The Space Inside the Silence:

What if the most expansive place we could ever know is already within us?

In a world that invites us constantly outward—toward problems to solve, gadgets to get, identities to perform, and experiences to chase—a sitting practice turns us gently inward.

Not to escape the world, but to rediscover a spaciousness so quiet and close to us that it often goes unnoticed. A field so intimate it can only be entered through stillness.

Take a moment to relax your focus. Let your awareness expand into the space around you. Notice what shifts. Notice the sense of openness that is there.

Sitting is not a technique. It is not a tool to accumulate mastery. It is not a hack for productivity. It is an act of expansion.

Every time you sit, you intentionally step out of your normal frame of reference. You drop the subject. You drop the object. This enables you to get bigger.

Not to gain anything. Or become more, or better, or improve.

You are not optimizing. You are going beyond. You are going beyond the small view of yourself, expanding into a fuller sense of being.

Sitting is not a form of getting or having. It is the practice of letting go and opening up to the spaciousness of your being. The emptiness of the space is not a flaw. It is not something to fear or avoid. It is the ground of your being.

When we sit, we develop a felt sense of vastness. Not as a concept, but as our lived reality. This is a presence that doesn’t demand us to do anything. We don’t make it happen. It’s already here, waiting for us to notice. The breath moves. The body softens and opens. Awareness spreads like the morning sun rising over the mountains.

As we sit more regularly, and deepen our practice, we learn to be comfortable resting in this inward space. Not grasping, not naming. Just relaxing and opening.

The spaciousness of our practice doesn’t mean detachment; it means we’re big enough to hold all of it—emotions, thoughts, anxiety, grief, uncertainty, and silence. And somehow, with the tenderness of feeling our way inward, we intuit that we are not alone.

As we practice this with regularity, you become capable of remaining in touch with the basic spaciousness of your being. This is a peace that is always present.

This is an inter-becoming that is vast and connected. Empty and full. Beyond and fully present, here and now.

Let us turn toward that.

Turning Toward Spaciousness

Below is a lightly edited transcript of an introduction to a Sitting Lab sitting.

“Welcome.

Stepping back from our usual patterns—habits of entangling ourselves with the objects of our minds and the concerns of our lives—we turn inward.

And, it seems like there’s nothing to see when we turn inward. But there is.

There is something to notice.

We notice that there is an experience of space.

An experience of spaciousness.

An experience of empty spaciousness.

And an experience of being aware within that spaciousness.

Coming into relationship with our internal experience is a fundamental and essential activity in our practice.

We don’t really have to do anything to make it happen— because it’s already there.

It’s just that usually we’re turned away from it. Occupied by something else.

But when we turn toward it, we can sense—intuitively—feel our way toward that inner space. That inner spaciousness.

We notice its quality. The quality of being vast, open.

As we sit, we become intimate with the experience of being in our body. With our breath. It can be helpful to stay with that. To stay with the sensations of the breath as it moves in and out of the body. Never stopping.

Our attention can rest somewhere along the process of inhaling or exhaling.

This settles the mind. Calms the nervous system.

So that we can really feel into a state of presence with the spaciousness within.

Together we engage in this practice.

Together we are opening to new possibilities, allowing ourselves to not know exactly where the benefit is.

We trust. We have faith that something is happening. And we dedicate ourselves to being of benefit.

To serve not only ourselves, but all living beings. People we know, and those we don’t. Living beings who are near and those very far away. Those we can see, and those we can’t see.

This is allowing our practice to expand, to be big, vast, and open.

This is allowing the benefit to flow through us and beyond us.

This is the spirit of our sitting.

We can sit silently now.

Rest here in open space for the remainder of the session.”

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.

On Sunday, June 29th, we offer our monthly Half-Day sit. If you want to go deeper in your practice, sit together with others, and learn more about Sitting Lab, this is a great place to start. More info here.

The Quiet Power of Choosing to Commit:

At the heart of every sitting session is a choice—not dramatic, not forced, but careful. It is the choice to return. To re-orient. To offer ourselves fully to this moment.

