I like to offer a multimodal approach. I mean, these depths of reality are ineffable, right?

My programs often combine mindfulness meditation with heart-opening practices, poetry, storytelling, expressive writing, encounters with traditional sacred texts, and group discussion. I love to send the students out to dance on the grass. Once I had a group form a line and slowly wash their hands one by one in silence as the end-of-day sunlight poured into the synagogue kitchen. Different modalities work for different people, and what worked for us one day may evolve into something else the next.

There’s a question that often comes up: we call it a “practice,” but what are we practicing for? When is the performance? Today I would say: we are practicing to receive the richness of life as it comes to us and for us each moment. As anyone knows who has opened up their email after a vacation, or spent an evening doomscrolling, it is possible to miss life even when we are breathing. Basic animacy is no guarantee of a full life. We practice being present when “nothing” is happening so that we can be present when the big and small somethings are happening: birth, death, illness, celebration, heartbreak.

Basically, my aspiration is to offer the experience of sacred encounter I didn’t know I longed for as I sat slumped in the back row of Hebrew school watching an Israeli VHS of Barney the Dinosaur, praying an angel would beckon me at the window and transport me to Bruegger’s Bagels or oblivion.