About

What can happen in the space of a pause?

What brings a person to mindfulness? For me, it was the pain of divorce. I needed a way to hold the hurt, to ask questions about responsibility, to make decisions without the comfort of certainty. Mindfulness made space for me to practice life without the illusion of control. In that practice I found grace even when the pain still pressed hard against the ribcage. 

What keeps a person in mindfulness? For me, it was the challenges of work. I needed a way to address my anxiety, to question my habit of finding validation in productivity, to embody a healthy sense of authority, to learn boundaries. Mindfulness increased my capacity for wisdom. I learned that life wasn’t absent in the midst of painful realities and habits.

What brings a person to teach mindfulness? For me, it was bearing witness to the suffering in our world. I longed for a way to help my university students relate to their anxiety and depression. I wanted to fight for social justice by challenging the realities of discrimination and oppression through compassion and care rather than aggression. I knew there was joy waiting to accompany us through our struggles; I wanted to discover it in the company of others.

To be mindful, we must include our histories and our environment, all the causes and conditions that have made our life possible. I wouldn’t be here teaching mindfulness without the wealth of teachers who’ve gone before me nor without the wealth of tribes who’ve cared for the land.

I first came to the practice of mindfulness through Pema Chödrön’s texts. When Things Fall Apart was a particular source of refuge during my divorce. Her lineage resides in Tibetan Buddhism, a tradition in which I coincidentally took my first teachings through Mangala Shri Bhuti, a sangha under the guidance of Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. More recently, I’ve trained within the Insight Meditation tradition when I completed Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield’s two-year teacher-training. While mindfulness is not synonymous with Buddhism, it does not exist without it. The 2500-year ancient wisdom upon which mindfulness draws began with the Buddha in India and expanded throughout Asia before arriving in the West. I deeply appreciate the teachers I’ve had and will come to have along this path to waking up.

Mindful Pause Center is located on spuyaləpabš (Puyallup) tribal land. As a new resident here, I am beginning to meet the waters and forests and mountains of a home that has long been stewarded by the spuyaləpabš and other coastal Salish people. I have a history to learn and a responsibility to understand. That responsibility extends to both uplifting Native communities and protecting the land and its resources for all beings. May it be so.