the flow of techniques such that they build on each other and feel like a slowly expanding toolbox, rather than a disjointed set of mismatched directions

2. emphasizing what principles are common to all the approaches i am offering

3. supporting each student in finding their own path through the curriculum, balancing their intuition and self-knowledge with the structure of the course

4. increasing the amount of freedom in the curriculum for participants as the course goes on

i’m really excited to write about what principles i think are common to all the techniques i will offer, so i’ll write about these next. these are the

fundamental meditative skills

as i see them.

mindfulness of the body, and the ability to relax muscle tension

with practice, it becomes clear how deeply intertwined the mind and the body are. indeed, they increasingly seem to be perhaps not separate things at all, as every thought leaves an imprint in the body, and the impulse of every thought and emotion can be found in the body.

when there is tension in the body, there is tension in the mind. by relaxing the body, we can help the mind to relax. as the mind relaxes, the body becomes available for even more relaxation, and thus there is a positive feedback loop between them.

another positive feedback loop is that as muscle tension relaxes, the body becomes easier to sense in finer and finer detail, which makes even subtler patterns of tension available to the light of awareness. awareness of tension is often a necessary ingredient of its dissolution, because we are noticing that the tension is something we are doing. rather than adding another doing (such as pushing the shoulders down to try and relieve the tension in them), we see there is the opportunity to stop doing.

while it is possible to take sense objects other than the body as an exclusive meditative focus (such as sounds, or a visual object), in practice, i have found that every meditative technique benefits from being able to really receive the marvelous sensations of the body.

kindness

there is no moment that does not benefit from kindness. kindness can be firm or soft, intense or dreamy, obvious or subtle, but kindness is never cruel. kindness is never threatening, malicious, or uncaring. kindness may be perceived as a threat, but this is never its intent. cruelty may arise in the mind, but it can be viewed and welcomed with kindness.

kindness (or, love) is the nature of attention. attention making contact with any sense impression (such as a sight, a thought, an emotional body sensation) is implicitly carrying the message “i am willing to touch you, i am willing to be with you.”

there are some techniques specifically designed to cultivate kindness as a view, or love as an emotion, but even in a practice of simply noticing whatever is arising without preference, there is a kindness inherent in the allowing of phenomena.

kindness is a quality of the mind in contentment. a mind holding ill-will is not content. a mind that is content is able to collect itself, to rest in the present moment, to see more clearly the nature of phenomena.

ability to discern when attention is receiving the senses directly vs. when it is lost in thought

thought is no more or less a part of experience than any of our other senses, but somehow, thought seems to have a unique ability to confuse us. we easily “believe” thoughts, thinking their content is “real,” or describing our external circumstance, when in fact they are something we are, in some sense, conjuring, ourselves.

this is sometimes called being lost in thought, or called believing the story of our thoughts. it may look like reliving a memory, being lost in a fantasy, getting into an imaginary argument, or even being lost in thoughts about the practice itself. there is nothing wrong with any of these thoughts arising — the skill i am describing here is simply being able to notice that they are thoughts.

a thought has a very different quality when we receive it as a present moment phenomenon arising in the mind. it becomes less personal. we don’t have to believe “what a terrible person i am for this mean thought,” when we can simply see “ah, this thought has arisen in the mind.”

when we see a thought as a thought, we are not engaging in a subtle type of habitual clinging that surrounds our thoughts. instead of reacting to a thought with a sense of “i need to do something about this thought,” we are able to let a deeper intelligence operate on its own, and receive the next naturally occurring thought.

this is not to say there is no utility in intentionally directing our thoughts at times — but the option to do so is different from the compulsion to do so. another way to think of this skill is the ability to notice and let go of rumination.

balancing commitment and determination with playfulness and intuition

the ability to skillfully employ varying levels of commitment and stick-with-it-ness to an idea or practice and the ability to trust a twinkling of intuition or flicker of playfulness are both indispensable skills in meditation (and life, writ large).

commitment is like creating a container for ourselves. if we commit to sit quietly for five minutes, and some physical or emotional discomfort arises, the (kind) container of our commitment keeps us in the practice, which grants us the opportunity to get to know this discomfort better, and perhaps release our bracing against it, leading to greater ease and self-knowledge. meditative commitments can take many sizes and shapes, such as a commitment to sit without moving for 45 minutes, a commitment practice lovingkindness almost every day for a month, a commitment to pause for one mindful breath a day, or a commitment to stay in silent meditation practice for three months straight.

without commitments, it is easy to become stuck in local optimums. it might be difficult to access a genuine want to wade through a time of less comfort or less certainty. with a commitment, a determination, we can say “i want to find out what’s over THERE!” and keep going until we’ve discovered the answer for ourselves.

playfulness is more like following a whim, fiddling with something and having a laugh, not trying to accomplish anything or end up anywhere in particular. intuition is often a quiet voice saying “actually, i think what i want is over here.”

releasing goal orientation is part of what makes discovering new possibilities available at all. playing, in this way, is more like the process of natural evolution — trying everything in all directions and without a sense of “trying” at all, yet ending up creating extraordinary beauty and complexity in a forever unfolding way. intuition guides play, and also accesses types of knowing that may be beneath the analytical apparatus of the mind.

in meditation, this might look like an open-ended practice period of doing some metta, and then some breath focus, and then some open awareness, and then some emotional inquiry, according to one’s whims. it might look like practicing cultivating concentration and having an inkling to try a subtle mental move that you couldn’t even put words to. it might look like having an idea to combine meditation instructions or tips you’ve heard from different sources.

so, how to balance commitments and determination with playfulness and intuition, when they may seem to be at odds?

much of the solution is that commitments can be different strengths. how easily will i break this commitment? on one end there’s a solemn vow, and on the other there’s a gentle intention. in between there is a huge range of options, and where a commitment falls on this scale can help determine what kind of play is available.

we can set commitments in a playful way, based on intuition, and we can also set the strengths of commitments in a playful way. over time, there is greater and greater harmony between these two aspects, as the system learns how they skillfully support each other.

more fundamentals

this section of the essay feels long enough, so i’m just going to group together some other fundamental skills here without as much exploration of each one.

