Dear Friends, For a long time, I felt like there was a problem with me. While so many people seemed happily coupled, I found myself in "situationship" after "situationship," dating unavailable men, longing for something real, and yet incapable of finding it. Plenty of available guys liked me, but I was never interested in them, even though I really tried to be. I related to the Buddhist concept of a hungry ghost -- a being with a huge, extended belly, desperately hungry, and a teeny tiny...
11 days ago • 3 min read
Dear Friends, Knocking on the door of 40, my life looked from the outside like everything I had ever wanted. An amazing husband. Two hilarious and adorable little kids. A senior role leading spiritual life at NYU. And yet, I also had a creeping, bone-deep misery I could not explain or shake. The excitement and the joy had quietly drained out of my life, replaced by obligations, exhaustion, and the hum of ever-present anxiety. So I went looking for my long-lost joy. I discovered, with the help...
19 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, Flourish - my transformative 12-week Jewish mindfulness immersion and certification program starts this Tuesday, March 10, and I wanted to write to you directly before the door closes. If you've been on the fence, I understand. Life is full. Money is real. And you may have wondered: is this really for someone like me? I've spent the last few weeks talking to people just like you with lots of questions like this. Let me answer them: "I don't have 5–7 hours a week." I hear this a...
23 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, Did you know that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly by digesting itself inside its cocoon, dissolving its entire structure and becoming goo. This goo is filled with "imaginal discs" that later become the component parts of a butterfly. You can read all about it here and watch it happen here: Wow. So many parts of this process resonate with every major life transition I've ever had. The old thing has to dissolve - often painfully - to make way for the new. The in-between time is...
27 days ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, I have become a major fan of Olympic Gold Medal-winning figure skater Alysa Liu. After becoming a phenom at 13, enduring a punishing, medal-focused training schedule, she dropped out of skating at 16. She traveled the world, played other sports, went to college, and got herself back. Then she decided to return — but on her own terms, with new coaches and a new system in which she held the reins: "She has been much more engaged in the process of creating the program from...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Dear Friends, In my latest conversation in my Desire & Dharma series, the brilliant Adreanna Limbach tells me about the moment that found her clutching the kitchen counter and group chatting her friends in excitement after seeing a certain very sexy movie trailer. We talk about the pleasures and joys of desire and the possibility that we’re already whole, even while wanting more. Rather than making desire the enemy, this conversation is a curious inquiry into what our wanting is trying to...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, There’s a moment many of us hit with meditation — maybe you’ve been there. You know how to sit.You’ve logged hours on an app, been on retreat, taken a course or two.And yet… the practice still lives in a kind of side pocket of your life. It helps, but it hasn’t quite reshaped how you meet stress, relationships, or the bigger questions of meaning and purpose. Flourish was created for you. Flourish is a 12-week Jewish mindfulness certification program for people who want their...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, Have you been feeling overwhelmed, unsteady, and/or spiritually depleted recently? You are in good company. The terror and murder inflicted by ICE in Minneapolis and elsewhere in our country - not to mention the horrors continuing around the globe - have prompted two knee-jerk reactions in me and many people I know: Reaction 1: Heartbreak, anxiety, rage, overwhelm, fear. Reaction 2: Withdraw and self-distract. It's easy to find myself wildly springing between the two reactions...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Dear Friends, I had the pleasure of talking with my friend Koshin Paley Ellison for my Youtube Series on Dharma and Desire a few weeks ago, and so much from our conversation has stuck with me as ever more heartbreak, fear and horror fills the news. We discussed how to experience the pleasure of desiring things without needing to posses them, about Dogen's idea of being time, rather than "spending" time, and Jung's idea of "being in the time in your life," which is a way to experience presence...
3 months ago • 1 min read