Starting Over

One thing I teach in my online Yoga Nidra training is the value of starting over. Tell me if you relate to this story.

I attended college back in the era of “floppy disks” and one day I got a hard lesson on just how "floppy" these disks were.

One evening, after a grueling day of wrestling with an essay I'd been writing for weeks, what was to be my pièce de la résistance, my magnum opus, and intended to be both my senior thesis AND my entry into a prestigious essay contest, I sat down at my desk to print off my essay so I could submit it the following day and as I clicked the floppy disk into my computer and looked at the contents to find the file to print … nothing. Nada. Rien.

Floppy. 

 Everything on that disk had been mysteriously obliterated.

So, what did I do? What could I do?

Sitting there at my desk, I simply started over. 

The words were fresh; I’d practically memorized the thing. 

But this time instead of wrestling with the words and ideas, they tumbled out of my brain and danced through my fingers onto the keyboard fast and fluid. This time it formed more clearly with ideas I hadn’t even thought of the first time. This time, it had soul. 

I finished the essay (again).

I graduated with my degree.

I took 1st place in the essay contest. 

Starting over can be a gift. 

Regardless of how many times you have to come back to your presence in meditation, it doesn't matter, starting over is a gift.

Even if you've let your meditation or yoga practice go, it doesn't matter, starting over is a gift. 

No matter whatever we've lost, tried, and failed at, no matter what didn’t take the first time (or several times), starting over is a gift. 

May we all celebrate the opportunity to come back to presence and start over again and again and again. 

This time could make all the difference.

---

Online Yoga Nidra Training

I’m absolutely passionate about Yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra has taught me more about myself, the Universe, and my purpose in the world than any other practice and I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned with you.

If you’ve ever thought about teaching Yoga Nidra, now is the time—the world needs it more than ever. Also, the world needs more qualified Yoga Nidra teachers, and this course is designed to teach you to become a Yoga Nidra expert, delivering this healing practice in the power of your own voice— because there’s no one who can teach like you can.

One of the things I’ve learned about Yoga Nidra is that even though practicing it is very easy and can lead to profound transformation, being an effective Yoga Nidra facilitator can be very difficult. This is why I’ve created Facilitating Transformation with the Yoga of Sleep, an enlightening, engaging, and enjoyable online Yoga Nidra teacher training where you will learn the art and science of teaching Yoga Nidra using the power of your own voice. You’ll also learn how to apply your expertise to acquire and create excellent teaching opportunities through live or online group classes, workshops, courses, private sessions, and even how to lead yoga retreats and other paid events. I’ll even teach you how to create digital products to sell and share your teaching gifts with the world. In short, you’ll learn how to make a massive impact while making a great living doing what you love.

Guides From Beyond

It’s almost the 2-year anniversary of my mom’s death. About 10 days after she passed, she came back to me in a dream.

She looked radiant, so happy and vibrant and only wanted to say one thing:

“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”
“I’m just so grateful!”

Then she burst into flames.

Totally serious.

It was her moment of transformation into the great beyond and this vision seared the message of her gratitude deeply into my heart and mind.

What do you think you’d say if you could come back from the dead and say one thing?

Gratitude is one of the most important things we can cultivate in our life.

Instead of waiting for things to happen in our lives to be grateful for, we must make a point of choosing to find things to be grateful for no matter our circumstances. Practicing gratitude in this way will soon help see that your life is non-stop blessings.

Maybe this is what my mom was saying.

Thanksgiving is this week in the US and regardless of where you are in the world, I invite you to practice gratitude with me this (Saturday Nov. 26th 9–11 am MT; 5–7 pm CET) at my special Gratitude Workshop where we will practice some all-levels poses, expansive breathwork, journaling, and of course Yoga Nidra.

Join live via Zoom and/or catch the replay.

You’ll float away from this practice feeling alive in your body, calm in your mind, and your heart brimming with the truth that your life is an incredible gift.

