With Melanie Cooper
www.melaniecooper.co.uk

Photo cred Alysa Bajenaru

Sleep Nidra Stomach and Spleen with Melanie Cooper, recorded live in London (28 min)

On March 14, 2020, just after COVID was declared a national emergency, meditation teacher and activist Shelly Tygielski wanted to find a way to support her community in South Florida. She created two simple Google forms—one to give help and one to get help—and shared both on social media. The next morning, each form had over 500 responses from around the country, and the mutual aid organization Pandemic of Love was born. Since Pandemic of Love’s conception, the organization has connected over 2 million donors with individuals and families in need and has responded directly to global crises including hurricanes, mass shootings, and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Just this past month, Tygielski returned from the Poland-Ukraine border, where she was supporting Ukrainian refugees displaced by war.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Tygielski to discuss her work in Ukraine, the history of mutual aid movements, and the radical power of just showing up.

The Radical Power of Just Showing Up with Shelly Tygielski

Catherine Burns is a firm believer in the power of stories. For the past 20 years, she has served as the artistic director at The Moth, a nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling. In this role, she has helped hundreds of people craft their stories, including a New York City sanitation worker, a Nobel Laureate, a jaguar tracker, and an exonerated prisoner. For Burns, listening to stories can be a way of cultivating empathy and healing from trauma. 

In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Burns to talk about how to tell a good story, how we can break free from harmful narratives, and how stories can help us find community in the midst of isolation.

Breaking Free of the Stories We Tell Ourselves with Catherine Burns

For twenty years, Valerie Brown worked as a lawyer lobbyist, persuading politicians on Capitol Hill. But after a chance encounter with the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, she began searching for a deeper sense of meaning and purpose. Eventually, she quit her job and became ordained as a dharma teacher in the Plum Village tradition. In her new book, "Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace," Brown shares her journey through personal loss and how she has grappled with the question, “Where is hope now?”

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Brown to talk about the distinction between active and passive hope, her unique blend of Buddhist and Quaker traditions, and how she has learned to listen to her soul’s voice.

Making Peace with Our Longing to Belong with Valerie Brown

A spacious Yoga Nidra with eye movements and images of lying watching clouds in the sky - creating space for your creativity to grow

Yoga Nidra For Creativity with Melanie Cooper (24 min)

Over the course of the past few years, many of us have found ourselves dealing with loss. Yet our contemporary culture often doesn’t allow us the space we need to grieve. Meditation teacher Kimberly Brown believes that mourning takes time, and she works as a grief counselor to support people through difficult and complicated losses. In her new book, "Navigating Grief and Loss: 25 Buddhist Practices to Keep Your Heart Open to Yourself and Others," Brown lays out concrete tools to help us become better friends to ourselves as we grieve.

In this episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, and co-host Sharon Salzberg sit down with Brown to talk about how we can learn to stay with our grief, why it can be so hard to ask for help, and how rituals can help us honor the losses in our lives.

Navigating Grief and Loss with Kimberly Brown

This past fall, writer Sandra Cisneros published her first book of poetry in 28 years, "Woman Without Shame." Cisneros, best known for her 1984 novel "The House on Mango Street," is a poet, novelist, performer, and artist—and she’s also a Buddhist. In her new poetry collection, she offers insightful and characteristically blunt meditations on desire, memory, and how she has learned to love her aging body.

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor in chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Cisneros to discuss her writing process, how she combines Buddhist practice with the indigenous spirituality of her childhood, and what it means to be a woman without shame. Plus, at the end of the episode, Cisneros reads two poems from her new collection.

Learning to Live without Shame with Sandra Cisneros

According to the recently released COVID Response Tracking Study, Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in fifty years. Between the pandemic, mass shootings, and ongoing environmental catastrophes, it can be easy to feel like we’re always in crisis—and to believe that the world is coming to an end. But journalist Emma Varvaloucas believes that this pessimism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if we want to build a better future, we have to change how we relate to the news. Previously an executive editor at Tricycle, Varvaloucas now serves as the executive director of the Progress Network, a nonprofit media organization dedicated to countering the negativity of the mainstream news cycle. 

In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Varvaloucas to discuss how her Buddhist practice informs how she engages with the news, how we can stop doomscrolling, and what can happen when we pay attention to what’s going right.

An Antidote to Despair with Emma Varvaloucas

A world-renowned meditation teacher, Sharon Salzberg is the founding teacher at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. In her new book, "Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom," she weaves together Buddhist psychology, her own experiences, and insights from a variety of contemplative traditions to examine how we can live with greater creativity, connection, and joy. Through exploring the forces that keep us trapped in constriction, she lays out a path toward what she calls “real life,” or a life of spaciousness and freedom.

In today’s episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Salzberg to talk about what it means to live a real life, how we can break free of our habitual patterns, and how expansiveness makes love more available to us.

Opening to Freedom with Sharon Salzberg

Composed and Recorded by Robert Haig Coxon for Andrew Bray

http://www.roberthaigcoxon.com/

ABray Masterhood - By Robert Haig Coxon

Christine Grace McMulkin is a Certified Mindful Self Compassion Teacher. She teaches Live Online MSC and is also a faculty member of the Centre for Mindfulness Studies.

Soles of the Feet

Tricycle Talks: Listen to Buddhist teachers, writers, and thinkers on life's big questions. Hosted by James Shaheen, editor in chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the leading Buddhist magazine in the West.


Life As It Is: Join James Shaheen with co-host Sharon Salzberg and learn how to bring Buddhist practice into your everyday life.


Tricycle: The Buddhist Review creates award-winning editorial, podcasts, events, and video courses. Unlock access to all this Buddhist knowledge by subscribing to the magazine at tricycle.org/join

An Antidote to Despair with Emma Varvaloucas

Tricycle Talks

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