Tonglen (giving and taking) is a method for connecting with suffering — ours and that which is all around us — everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality.

Healing Through Tonglen

It is painful to exclude a person from your heart. In this meditation you are invited to soften that pain and see a difficult person in a different way. It might change the way you relate to that person as well. 

Loving - Kindness With A Difficult Person

20 minute guided meditation / iRest Yoga Nidra for Inner Strength.
Want other audio meditations like this? Download the free app: Yoga for Better Health - www.yogabetterhealth.com/ybh-app

IRest Yoga Nidra / Guided Meditation for Inner Strength

Bringing distractions back into the beginning of the inhale. Victoria, B.C. Recorded January 17, 2017.

15 minute Guided Meditation on the Breathing Body

Become available for healing, forgiveness and a deeper connection with others.

This 15 minute guided meditation asks you to smile! This may seem an unusual practice however it is a rather beautiful way to open a connection to your heart which is the centre for healing and forgiveness. The intention of this meditation is to open your heart which allows you to connect more deeply to your own truth and to open lines of communication with others.

Open Heart Meditation

20 minute visualization exercise recorded for students in MBSR classes.

InsightLA Meditations mp3s

20 minute Mountain Meditation for MBSR by Christiane Wolf

2019-12-20 at Spirit Rock Meditation Center

Oren Jay Sofer

Mindfulness of Thinking

“O Nobly Born” the Buddhist texts begin, remember your Buddha Nature. Remember your innate capacity for dignity, understanding and vast compassion. These gifts were born into you. Discover how the beautiful qualities of Buddha Nature can become alive for you, in your heart and the way you live.

This series of inspiring talks discuss the awakening of the qualities of Buddha Nature, traditionally described as inner perfections. Through these teachings and practices, you are invited to bring alive and embody the virtues of the heart, lovingkindness and steadiness, compassion and wisdom. You are invited to awaken the best in yourself.

Given in 2017, these teachings are some of my favorites.

The Truth That Frees - Jack Kornfield

The ocean of calm - Part 1

Rely on Silence - Part 4

In 1968, Dr. Bernie Krause was leading a booming music career. A prodigiously talented musician and early master of the electronic synthesizer, Krause was busy working with artists like the Doors and the Beach Boys and performing iconic effects for blockbuster films. Then Warner Brothers commissioned him to create an album incorporating the sounds of wild habitats, so he headed into Muir Woods with his recording equipment. What he heard changed his life and triggered a fifty-year odyssey.

Then and there, Krause decided that he wanted spend the rest of his life recording and archiving the music of wild animals and wild places. He quit Hollywood and began traveling the world. The soundscapes he recorded were full of epiphanies about the origin of our own culture and music, about the profound connectedness of creatures, and about the unseen tolls of human activity. Previous wildlife recordings isolated the calls of individual creatures, but Krause recorded habitats as a whole. He soon proposed a new theory of ecosystem functioning: that each species produces unique acoustic signatures, partitioning and occupying sonic niches such that the singing of all of the creatures in a healthy ecosystem can be heard, organized like players in an orchestra. 

Today, Krause’s astonishing archive contains sounds made by more than 15,000 species. It is, as The New Yorker aptly put it, “an auditory Library of Alexandria for everything non-human." Fifty percent of the recorded habitats no longer exist due to habitat destruction, climate change, and human din. We spoke with Krause about the beauty of and perils facing wild music, the extraordinary science of soundscape ecology, and how sound impacts the welfare of animals. The music in this episode is from Wild Sanctuary (www.wildsanctuary.com).

Ep. 39 - Bernie Krause on saving the music of the wild

Stephan Wormland, MA in clinical psychology and trained in Gestalt therapy. He has studied and practiced meditation in multiple Buddhist traditions for over 30 years and spent altogether 5 years in meditation retreats. Stephan was a monk in the Tibetan tradition for 11 years and teaches meditation in Buddhist centers in Europe.

The ocean of calm - Part 1

Natural Meditation podcast