Commitment in sitting practice isn’t about perfection. It isn’t even about progress. It’s about the fullness of our participation.

It’s not about showing up with answers. It’s about showing up with sincerity, ready to feel our way. There is something quietly, subtly transformative in this willingness to simply show up. To do it for ourselves and others, simultaneously. It’s a commitment to be here, to be now.

We do it just once, today, but with a lightness and a sense of wonder that enables us to show up tomorrow, and then again the next day.

Nobody is requiring it, or even asking for it. At some point we make a commitment to ourselves, not because we’re convinced or certain, but because we’re being drawn to what matters. Somewhere inside, it feels important.

So what do we commit to?

In sitting, we commit to not fixing ourselves. We commit to not trying to achieve some polished version of calm. Instead, we commit to listening. To grounding in the present moment. To reconnecting, intimately, tenderly, with ourselves. To remembering who we really are.

We commit to the breath, because it steadies us. We commit to our upright posture, because it calls us into dignity and presence. We commit to holding all beings in our field of practice, because we know—we feel in our hearts—that our participation is entangled and entangling with the vast web of life.

When we sit, we commit to aligning our deepest intentions with our actions. We let the embodied act of being here ripple outward. We practice for the benefit of ourselves and for each other—at the same time. We expand this intention outward, offering it to the whole shimmering, unfolding, boundless universe.

Every sitting we start by saying, “Tapping into the heartfelt essence of wisdom and compassion, we sit together and cultivate a sincere intention to practice for the benefit of all living beings, throughout space and time, without one exception.”

This is not a duty. Or a burden. It’s a gateway we choose to enter. A re-orientation toward the path we choose to walk. It’s an commitment we make with humility. With compassion and gratitude and appreciation for everything that has been given to us.

Let’s offer it now.

What Are We Committing To?

Below is a lightly edited transcript of an introduction to a Sitting Lab sitting.

As we orient ourselves
to practice today,
I am thinking
about our theme of commitment.

I remember a moment
when I first came to practice.
I wasn’t so sold
on the whole idea.
I wasn’t really committed
to anything.
I was just checking it out.

Then I had a conversation
with one of my teachers,
and she said:
That is fine. But you should know that
nothing important will happen for you
unless you make a commitment.

Those words
went straight into my heart.

So I was thinking about that today—
thinking about our practice.
What is it for you
that is important?

What are you doing here
that matters deeply to you?
Why do you show up here today—
make an effort,
to be here and now,
for yourself
and for each other?

What are you committing to?

You can hold that question
lightly
in your mind.
Not needing to think about it—
just allowing it
to shape the pattern
of your practice.

Letting it support you
to be curious,
to be full of wonder,
as we bring our attention
down into our hearts,
and into our bodies.

Find a sense of upright alignment.
Connect with the breath—
the sensation
of breath
moving in and out
of your body.

Allowing that
to settle us.
To ground us.

And holding all beings
in our intention.

Practicing
within a field of awareness—
an intentional field
to practice for our own
benefit,
to support and
encourage each other,
and to serve the larger
web of life.
Some way. Some how.

This is
orienting our practice
to be of benefit
for all living beings—
without any exceptions.

Let’s continue
to sit silently
together.
Now.”

The sound of three bells and then silence.

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.

On Sunday, June 29th, we offer our monthly Half-Day sit. If you want to go deeper in your practice, sit together with others, and learn more about Sitting Lab, this is a great place to start. More info here.

We welcome you to the Ecology of Sitting, a series of brief posts designed to support your regular sitting practice and encourage your deepening path as a sitting practitioner.

Ecology of Sitting is not a curriculum, a program, or a technique. Instead, we view it as a means to publicly begin reimagining the practice of meditation in ways that make it more vital, relevant, and beneficial for our time.