I hope you'll join me on Saturday.

In the meantime, here’s a poem to brighten your day and which hits home with the message of gratitude, despite whatever visits us in life.


The Guest House
By Rumi Translated by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
​
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
​
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
​
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
​
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

What Would Bruce Springsteen Do?

I just heard Bruce Springsteen say something that stopped me in my tracks. He said:

“… the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.”

Heart, brimming. Mind, blown.

No wonder they call him The Boss. 

So, allow me to put this into a little bit greater context.

The essence of any practice is interpersonal work. I relate to the wise words of one of my most influential teachers Judeth Hanson Lasater who said, “All my gurus share my last name.”

In other words, there’s positively no greater laboratory than intimate and personal relationships to do the arduous but joyful work of transforming into who we are destined to become. 

To that end, my wife and I love to read or listen to books that help us to stretch into the people and the couple that we are destined to be. Currently we are reading the book US by Terry Real. It’s about evolving past a you-and-me kind of mentality into a deeper relationship that builds an “US.” This has immense personal benefit as well as benefit for any couple. 

I have found Terry Real’s other stuff astoundingly insightful and directly applicable and even just a few chapters in, I would recommend US to anyone interested in uncovering then working through the unconscious programming we acquire as kids and perpetuate forward into our current relationships and to our own communities, partners, and kids, often with difficult or disastrous results for ourselves and our nearest and dearest. This book is designed to help us confront, then move past, our old ghosts, break the cycle of negative coping behaviors, and finally start acting like functional and emotionally healthy adults for feck sake!

One of the reasons this idea of US impressed me so much is because, kinda what The Boss was saying in not so many words, is that as we learn to see ourselves as an “US” in our most personal relationships, by extension we simultaneously discover how humanity is an “US.” 

Learning this lesson is how the world transforms from the you vs me mentality, through the you and me mentality, into the apotheosis of human relationship which is the US reality. “US” is Oneness. Doing so heals us from the natural but terminal human malady of the illusion of separateness. Doing so wakes us up to the truth of what I call our Both And Nature: I am you and me AND everything else. 

Cool. What does this have to do with The Boss?

Well, I love The Boss, the one and only Bruce Springsteen. So, what could be better than an incredible book like US than US with a forward written by the one and only Bruce Springsteen? That’s right. Perhaps the thing I love most about Bruce is his powerful and well-crafted lyrics. It’s no surprise, then, that his forward to this powerful book is also well-crafted and powerful. 

I was recently at the gym listening to this book and Bruce’s words popped into my AirPods and completely arrested me, leaving me standing there looking vacantly into my gym locker. As people were pumping iron all around me my mind was pumping the simple thought, “This is incredible! I gotta share this with everyone I know.”

And so I am taking the liberty of sharing this with you. Here is the forward in its entirety which I found on Oprah’s website: 

By my early thirties, I’d become aware enough to know, as things stood, I’d never have the things I wanted. A full life, a home, a wholeness of being, a companion, and a place in a community of neighbors and friends all seemed beyond my grasp. I didn’t have the judgment, the courage, or the skills to bring a real life to fruition. I was one of the most successful musicians on the planet, but work is work, life is life, and they are not the same. Even more frustrating, the things that made me good at my job—my easy tolerance, even hunger, for the isolation of creativity, my ability to comfortably and deeply reside within myself and put all my energy into my work for days, weeks, years at a time—doomed my personal life to failure. I lived a lonely but seemingly secure existence. Then at thirty-two I hit an emotional wall and realized I was lost in a deep dark forest, largely of my own making, without a map. So began forty years of trying to find my way through the shadowed trees, down to the river of a sustaining life.

With help I realized, in early middle age, that I was subject to a legacy that had been passed down from generations in my Italian-Irish family. A long and stubborn stream of mental illness and dysfunction manifested itself in my life as a deep, recurring depression and an emotional paralysis. I had a fear of exposing my inner life to anyone besides twenty thousand complete strangers at your nearest arena. The eye-to-eye democracy of real adult love struck fear and insecurity deep in my heart. Meanwhile I could feel my life clock ticking on the things I wanted to do and what I wanted to become.

