Let me ask you something: 

How's your breath?

No, I'm not suggesting you go grab a mint.  I'm wondering if you've played with the first part of Shamatha-Vipashyana Meditation yet: "Be with your breath as it goes out?"    

My last blog and podcast episode launched us into this exploration of three different meditation techniques I'm learning right now.  This first one I'm learning through the book Start Where You Are, A Guide to Compassionate Living, by Pema Chödrön.  

Call me dense, but it was only this week that I realized this is the first kind of meditation I ever tried!  My first meditation teacher, Sally Kempton, taught my teacher training group back in 2004 to label our thoughts, "thinking."  This is the second part of the Shamatha-Vipashyana Meditation. 

You can try it right now:

• Sit and notice your breath as it goes out.
• Try to keep your mind...

Something I've had fun doing this season is reading and trying new things.  I've pulled books off my shelf that I hadn't gotten around to yet, ordered some new ones, and signed up for a couple online classes.  And now they're making their way into my teaching, which is the way it is supposed to be :)

I'm currently practicing three different types of meditation, and I wanted to share them a little more in depth with you here.  If you've tried meditation and didn't care for it, I encourage you to try again! Try a different method or have another crack at a style you've done before--you are in a different place now, and that can make all the difference.

Over the next few weeks I will describe or explain three different types of meditation.  This list is by no means exhaustive, but it's a good start.

First, I'm trying the Buddhist practice of Shamatha-Vipashyana Meditation.  My resource is Pema Chödrön's...