With short, daily offerings, we aim to humbly, creatively, and organically share our thoughts on how to seed the emergence of something vital and transformative—with the hope of enabling more people to live with a deeper sense of presence, connection, compassion, coherence, and care—for themselves, for their communities, and for all living beings.

Each entry in this series is designed to serve as a daily companion for those of us who are recognizing and reorienting to a world that is no longer sustainable—both within and around us. The series is envisioned as a hybrid of unfolding, emergent experiences, decentralized intuitive learning, deepening practice accelerators, and daily inspirational messages.

The posts are designed to support your personal practice journey while inviting you into a collective field of practice that essentially has no rules, no limitations, and no boundaries. It's a daily encouragement to open up to the possibilities of how a sitting practice might change your life. Not with more effort but with a sense of gentle release and caring permission to explore, to not-know, to experiment, and to find your unique way forward.

Each entry is a call to participate in something larger than yourself, to learn, to unlearn, and to relearn. This is not a framework to help us solve life’s problems but an invitation you might get from a friend to touch life more deeply and slowly begin to create the conditions in our life for deep, adaptive transformation.

Each day brings a weird hand-drawn image of a human being sitting, a short reflection on how we might reimagine meditation as more tailored and relevant for our contemporary meta-crisis landscape, and a verbatim, lightly edited transcript of a talk given at Sitting Lab that guides people into silent practice. The format is short and straightforward. The depth is up to each of us to find.

Each post is an actual human record of why and how the practice of sitting looks and feels like it does. They are not deliberately mysterious, but they may be difficult to understand or resonate with if you do not have a regular sitting practice. That’s why we also encourage you to join us at Sitting Lab for regular daily practice.

We envision three essential qualities to the posts we offer here at Ecology of Sitting. These qualities are more like an aesthetic, or “vibe.” Our intention is not so much to teach or to define, as to give you a felt sense of different ways we might think about the practice of sitting.

These qualities are:

Suggestively Organic.

Not being too obvious. Practicing restraint in terms of explanation and instruction. Suggesting rather than trying to reveal everything. Presenting a picture of practice as an organic, unfolding, emergent process—in soft, muted colors, the poetry of unfinished lines, and images that invite our imagination to play.

Irregularly Creative.

If we were a product, perfection would be an appealing quality. However, since we are discussing an emergent process and a relational system of practice engaged in by human beings, perfection is not only unappealing, but counterproductive. Irregularity encourages participation and attention. An uneven—yet safe and supportive—imperfection invites everyone into a field of acceptance.

Slowly Feeling Our Way.

At Sitting Lab, we want to do as little as possible. The ultimate goal of our sitting practice is to do nothing. We present things in plain words that feel basic, fundamental, and comes directly from our own experience—no fancy theories or philosophies. We’re weaving a simple, plain fabric. As if walking together in an open dirt field. This doesn’t mean a lack of depth. It means feeling our way to new paths of possibility.

The daily Ecology of Sitting posts are for those who:

• Are tired of struggling to maintain a meditation practice alone and curious about practicing together with others in community.

• Have a sense that there’s more to meditation than trying to control the mind, or counting breaths, or swatting away thoughts.

• Feel the pull toward a form of practice that emphasizes exploration, experimentation, and self-discovery and doesn’t require buying into a closed traditional system or Buddhist lineage.

Throughout this ongoing series, you’ll be able to:

• Learn more about how, at Sitting Lab, we practice every day with simple yet powerful guidance of humble, dedicated spiritual mentors.

• Learn what makes the practice of sitting different from both traditional meditation and contemporary mindfulness.

• See new ways of using a meditation practice to sense, feel, and relate to the actual circumstances and challenges of your life.

• Develop depth in your practice through a regular experience of embodied awareness, poetic inquiry, and relational, caring support.

• Move toward a way of being in the world that brings more joy, kindness, wisdom, and compassion to every moment of your life.

What we will explore at Ecology of Sitting is not meant for your self-improvement. It’s not designed to help you master an ability to meditate or attain complete enlightenment. It’s also not encouragement for you to retreat from the responsibilities and engagement with everyday life.

