Traditions
9 articles
Traditions
Palms to the Sky, Palms to the Earth: The Turning Discipline of the Mevlevi Sema
A man in a tall, honey-coloured felt hat and a long white skirt stands in a line of others, shoulder to shoulder, his arms cros...
Traditions
Rising, Falling: The Noting Method of Mahasi Sayadaw
A meditator sits with eyes closed, attention resting on the abdomen. As the belly rises with each in-breath, a single silent wo...
Traditions
David Lynch's Fifty Years of Diving Within
On the Sunday morning of 1 July 1973, at about eleven o’clock, David Lynch sat down for the first time to meditate. He was twen...
Traditions
The Teacher Who Told Everyone to Stop Following Teachers: Jiddu Krishnamurti
The encounter that decided Jiddu Krishnamurti’s life was, by his own account, unremarkable. In 1909, on the beach at Adyar on t...
Traditions
Talking to God in Your Own Words: Rebbe Nachman's Hitbodedut
The instruction, as it has been handed down, is unadorned: find a place where no one can hear, and talk. Not the fixed Hebrew w...
Traditions
Yoga Nidra: The Ancient Art of Conscious Sleep
A person lies flat on their back, arms loose at their sides, palms turned upward. Nothing about the posture is unusual — it is ...
Techniques · Science · Traditions
Wave Hands Like Clouds: What the Tai Chi Fall-Prevention Trials Actually Found
Three times a week for six months, between 2001 and 2002, physically inactive adults aged 70 and over — recruited through a Por...
Traditions
Prayer of the Heart: How Byzantine Monks Set Words to Breath on Mount Athos
On the wooded peninsula of Mount Athos, the hesychast instruction texts describe a monk settling onto a low stool, letting his ...
Traditions
Sudden Signs from Within: The Kogi Máma's Breath, Relaxation, and Listening Discipline
Partway through a Kogi priest’s training — a period Reichel-Dolmatoff says was ideally eighteen years long, divided into two ni...