So how do you transform that legacy? How do you break the chain of trauma and illness whose price is compounded with each successive generation? As Terry says, “Family pathology is like a fire in the woods taking down all in front of it until someone turns to face the flames.” Slowly I began to face those flames, mainly because I couldn’t stand the idea of failing my own children, my family, in the manner that I felt I’d been failed. And at the end of the day, the way we honor our parents and their efforts is by carrying on their blessings and doing our best to not pass forward their troubles, their faults, to our own children. Our children’s sins should be their own. It’s only through the hard work of transformation do those of ours who have come before cease to be the ghosts that haunt us and transform into the ancestors we need and love to walk beside us. Working even a small piece of this into my life took a long time, and I’m still a daily work in progress. My children will have plenty of work to do on their own, but we all have to learn and earn our own adulthood.

Looking more broadly, the price we pay as a society for our toxic individualism and patriarchy is our permanent estrangement from one another. If I can’t connect to you, I can’t connect to us. Whether it’s racism, class differences, or any of myriad other social plagues, its cost is always the same: a broken and dysfunctional system that prevents us from recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart. Terry’s writing is loving and kind, clever and strong, and he’s written a beautiful and important book, particularly for the moment we are in. It helps lead the way to a more powerful and noble society based on the tenets of love, justice, and respect. He has laid out a process by which we can begin to understand our place in our own families and our society. I’ve worked hard, and I’ve been lucky. Over the years I’ve found some very good guides through that dark forest and down to that river of life. For my wife, Patti, and me, Terrence Real has been one of those guides, and this book is a map through those trees.

Be safe and journey forward, Bruce Springsteen

What a Boss!

If you do decide to buy this book, and I hope you do, might I suggest buying it from your local bookseller? There’s something special about books and actual bookstores and I believe that the people running them are like literary angels. Here’s my favorite local bookseller in Salt Lake City who would love your business and no, I’m not endorsed by them in any way. I just like to celebrate awesomeness. 

And just like I celebrate the awesomeness of The Boss, Terry Real, and great books like US and places that sell books, I also celebrate YOUR awesomeness. But you rising up to your potential isn’t just awesome, like let’s give each other a high five and say good job thinking our job is done so we go on our individual way thinking, “I’mna go make myself an ‘I’m Awesome’ tee shirt,” kind of awesome. It’s awesome cuz you becoming your best is what saves the world. It’s true. Regardless of whether or not we have met in person, I believe in you and the amazing potential you have inside to change the world. I know that as you continue to grow into the kind of awesome that you are meant to be, the world will be a better place for it. Changing the world starts with you inching your way toward your best self.

And yes, as humans are all fatally flawed, but like The Boss says, you learning how to accept and navigate your brokenness is the first step to “recognizing and caring for our neighbor with a flawed but full heart.” 

And as soon as we transform into an “US,” we discover that just like Alice Walker said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Truly an “US” is what we’ve been waiting for. 

My favorite way of practicing the “US” reality is through the transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. Please consider joining my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training happening August 15–28, 2022 where we learn to master the art of facilitating this practice of our Both And Nature, this “US” reality, which is necessary for this world to survive and then to thrive.

My prayer is that we all continue being “a boss” in all that we positively benefit the world and that as we do so, we all wake up to this “US” reality that saves ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world. 

Yoga Nidra Training: Holding The Paradox of Peace and Rage

View outside my window at my château retreat

I recently wrapped up two incredible weeks of retreats in the French countryside, practicing presence as we savor life with flavors, terroir, and connection of body, mind, and spirit. 