It’s much bigger than that. It’s wide, in terms of boundaries (interbeing), and long, in terms of time (interbecoming). Our belief is that the way to the other side is through, not around. It’s in meeting this moment, fully. It’s about showing up, for ourselves and each other, ready to help, with kindness and compassion.

We hope that what we offer—at Ecology of Sitting and Sitting Lab—inspires more people to stop and turn inward. To give ourselves permission to pause each day and take a long and loving look at the worlds inside us, so that we can more deeply understand ourselves. And to explore, with joy and tenderness, so that we might come stumble upon new paths that enable radically different perspectives, patterns of meaning, and ways of being in our lives—ways of being that serve us better and serve life better.

Ecology of Sitting is an encouragement to you and others with their antennas up, to settle into a deeper, more grounded space of awareness, together. To individually and collectively align with our deeper intentions. To develop a more intimately connected, deeply felt sense of safety, support, and belonging in our lives. And to become the fullest, biggest, baddest version of ourselves—beyond what we can currently even imagine.

That’s why we want to help you practice. Because the only way to become more fully present and awake in our lives is to practice being fully present and awake.

This is reimagining meditation practice. It is bringing us together to uncover, one breath at a time, how we can grow into our fullest, best version, inspire and encourage each other, and create the conditions for a transforming world.

We hope that you enjoy the Ecology of Sitting and we wholeheartedly invite your contributions to the ongoing conversation.

The Sitting Lab team.

Each weekday a small group of us sit quietly together, four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you think having a regular, deepening sitting practice might help you become the best and fullest version of yourself.

The Wisdom of the Wandering Path:

There comes a time—often quietly, sometimes with pain or grief—when we realize that the well-trodden path we’ve been following is no longer leading us to where we hope to go. The markers of success, the yearly optimizations, the rhythms of urgency, and the promises of sudden clarity—they’ve brought us only so far.

And then something in us whispers: "We need a different path."

Then, if we start our seeking process and begin looking, listening, and paying attention, we eventually notice that other paths appear. And maybe, if we’re lucky, something inside of us whispers again: "Let’s go that way."

Sitting practice, in its truest, simplest form, is gentle yet radical, veering from the usual pattern—away from the dominant path. It’s not a retreat, or a complete stepping out of our everyday life, but a reorientation within it. We step off the path of performance and onto one that dissolves into the mystery of this moment. This is not the path of mastery or progress. It’s the path of presence.

In sitting, we don’t ask our thoughts to behave, our breath to be deeper, or the body to stop aching. We feel our way, and we take a small step in a different direction. We commit ourselves to walking the path of sensing, of noticing in the body, of letting go, becoming intimate with the rhythm of our breath—without needing a destination.

Here, we practice a form of wandering—a subtle form of seeking in wonder, with a spirit of inquiry. We practice not-knowing, with tenderness. We listen to the patterns behind the thoughts and beneath the language. We feel our way into a new, heartfelt, embedded relationship with the web of life, and begin to see with greater clarity that everything has been walking together with us all along.

This wandering—and wondering—this permission to not-know and to never arrive is how we begin to feel ourselves again. Whole. Unscripted. Vitally alive. Improvising in response as we find our way in each moment. Entangled with all things, yet letting them go the moment they come.

Sitting is not an effort to control, but a wandering into presence. An opening into wonder and awe. A feeling into fuller possibility.

The Practice: Wandering Our Way Into Presence

Below is a lightly edited transcript of an introduction to a Sitting Lab sitting.

“Welcome.

As we settle into our practice today, let’s take a moment to step back and turn inward.

Today, I would like to encourage us to give ourselves permission to walk a different path.

Not the one shaped by obligations or polished by our expectations.

Not the one that’s rewarded by the results of our productivity or performance. But a path that wanders.

A path that allows us to wander, and wonder.

Maybe you’ve had a moment, walking on a trail, maybe in a forest, when suddenly you catch a glimpse of a smaller trail veering off to the side.

