This winter I am teaching meditation in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, a beautiful place for meditation, yoga and general relaxation and recovery. https://video.wixstatic.com/video/421d37_8199ec0f11f84f7a873d067618c528c8/720p/mp4/file.mp4 I will be offering classes at the Playa Yoga Tribe studio at the Imix Holistic Space in Casa Lol-kin, Av. 15 between Av. Juarez & Calle 2, Playa del Carmen. Vacations can be an opportunity to gain some precious inner focus while we take a break from our usual hustle and bustle. Meditation allows us to let go of the preoccupations with who we (think) we are, wh ..read more

I am taking a few months in Playa del Carmen, on the so-called Mayan Riviera, to teach meditation and to enjoy life a bit. One of the first things I did was to track down my buddy, Kevin Connelly, whose company, Reconnect (https://www.reconnect.mx/) (https://www.instagram.com/recnnect/), organizes breath work and ice baths in Playa del Carmen. Now, it's not impossible that some people would detect a certain irony in talking about enjoying life and taking ice baths in the same breath. I must say that I agree that plunging into ice water up to my neck was not high on my list of highly anticipate ..read more

Why is it that some people with no prior interest in spirituality suddenly become interested when their lives are a mess? There are probably about a billion answers to this question, but I suspect that my own experience is not too uncommon... "True Believers" Now, I'm not talking here about the fundamentalism of retreating to a structured set of received beliefs and socio-political sanctions at a time of crisis. This isn't about surrendering in despair to some external authority and allowing some group or ideology to run your life and do your thinking for you while you just "accept" and "beli ..read more

"How does one develop the silence that allows for the blossoming of organic joy? By closely observing the activity of our internal discourse and by becoming conscious of its ongoing repetitiveness. We know how to escape the drivel of everyday life, but why is it that we are completely unable to escape our internal discourse which is so predictable and boring?" Daniel Odier, The Doors of Joy What is spontaneity in spirituality? What is joy? And how can we talk about these without disappearing into a graduate seminar on the philosophy around these concepts? The Cambridge Dictionary provides a s ..read more

I remember when I first began meditating and people tried to explain to me about the ego in meditation... I was one of those hardcore leftwing atheists who had been writing about European Intellectual History and who had studied religion almost entirely as an epiphenomenon of culture. "Spirituality" was something I associated with far too much uncomfortable hugging and that unnerving New Age perma-smile and determinedly upbeat behavior that invariably seemed to mask profound anger, passive aggression, and depression. I had admittedly responded with an odd sense of recognition when I read Cole ..read more