One of the themes of my retreats was learning to see with the heart more than with the eyes. It’s been truly fabulous to retreat from the every-day and get to the heart of what really matters in life. I hope that you will be able to join me for either of my next upcoming retreats this late summer/early fall to Tuscany where we will be taking a similar approach to savoring life. 

Yet still, sometimes it’s hard to think about enjoying ourselves when there is so much trouble and difficulty in the world right now. And as individuals what can we do about the world’s problems? As a single person, can we even make a difference? 

First, I believe that the biggest problem we are facing as individual and collective human beings is nothing new. Our biggest problem is the false notion that we are separate from one another. We feel that there is a war “out there” that we must fight in order to somehow find harmony so we fight other nations, other political parties, and other people’s beliefs when the struggle has and always will be within.

We will never achieve harmony in our outer world until we first achieve it in our inner world. 

Yes, we have big differences and problems with one another and it’s part of the point of being human: to learn to work through these issues and allow them to act as a catalyst for our growth into waking up to our ultimate oneness. 

One of the greatest things we must learn as we wake up as humans is to respond rather than react to our personal and global circumstances. Reaction is the product of our lesser self and only perpetuates the fight moving us personally and collectively in a downward cycle of separateness and destruction. 

Compassionate responsiveness, however, is the product of being connected to our True Self, the person who is evolving as the product of our upward cycle of awareness. Practicing compassionate responsiveness rather than perpetuating reactivity helps us to use our energy and resources to build the world we want rather than fight against the one we don’t. 

Of course there is work to do, of course we can’t just sit on our meditation cushions and hope the world’s problems go away. But without a solid relationship to our inner-self we have no foundation to step from where we are into where we want to be. 

Honestly, I’m completely enraged by so many injustices that are happening in the world and specifically in the US right now. The cultivation of compassion through mindfulness doesn’t blanket these feelings. In fact, with connection to my compassionate ground my hearts actually wake up fully to this world’s problems and the intolerable injustices that those in power perpetuate toward marginalized people, women as a whole, and of course our dear mother Earth. But with connection to my compassionate ground, I may cultivate the superpower to alchemize my righteous rage into loving action that actually heals, both individually and globally.

Yes, any true change we wish to see in the world must start within and I can think of no greater way of creating necessary personal and global change than by learning and practicing the gentle but transformational practice of Yoga Nidra. 

Yoga Nidra has immensely impacted my life by showing me very clearly my personal wholeness and the connectedness of all things. It’s given me a personal and global perspective over problems. And because I’m human I’m going to mess it up so Yoga Nidra has given me a way of practicing learning how this compassion thing works. It’s empowered me with immense clarity of action while also helping me maintain an abiding peace while working toward the future I wish to build. 

Yoga Nidra has shown me that my anger about injustice in this world is actually a wonderful gift because it wakes me up from being anesthetized on auto-pilot and shows me that somehow everything is love. It shows me that I am responsible to ground my actions in this love and do the work necessary to build the future I want. It’s shown me that I can work to help end injustice in this world while also having peace in my heart. 

In short, Yoga Nidra has shown me the paradox that I’m powerful enough to hold both peace and rage simultaneously. 

I’m not alone here and I feel immensely honored and gratified to have done my part to help tens of thousands of other people likewise feel empowered to realize their own innate wholeness and power by teaching Yoga Nidra to them. 

I want to invite you to make a difference, to make a global impact by learning to teach Yoga Nidra.

My Next Yoga Nidra Training

In about 4 weeks, August 15–28th, I’ll be hosting my next Yoga Nidra immersion and teacher training. I’m really thrilled about this training because I’m constantly improving my trainings and this time around I’ve developed a completely new hybrid format that offers a more comprehensive curriculum as well as incredible flexibility. You’ll learn the core principles on your own timeline and will also have tons and tons of personalized live Zoom time to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, explore your personal questions, and discover exactly how YOU will use Yoga Nidra to make a positive impact on the world. 

If you’ve already taken my Yoga Nidra course and want a refresher or to sharpen your skills, you can join for a special repeat-student price.