It disappears into the trees, and the something in you says: “Yes. Let’s go that way.”

So you follow. You follow the feeling. And now you're not on the main path anymore. You’re walking into the unknown.

Our sitting practice is like that.

So, today, I invite you to take a gentle detour from what feels familiar to you.

It’s a creative and courageous act, more like a ‘feeling into’ than a decision. It’s giving yourself permission to not know. To not have a destination. To wander. To allow the path to reveal itself to us as we sit and as we walk together.

Sitting is not about seeking to achieve stillness. It's about co-creating different conditions for ourselves—new conditions for our breath, the sensations of our body, our thoughts, memories, stresses, and moments of silence—to find a new pattern, or path, to find their own way, in their own time.

As you sit, begin to feel your way, not just with the mind, but with the whole body. With the heart. With the breath. With a knowing that rests beneath the words.

We are not walking alone. We are walking within the vast interconnected web of life. We are walking with the trees, the wind, with everything. And with each other.

In this walking, your field of awareness extends inward and outward.

Allow the vast expansive field of your mind to include everything, and with no exceptions, allow everything to come and go.

You may start to feel bigger, as though you are becoming a fuller version of yourself, more open and expansive. One that is not shaped by your effort or goals, but by your attention, your presence.

This is being fully present. This is the deep medicine of just sitting.

And as we merge with it and receive it, we sit not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of all living beings.

So, I invite us to walk this path together now—softly, slowly, quietly, breath by breath.

Feeling our way, moment by moment, not needing to know what comes next.

Let’s continue quietly now. Together.

Listening for what our path may show us.”

The sound of three bells and then silence.

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.

Everything Arising, All at Once:

Sitting is not a single-pointed act. It is a living constellation. A co-arising system of entangled and embedded relationships.

It is not just the body, not just the mind, not just the breath. It is not just stillness, not just thought, not just silence.

It is not just me, and not just us. And not the absence of me or us. It is the shimmering complexity of all of it—interwoven, unfolding, and emerging.

You might be tempted to reduce your meditation practice to a technique. To fix your attention on one object using a particular method. Or maybe to pursue a goal of mastery, expertise, and command.

But the path of sitting invites us into a very different kind of effort. A more radical intimacy—one that does not slice reality into parts or accomplishments, but rests in their entanglement and in an unfolding process of emergence.

Sitting practice is itself a complex, adaptive, constantly changing system. Each aspect of the system—our posture, our thoughts, our relationships—whether those we practice with, our immediate community, or the larger environment—our motivation and aspirations, our momentary arising patterns of joy or pain or grief. In fact, everything about us and our messy lives is co-arising all the time, interacting with everything else, forward and backward in time, across vast distances, continuously, without stopping, and without one single exception.

When we sit, we enter a field of practice dependently co-arising in this moment. Our job is not to orchestrate, control, or manage that field. We are simply there to meet it, to participate in it. And in that participation, we are cultivating a deep sense of acceptance and of presence, we are meeting it without needing to change anything. We are making an effortless effort.

At Sitting Lab, we always sit together.

We sit together not to remove ourselves from our everyday life, but to pause from the relentless, habitual patterns that keep us separate, to interrupt them, and to allow ourselves to become fully present for another way of being. We sit together to create a safe and generative environment for each other. This enables us to unlearn our separation and remember the possibility of our wisdom, our humility, and our belonging.

From the settled ground of our interbeing to the vast open sky of our interbecoming, we sit together to become more permeable, more authentically us, more whole. We sit down not to step out of the world, but to step more fully into relationship with it.

We sit together in a collective act of stepping back and turning inward, co-creating a field of practice that supports and encourages us to fully participate in the co-arising of this moment. This is the unfolding pattern of co-arising that reveals itself to us as we tenderly touch the pulse of our life in its full expression.

This is where we cultivate our human capacities to be more sensitive, kind, and open, even in the midst of our demanding and complicated lives. This is how we move beyond an intellectual understanding and begin to become the co-arising, and let it show us directly, without filters, who we really are and how things truly are.