• finding enjoyment in the practice

• learning to notice and cultivate motivation

• learning how relaxation and alertness support each other, in body and mind

• practicing patience with learning basic skills and with the whole process unfolding. this is not like gritting your teeth for the unpleasant bit to be over, but more like trusting that development is occurring at the appropriate and natural pace.

• learning to recognize emotions, to investigate their qualities, and to meet them in particular with kindness and acceptance

• learning to collect the mind and stabilize attention (called concentration, or samādhi). it’s funny to put this here in the bullet point list since it’s such a huge fundamental skill, but i don’t mind doing so because it is in large part a natural outcome of practicing the skills i listed above — especially body awareness and relaxation, kindness, and the ability to discern the location of attention with regards to believing thoughts or sensing direct experience.

• cultivating equanimity. equanimity can be thought of not needing to hold on to pleasant experiences nor push unpleasant experiences away. it is a quality of heart and attention that prefers to be intimate with all experience as it is.

a miscellaneous pedagogical thought

acknowledging that there are some beginner practitioners who have a temperament well suited to beginning with instructions that point straight at non-duality, techniques that involve complex visualizations, or techniques of self-inquiry, i think for most people there is a great deal of value in beginning with meditation techniques that meet us right where we already are in our everyday experience. becoming familiar with the tensions and sensations of the body, the moods and states and tightly wound patterns of the mind, the varieties and subtleties inherent in all the other senses — this is our home turf as human beings with consciousness, and learning to navigate it skillfully will serve us well in our day-to-day life. it will also serve us very well whether we follow it all the way to deep insights, or use it as a support for other types of practices that also lead to deep insights.

the role of the teacher, or guide, or spiritual friend

here are some of my intentions as someone setting out to relate to others in a way that helps them learn to meditate:

• to maintain and practice goodwill, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity towards others at all times

• to speak from my direct experience as much as possible, and to make clear when i am sharing information that i have learned from external sources but not fully seen in my own experience

• to express when i don’t know the answer to a question and offer to connect others to further resources or teachers that do know

• to see the intelligence of others and trust that they ultimately know what is best for themselves. to let go of agendas for them be any particular way, hold any particular view, or take on any particular practice

• to practice viewing others not as lessers or superiors or even equals, but as interdependently arising with myself and all beings

• to keep my words connected to my heart and gut, even when the intellect is in full and excellent use

• to be aware of inherent power dynamics and the possibility of transference that can occur when one is in a teacher or student role, to navigate these skillfully, and to be willing to talk about them

• to maintain ongoing conversations with my peers and mentors around teaching and skillful behavior, to ask to be held accountable when needed and show myself to them so this is possible

ok let’s talk about my upcoming course, “meditation fundamentals: practicing for a free heart”!!

from april 12th to may 31st 2025, i will be teaching an online course in meditation practice. the course is designed to help someone go from having no meditation experience to having a daily-ish practice that they enjoy and is beneficial to them. i expect it to also be helpful for people who already have meditation experience and want the support of eight weeks of instruction and community as well.

there will be a weekly group session for 90 minutes, and weekly individual sessions with participants for 45 minutes each. we will also have some written and audio materials to support us, as well as a group text and the option to text me during the week as desired.

each class will include guided sits, short talks from me on our current topics, time for practice reports and Q&A, and some amount of check-in time or other ways to help create community.

i want to let the class evolve naturally and respond to how everyone’s practice is developing, but i also have an outline of the curriculum to work off of.

week 1

• big picture ideas about practice

• advice in finding supportive physical postures for meditation practice

• body-scanning, relaxing the body, holding the whole body in awareness

• discussing trauma-sensitivity

week 2

• working with emotions as an ever-present element of any kind of practice

• working with emotions as a focus of practice. noting what emotions are present

• differentiating between present-moment emotional sensations, and stories that accompany emotions

• still very body-based practice

week 3

• discussing samadhi (concentration)

• breath focus and counting the breath as a technique for cultivating concentration

• offering options for how to think of concentration practice with a focus other than the breath

• discussing the five hindrances

week 4

• open awareness

• noting as a tool to aid open awareness

• how to discern when open awareness is helpful vs more directed techniques, and how to make decisions in meditation practice

week 5

• metta (lovingkindness) practice

week 6

• no new techniques, or, continue metta and introduce karuna (compassion)

• social noting, in class

• the walking posture

week 7

• no new techniques, but continue social noting in class

• support students in making their own practice commitments

• 30 minute guided meditation, in class

• discuss vedana (the aspect of all sensory experience to be either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral)

week 8

• continue as in week 7

• discuss the seven factors of awakening

• discuss further resources after this class, where to go from here

i hope to see you there! please feel free to reach out to me with any questions about the class! sign up link here :)

if you know anyone who might want to take the class, let them know about it! thank you!

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the other essays in this series are on the questions “who the hell do i think i am to teach meditation,” “how do i want to relate to money and meditation teaching” and “what is meditation good for and what is it not good for?”

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(if you wish to financially support my life and efforts, i invite you to contribute via my patreon account. thank you.)