If you've ever wanted to learn how Yoga Nidra can help you and others make serious life transformation, now’s the time. 

This training is perfect if you’re a yoga or meditation teacher, coach or therapist, school teacher, parent, or anybody who is passionate about making a positive impact for others and making a difference in the world. 

When you complete this course you will:

• Feel confident to teach Yoga Nidra like an expert

• Understand Yoga Nidra so well that your delivery will be effortless 

• You’ll understand how to satisfy the unique needs of your students and clients

• Stand out as a teacher, therapist, or coach

• Make a deep, meaningful, and positive impact on the lives of your students or clients and the world

• Be prepared to start earning money as a Yoga Nidra facilitator either in person or online

Too many Yoga Nidra trainings only discuss what Yoga Nidra is and then send you off with a few rote scripts to teach with. The problem with that is that a teacher will be most powerful when they can teach from their own experience and their own words and not as a parrot of their teacher. 

Imitate then innovate

I believe that you must learn to imitate then learn to innovate so in my program, you’ll get over 100 pages of highly-effective Yoga Nidra scripts—like Yoga Nidra for Sleep, Yoga Nidra For Healing, and Yoga Nidra for Stress— so that you can start teaching great Yoga Nidra classes right away. But by the end of my program, you’ll feel so confident with the principles and roadmaps of how to build your own specialized Yoga Nidra scripts, that you will soon be able to innovate and make your OWN scripts to meet the specific and individual needs of your students and clients. This is so essential to be a transformational Yoga Nidra facilitator and I don’t know of any other program that prepares their students to make their own scripts like this. 

I’ve spent years developing my curriculum and as I’ve done some deep soul searching to explore how I’ve become an expert at teaching Yoga Nidra, I’ve discovered two complete game-changing principles that I can’t wait to share with you, that will help you to deliver excellency in your teaching and have you teaching like nobody else. 

Hybrid Learning Gives You More of Everything

Both the immersion and teacher training will be a combination of self-paced online learning as well as weekly live weekend sessions. 

Online Learning

You’ll learn the essential principles, lessons, theories, techniques, roadmaps, and practice Yoga Nidra via my robust pre-recorded online Yoga Nidra training. This allows you to digest this material on your own timeline and to review it as often as you like. I’m very proud and honored that my online Yoga Nidra teacher training is considered among the top 5 online Yoga Nidra trainings in the world. 

When you register you receive immediate and lifetime access to the online portion of the training which contains: 

• Engaging video lectures 

• Dozens of specialized Yoga Nidra audio recordings (some specifically designed to help you learn to teach Yoga Nidra) 

• Breathing and mindfulness exercises

• The Yoga Nidra Roadmap 

• The Yoga Nidra Dyad Roadmap 

• Class Building Worksheet 

• Helpful Tech Sheet 

• Pranayama exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindfulness exercises for yourself and to give to your students

• Mindful poems 

• Essential props list

• Yoga Nidra Door hanger for privacy

• Over 100 pages of Yoga Nidra scripts

Live Sessions

These live sessions will be so valuable!

Because the core content will all be done on your own, this allows us so much more time on our live Zoom sessions for:

• Deeper and more personalized Q&A

• More peer collaboration

• More practice teaching Yoga Nidra and Yoga Nidra dyads

• Exploring specifically how YOU can use Yoga Nidra with your students and clients

• Building classes in real time together to see how ideas become effective Yoga Nidra scripts

Every cohort of trainees is different and each person has specific needs for learning Yoga Nidra. You have unique perspectives, talents, and reasons for teaching Yoga Nidra. That’s why I’m devoting the majority of our Zoom time (4 hours on each Saturday and 4 hours on each Sunday) to answer your personalized questions, go deeper on the topics that are important to you, to practice teaching Yoga Nidra, and to receive live Yoga Nidra practices. These live sessions will  allow you the opportunity to practice teaching yoga Nidra to each other. This will be so powerful!