Together with each other and with everything, we sit.

We rest in the heart of our co-emergence. We remember life’s song of co-arising, and begin to sing its beautiful tune.

We begin to see the unfolding as a refuge and know it as our home.

The Practice: A Co-Arising

Below is a lightly edited transcript of an introduction to a Sitting Lab sitting.

“Welcome.

Allow your awareness to come down into the body, into the heart—as we begin to create the conditions for our practice this morning.

Our practice is a complex adaptive system.

It’s not one thing. It’s not just the breath.

Not just the cushion. Not just the body or the mind. Not just the relationships between those of us sitting together here today.

Not just our views of the world, our beliefs, our behaviors, our patterns of suffering, or our various ways of finding joy.

It’s all of it.

And the relationships between all of it. And more.

It is taking a moment—not really ‘out’ of our lives, but maybe ‘into’ our lives—to sit down, to be quiet in the middle of all this co-arising.

It is a co-creative act—to find our posture, to sit in a way that is relaxed, easeful, balanced, upright, vital, and alive.

All of it comes together to create the conditions to do nothing.

To give ourselves permission to not know. To wonder. To be curious.

To rest our attention in our hearts and to move, and not move, from that place. With compassion. With kindness. With acceptance.

Allowing the co-creation—the moment-by-moment unfolding—to show itself. To receive it, and to know ourselves.

From the heart—from our field of feeling, knowing, and sensing—we intuitively know we are not separate from anything. We are in the middle of it all.

This co-arising that is us is without boundaries. Limitless. Beyond what we can imagine. But still felt.

From that place, we can generate our aspirations and make a quiet commitment to ourselves and to all living beings.

Wishing for happiness, peace, a genuine state of wellbeing, joy, and freedom from suffering, for all living beings.

And now, we continue, sitting silently, together.”

The sound of three bells and then silence.

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.

Returning to the Animal that is our Body:

Before we understand, before we adapt, before we transform—we feel. We sense. We breathe. The body remembers what the mind forgets: that we are creatures first. Beings of rhythm, of energies, of pulses, of gravity.

The practice of sitting invites us to return to this animal knowing. It is not a cerebral exercise, but a homecoming to something much more fundamental. A place where we lay down the burden of performance and optimization and rest in the dignity of our aliveness.

To sit is to become aware of our weight—not as heaviness, but as belonging. To feel the breath as our interconnectedness. To let the tension in our shoulders tell us it's here, without needing to be improved or fixed in that moment.

In sitting, there is no ideal posture and no correct state of mind. Only this moment, as it is. The body, as it is. You, as you are.

When we begin with the body, we begin with something true. Not the kind we need to articulate, but the kind we need to feel in our bones. This is the experience of groundedness that says, “I am here. Now.”

Sitting is not about fixing the body, or trying to escape its limitations. It is about reconnecting with it as a sacred companion.

That’s why we let the breath lead us into this moment. And then the next moment. It’s why we let the floor—the ground and the earth—receive our heaviness. It’s why we let our physical sensations speak to us and tell us what they are. It’s how we know who and what we are as human beings.

We sit together, not with our heads, but with our bodies, and the ground beneath us.

The Practice: Begin With the Body

Below is a lightly edited transcript of an introduction to a Sitting Lab sitting.

“Welcome. As we come into our sitting practice today, let’s begin with the body.

Not as an object to be controlled or a tool for performance. But as a living, breathing animal. A friend. A sacred companion.

Let your attention come down into your body—into the places that connect you to the earth, to this moment, to sensation.

Notice your breath. Not to shape it but to feel it. Let the breath do what it does. Let the breath lead.

You might feel the gravity of your body, or the way your spine holds you up, or the shifting currents of tension and release.

There is no wrong way to sit. There is only your body as it is.

Let the sensations be what they are. Not to fix or judge but to simply feel.

We begin with the body because the body brings us home.

