Diana Winston sympathizes with those who struggle to sit every day, and gives ten suggestions for having a regular daily practice. Your unforgiving alarm rings for all it's worth. It's 7AM. You crash out of bed, slamming your toe on your bedside table. You fumble for your meditation cushion in the dark. "It's over here somewhere," you mumble. Hearing you awaken from the [...]
About Diana Winston
Let It Slide
© Saschad, Dreamstime.com Tens of times a day, Diana Winston's two-year-old daughter helps her practice letting go. At the park, my daughter is climbing the ladder to the top of the slide. I think this is a great idea. I love slides; I’ve always loved slides. But my two year old isn’t really a slider. She’s more of a hanger. She loves to swing from monkey bars, which [...]
Loving-Kindness for Your Body
May I Be Happy: A Memoir of Love, Yoga, and Changing My Mind By Cyndi Lee Dutton Adult 2012; 272 pp., $25.95 (cloth) Body hatred is suffering. How many women and men, nationwide, suffer from eating disorders? Why is cosmetic surgery a multibillion-dollar industry? What respite is there from endless media images exhorting us to be thin, beautiful, and youthful? No one I [...]
One mom’s key to meditating with baby? Lowering the bar
New mom Diana Winston "desperately wanted" her ideas about meditation with her baby to work. Here she shares her most successful experiments, and how they've made for special time for mother, child, and dad alike. First off, true confessions: A few months ago I wrote here about meditating with my toddler. My husband I were trying a five minute experiment—sitting in [...]
Four Meditations I Practice in the Wake of a Tragedy
Diana Winston teaches a step-by-step meditation to practice in times of tragedy. Following a tragedy in the news, I often find myself focusing on the associated suffering during my meditation. I have several practices that address my terror and sadness. Here’s a run-down of my typical session, which can take any amount of time: 1. Loving-Kindness I start with loving [...]
Suffering Is Optional
Physical pain is unavoidable, but meditation practice can ease the mental suffering that often accompanies it. Susan Smalley and Diana Winston teach us how. There is a famous adage: “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.” This anonymous saying sums up what you can learn about pain through mindfulness. You cannot avoid pain. Even if you are physically healthy now, at [...]
Meditate with (and like) a toddler
Diana Winston on the difficulties and benefits of meditation while raising a toddler. I try not to complain that my formal practice has disappeared since I had a baby. I mean, I knew what I was getting into. For the first year of my daughter’s life, my formal practice was spotty at best, and often most accessible in the middle of the night when I couldn’t go back to sleep [...]
Saying Yes to an Open Heart
Diana Winston reflects on the intertwining mindfulness and compassion, as practiced with an open heart. I’d like to propose that mindfulness—true blue mindfulness—is the open heart. Sure, the purists can define mindfulness as “paying attention to the present moment with an open and curious stance,” but that definition can be staid, sort of dull, and inadvertently can take [...]
Mindfulness with Baby: Yes, it’s possible!
Diana Winston on maintaining meditation and mindfulness practice while being the mother of a young child. The most common question I get as a mindfulness teacher and new mom -- right after “Has she slept through the night yet?” (FYI, no!) -- is: “Are you still able to meditate?” The implication is that amid the chaos of a wailing, demanding, pooping baby, my formal [...]
Quiet in the Museum — A Meditation Revolution is at Hand
Have you ever been told to be quiet in a museum? Now you really can be quiet—meditatively quiet, that is. UCLA’s cutting-edge Hammer Museum in Los Angeles is starting a meditation revolution. Every Thursday at 12:30 they host a free, guided, half hour meditation session open to the general public. I, and others from UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center, lead the [...]