Facebook Group

In addition to the online connection with your Yoga Nidra cohort via Zoom, you’ll also be connected to your peers via our private Facebook Group. Here you can encourage each other, ask questions, make contacts, upload your recordings and share resources. 

Two Segments

I’ve split up the training into two Segments. The first segment is the Yoga Nidra immersion, designed for those interested in developing their personal relationship with the transformative power of Yoga Nidra. Ultimately, this is an inquiry into your very nature of being to discover how beautiful and wondrous your life can be, and how much this yoga of sleep can benefit your stress, sleep, and perspective on the world and its problems. The immersion also serves as the foundation for the teacher training segment of the training. 

The next segment is designed for those who are interested in teaching Yoga Nidra or for those who just really geek out on this fascinating subject. For this week, you’ll have the chance to practice teaching each other Yoga Nidra and begin to master the art of teaching, creating the container, and using the tools that facilitate lasting transformation. 

In addition to all the things you’ll receive in the online learning and Zoom sessions, you’ll also get: 

• An updated 160-page manual to help map your Yoga Nidra training journey

• A certificate of completion (upon completion)

• Access to my weekly live, online Yoga Nidra class from when you sign up through the duration of the training ($48 value)

• A 30-minute private consultation via Zoom ($100 value)

The Training Pays For Itself

Most yoga or Yoga Nidra trainings may prepare you to teach but almost none of them show you how to create good-paying teaching opportunities for yourself. By the end of this training, you’ll have the confidence to go out and generate your own well-paying live and online classes, workshops, courses, digital products, and even retreats. No more begging yoga studios to teach classes.

Additionally, I’m going to let you in on the some key information I share with those whom I mentor, the foundations of building what I call your Mechanism of Influence. This is all about how to organically attract the clients you want to teach, create a global audience, and get paid what you are worth to share your gift with the world. Your Mechanism of Influence empowers you to make a huge and positive impact on the world while also making a great living doing what you love. 

Refresher

For those who have already taken my training and would like a refresher course, you can participate fully in all parts of this course for a fraction of the cost. This gives you the most updated information (including updated manual), gives you the chance to ask personalized and refined questions perhaps informed by your recent teaching, and allows you to practice teaching classes and dyads with your peers. Refine or refresh your expertise as a Yoga Nidra teacher.

I can’t wait for this training to begin and I’d really love for you to join me. When you register, you’ll receive a welcome email with immediate access to the online learning portion so that you can start learning right away. You’ll also get all the information for our live sessions. 

We’ll have our live welcome meeting via Zoom on August 15th. By August 28th you can be a certified Yoga Nidra teacher with the power to make a large and positive impact on the world. 

Be the change and help others do the same. Make an impact and help build the kind of world we all want to live in by learning to facilitate Yoga Nidra. 

Please join me. 

Peace, Providence, and Plum Village

How are you?!

It’s been a while since I’ve sent out a newsletter. I’ve been enjoying practicing savoring life through presence in body, mind, and spirit as I’ve led 2 different retreats at a chateau in the Bordeaux region of France as well as a pre/post retreat in Paris. It’s been lovely!

Then, we were called to the States unexpectedly to attend the funeral of a dear family member—another great opportunity to practice savoring life but from a completely different perspective. So after the retreats we flew directly to the US. 

This learning to savor life reminds me of part of one of my favorite poems from Mary Oliver, Bone, where she says:

“…and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.”

May looking, touching, and loving be the way that we learn to understand the great mystery of life. 

I love teaching yoga and meditation retreats for so many reasons but especially because of the rich lessons I personally learn in the process. As the facilitator and leader of the retreats, I sometimes feel like I stand to learn the most. 

Today, I want to tell you a story about something truly incredible that happened on one of my retreats that has me celebrating the connection of it all. 

