Meditation retreats have been growing in popularity in the western world, but their purpose and descriptions can be difficult to understand. Those of us who did not grow up learning the practice may have a hard time getting their mind around to the benefits. While nothing can susbstitute for direct experience, this book will offer a concrete, comprehensive report to what a potential meditator can expect during a ten day vipassana meditation retreat. It is not simply a memoir to be enjoyed ...

Katarina helps a fellow ballet dancer follow his dreams in this sweet second installment in the Katarina Ballerina series from New York City principal dancer and international prima ballerina Tiler Peck and Broadway and television actor Kyle Harris.After earning a spot in a prestigious ballet camp, Katarina is excited to meet other dancers from around the world! When she arrives, Katarina becomes fast friends with a boy named Ricky from London. He loves to dance, b...

A young girl lives out her big ballerina dreams in this graceful start to a new series from New York City Ballet principal dancer and international prima ballerina Tiler Peck and Broadway and television actor Kyle Harris.Ten-year-old Katarina is a New York City girl through and through, but the buzz of the city drives her to feel that she is meant for more than her ordinary day to day routine. Her big dream? To become a prima ballerina.With the help of a fe...

While meditation retreats can be extremely beneficial to a person's mental health, often there is little explanation regarding how to re-integrate with society afterwards. The deep mental purification that is done allows a positive perspective change, but returning to the hectic lives many of us live, we are immediately overwhelmed with stimulus and negativity. Relationships can shift, and life plans may change - it is imperative to streamline our reconnection to the world after spending a...

Meditation retreats have been growing in popularity in the western world, but their purpose and descriptions can be difficult to understand. Those of us who did not grow up learning the practice may have a hard time getting their mind around to the benefits. While nothing can susbstitute for direct experience, this book will offer a concrete, comprehensive report to what a potential meditator can expect during a ten day vipassana meditation retreat. It is not simply a memoir to be enjoyed ...

While meditation retreats can be extremely beneficial to a person's mental health, often there is little explanation regarding how to re-integrate with society afterwards. The deep mental purification that is done allows a positive perspective change, but returning to the hectic lives many of us live, we are immediately overwhelmed with stimulus and negativity. Relationships can shift, and life plans may change - it is imperative to streamline our reconnection to the world after spending a...

Meditation retreats have become increasingly popular in recent years. While considerable effort is put forth by the organizers of these retreats, oftentimes meditators have not adequately prepared, nor do they have a plan for how to best benefit from their experiences afterwards. While the teachers often are incredibly experienced, they may not empathize with the specific trials of modern urban life - its chaos and neuroses abound. If you are someone who's grown up in such a world, learnin...

Meditation retreats have become increasingly popular in recent years. While considerable effort is put forth by the organizers of these retreats, oftentimes meditators have not adequately prepared, nor do they have a plan for how to best benefit from their experiences afterwards. While the teachers often are incredibly experienced, they may not empathize with the specific trials of modern urban life - its chaos and neuroses abound. If you are someone who's grown up in such a world, learnin...

Whether mere bumps in the road or genuine crises, we live in a world of unwanted events that no willpower can prevent. In The Art of Disappearing, Ajahn Brahm helps us learn to abandon the headwind of false expectations and follow instead the Buddha's path of understanding. Releasing our attachment to past and future, to self and other, we can directly experience the natural state of serenity underlying all our thoughts and discover the bliss of the present moment. In that space, ...

Wisdom Wide and Deep is a comprehensive guide to an in-depth training that emphasizes the application of concentrated attention (jhana) to profound and liberating insight (vipassana). With calm, tranquility, and composure established through a practical experience of jhana meditators are able to halt the seemingly endless battle against hindrances, eliminate distraction, and facilitate a penetrative insight into the subtle nature of matter and mind. It was for th...

Upasika Kee was a uniquely powerful spiritual teacher. Evocative of the great Ajahn Chah, her teachings are earthy, refreshingly direct, and hard-hitting. In the twentieth century, she grew to become one of the most famous teachers in Thailand--male or female--all the more remarkable because, rarer still, she was not a monastic but a layperson. Her relentless honesty, along with her encouraging voice, is one reason so many contemporary Buddhist teachers recall Upasika Kee so fondly, and so...

Insight meditation, which claims to offer practitioners a chance to escape all suffering by perceiving the true nature of reality, is one of the most popular forms of meditation today. The Theravada Buddhist cultures of South and Southeast Asia often see it as the Buddha's most important gift to humanity. In the first book to examine how this practice came to play such a dominant—and relatively recent—role in Buddhism, Erik Braun takes readers to Burma, revealing that Burmese Buddhists in ...