Frequently Asked Questions

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The concept of “mindfulness” traces to the Pali word sati (Pali is one of the major languages of Buddhist scriptures and literature) and it implies awareness or alertness, AND to the word vipassana, which is loosely translated as “seeing things as they really are”. 

MINDFULNESS is simply the act of paying attention, or I like to say being “present on purpose”.    A more technical definition is a "nonjudgmental, caring attention, to the here and now."

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning famously said “Between stimulus and response there is a space and in that space lies our freedom.”  And that’s what mindfulness does… it allows us to simply access the present moment and then WE have the agency to choose our response.  

Meditation is a practice that supercharges mindfulness!   MEDITATION at its core is the training, or the directing of our attention in a deliberate way. It’s our human capacity to open to perspectives larger than the consciousness of our small, separate sense of self.  This core training of mindfulness meditation can sometimes be thought of as passive.  It's not.  It actually orients us.  It brings us clearly into the present, from which we can then respond actively AND mindfully.  We’re ACTING not REACTING

Guided meditation involves an instructor guiding you through various meditation techniques, while unguided meditation allows you to meditate on your own without any guidance, usually with a timer.

The best time to meditate is always whenever works best for you, whether that's in the morning, afternoon, or evening.  Slight caveat: carving out some time to yourself in the morning, before the world grabs your attention, can be transformational!