To set this up, rewind almost 20 years ago. I’m in Korea, teaching English, studying meditation, and doing a lot of self-discovery. It was 2003 and the US had just declared war on Iraq and despite the anti-American sentiment in Korea at the time, I decided to take a train up to Seoul to attend a peace rally. Peace advocate and Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh was going to be there to offer a peace march, a slow walking prayer for peace. I LOVE Thich Nhat Hanh, had read several of his books, and couldn’t believe that I was going to finally see him. 

There were more than 10,000 people at this peace rally and as one of the only white people there, I stood out making me a potential target for anti-American sentiment. But I figured that being a peace rally and all, I’d hopefully be ok.  

While I was waving my hand-made sign which read “American for Peace,” a kind Korean monk began talking to me, sharing his warm smile and words, acknowledging my decision to be there. 

Soon, the crowd hushed as Thich Nhat Hanh took the stage and instructed us on how to breathe in peace and breathe out peace as he and a select group of about a dozen monks would walk slowly along a cordoned-off path in the center of the crowd of 10,000 people.  

Thich Nhat Hanh began his peace march through the silent crowd. As Thich Nhat Hanh and his posse of monks approached where I was standing, I heard my new monk friend whisper in my ear, “Stay close to me.” “Sure,” I thought, “we are packed in here like sardines. Where am I going to go?” Then, as Thich Nhat Hanh and his wake of monks passed in front of where I was standing, my kind Korean monk friend lifted the rope separating the crowd from the small double-row of monks performing the peace walk. I felt a gentle hand on my back pushing me into the slow procession of monks and before I knew it, we took up the caboose position in the peace walk with 10,000 pairs of eyes watching us. 

We completed the peace walk with the monks and ended up on stage facing the entire crowd. Thich Nhat Hanh gave some final remarks and everyone erupted into celebratory applause. 

I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Read the entire story here (blog)

Now, fast forward to January of 2022 and I am living in France. I was crushed to hear that at 95 years old, Thich Nhat Hanh had died. I knew he had Plum Village—his headquarters, meditation halls, and retreat center—was somewhere in the South of France but I was shocked to learn that it was only about 20 minutes from where I’d be hosting my retreats in June. I had to go and I desperately wanted to bring my retreat attendees with me. 

I scoured the Plum Village website to make arrangements but couldn’t quite discern whether or not we’d be welcome to visit Plum Village. I’d written an email to the administration of Plum Village which went unanswered. One page on the website said that we could show up and that lunch would be provided and on another part indicated the contrary. There were so many variables that I thought we should simply show up, trust fate, and be ready to roll with whatever presents itself. 

So one beautiful June morning at my Bordeaux retreat, the bus picked us up from the chateau and we headed to Plum Village. We had all packed some fruit, granola bars, and whatever other food we could in our bags to be prepared regardless of whether or not we were served lunch. 

As we unloaded from the bus we saw a busy but easy going community of monks, practitioners, and lay people on a meditation retreat. I’m not sure if any of them were also visiting for just the day. Some people were volunteers on their Happy Farm project, others were lounging in hammocks or meditating as they sat in the grass. 

We milled about for a bit as I tried to catch my bearings and figure out what to do and where to go. I introduced myself to a few monks, told them who we were, and I asked them if we were welcome and how we could participate. They kindly indicated we were welcome for the day, that we could join for a meditation and Dharma talk offered by some of the senior monks, but that we were on our own for lunch. Score!

As we waited for the meeting to start, we were all standing around and taking in this incredible fact that WE WERE AT PLUM VILLAGE. While we were standing there, a big warm-hearted black man who was attending the meditation retreat at Plum Village saw one of the attendees of my retreat, a black woman, and he jumped up in the air and shouted, “Yes! Now there’s two of us!” He walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her with a big, long, hug. We all met and introduced ourselves before the two of them celebrated their blackness together and immediately dove into deep and warm conversation about the need for meditation in their communities. 