Let’s continue now quietly, breath by breath, moment by moment.

Feeling our way. Together.”

The sound of three bells and then silence.

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.

A Field of Belonging:

There is a sacred potency in the quiet alignment of many hearts.

When we come together—not to impress, not to convince, but simply to sit—we step into a field that is more than the sum of its parts.

We co-create a field of interbeing and interbecoming.

This is the power of “we.”

Sitting practice isn’t a solitary escape. It’s a collective re-entry. A returning to the truth that we are shaped by our relationships. That our nervous systems co-regulate. That our breath responds to the presence of others around us.

This is the truth that the stillness of our presence, when offered generously, creates felt sense of safety around us.

To sit is to come into alignment—with our posture, but also with a deeper purpose for our life. We do this by dropping out of the mind’s endless chatter and into the vast, undefined spaciousness of the heart.

In this place, our perception softens and open. Reaction gives way to grounded receptivity and judgment gives way to attuning acceptance.

From this fuller sense of presence, generosity naturally flows. We give ourselves to the moment, and to each other, not in sacrifice, but in offering.

This is the offering of our attention. Without expectation or need for getting something in return. It becomes a tending to the shared moment. It becomes a rare, particular kind of contribution—an offering to something larger than us, to the whole. To the we.

In sitting, a guiding principle is that we give our ourselves—our breath, our stillness, and our caring compassion—not to fix, but to belong.

In the field of belonging we are able to co-create together, something quiet, subtle, and real emerges without any effort on our part. There is a sense of being held, being supported, of being carried along, from moment to moment.

This allows us to relax and open up.

And when we do, there is a feeling of deep remembering in the body, that our true human purpose is not to optimize ourselves for material gain, but to become the fullest version of ourselves in service to life itself.

This is how we learn how to live each moment inside the "we" of life.

By sitting together. Slowly. Generously. With presence, care, and tenderness.

The Practice: The Transformational Power of We

Below is the lightly edited transcript of a talk introducing a Sitting Lab sitting.

“Okay. Let’s begin by putting ourselves into a frame of mind that’s conducive for our practice today.

What’s interesting about that frame of mind—is that it’s no frame of mind.

It’s stepping back from the usual restrictions we put on ourselves, the usual patterns we fall into, the usual reactions we have created.

This is a totally ordinary place for us—but rarely fully felt or experienced.

It’s stepping back into a place of dynamic relationship with ourselves and with each other.

It sounds like we just say “with each other,” but we shouldn’t underestimate the power of we, the effects of us aligning ourselves in intention in this activity with each other.

People have researched this. Studies have found that to come back into a place of relationship with others that feels calm, and safe, and supportive, is deeply healing for us human beings.

So we begin by aligning ourselves with ourselves. Finding an upright sense of posture. Bringing ourselves into balance—right to left, front to back.

Bringing your attention down—out of the head and into the torso, into the heart of your being.

Cultivating a real feeling of resting and settling, right here. in the center of our being. And allowing yourself to feel what it’s like to perceive, to be conscious from that place.

It’s a different kind of consciousness than our usual consciousness.

There’s an expansiveness to it. A spaciousness to it. An undefined quality to it. But it is there. Perceiving. Receiving.

And then, lastly—we can orient this entire activity within a field of generosity.

Giving ourselves to each moment. Moment after moment. Giving our presence. Giving our acceptance. Giving our compassion. To ourselves, and to each other.

Extending it out to all living beings—the mountains, and the rivers, and the oceans, the forests, the deserts, and all the living beings who occupy those ecosystems.

Wishing all living beings happiness, a genuine sense of well-being, peace, and freedom from suffering.

And now, feeling grounded by the continuous movement of the breath going in and out of our body, we can continue to sit quietly, together.”

The sound of three bells and then silence.

Each weekday, a small group of us sit quietly together four times a day, using Sitting Lab’s community platform. We invite you to check it out and join us if you believe that a regular, deepening sitting practice could help you become the fullest version of yourself.