His name is Ofosu and I eventually learned that he is a Ghanian-American hip-hop and electronic musician in the Washington DC area and calls himself Born I. He teaches meditation, is a practicing buddhist, and devotes much of his music to waking up. Incredible.

Eventually, we entered a large meditation hall. There were chairs set up as well as meditation cushions on the floor and in several sections of the hall there were chords and headphones so that the talks could be translated into several different languages. 

The warm tones of a large bell greeted several of the head monks who entered and took their seats on the stage. We meditated. After, they hosted a moving Q&A session. One man asked the monks through tears how we can meditate when there is war going on. Then Ofosu approached the stage and asked a heart-felt question about how to reconcile racism through meditation. I was blown away by how compassionately the monks answered the questions. 

After the Q&A, the monks indicated that today was the celebration of the 40th anniversary of Plum Village. My heart leapt. I just happened to bring my group to Plum Village on this momentous day! The monks talked lovingly of their leader Thay (Thich Nhat Hanh’s familiar name), and illustrated the origins and evolutions that Plum Village has experienced over the years. They showed a video montage of Thich Nhat Hanh’s life as well as the ongoing life of Plum Village and even though none of the pictures were of the peace march I’d attended in Seoul in 2003, the photos took me back there as if it were yesterday. 

Eventually, we shuffled out of the hall and I was moved to find my new friend, Ofosu. I gave him a big hug and thanked him for his question about reconciling race issues with meditation and mindfulness and told him how his question invited me to be more mindful about race. We had a warm moment and a brief chat.  

Then the few hundred people in attendance at Plum Village that day, went outside to participate in our own peace march. We started at a large tower with an enormous bell which they rang several times as they evoked a prayer. Then we walked in silence in a thin line through the forest breathing and thinking peace. I felt as if I were reliving my impromptu peace march with Thich Nhat Hanh almost 20 years prior.

“It’s this.”

Thich Nhat Hanh was a master calligrapher and the organizers had hung many of his sayings up in the trees so that passersby could read them along the way. They were written in French, English, and Vietnamese. It took perhaps 30 minutes of slow walking to reach the end of the path through the forest, each step more inspiring and peaceful than the last. 

On the other side of the path, we were all greeted by beautiful classical music. We sat in the sun of this beautiful June day and soaked it all in. A few of the monks began playing Bach— a monk playing the cello, violin, piano, and flute, though the flutist was the only one not wearing the brown habit of a monk, so maybe they outsourced the flute. Several female monks performed a dance. 

I don’t know how I missed this, maybe it happened later in the day, but Ofosu performed a number with the monks as well. If you use Facebook, you can see it here. 

Born I and Phap Huu performing “Little Star”

Our group connected and together we marveled at our incredible fortune to be at Plum Village at all, let alone on this 40th anniversary celebration. We sat down on the grass and began to eat our lunch, the fruit and various things we’d brought with us.

Then they served cake, chocolate cake!

On display was a gallery containing many of Thich Nhat Hanh’s original calligraphy. I stood and marveled at Thich Nhat Hanh’s perfect, harmonious circles, his simple but wise phrases, all of it a legacy.

Eventually, we made our way back up the hill to meet our bus driver who picked us up and took us back to the chateau and our regularly scheduled retreat. 

What an incredible day!

I hosted another retreat at the chateau the following week and we also went back to Plum Village for another magical day, though this one with decidedly less surprise and celebration. 

On this second trip to Plum Village I bumped into the Ofosu again and he said that it was the last day of the retreat for him at Plum Village, he’d be going home soon. I asked him if he had any major take-aways from his experience at Plum Village and he said that what he learned most was how even though he will always be fighting racial inequality as long as it exists he can still be happy in this moment. He can fight for justice and have personal peace. 

I love this insight!

May past, present, and future all wrap itself into this moment, even if we don’t have everything figured out. May we tirelessly strive for justice and equality while also keeping the peace within ourselves and outside of ourselves. And may we be open to those unforgettable moments that present themselves along our way.