Month: July 2026
Vipassana works differently. It opens attention to whatever is
actually happening in the present moment — sensations in the body, thoughts, feelings, and the mind’s reaction to experiences. It includes observing the impulse to hold, to fix, to avoid, or to resist experience.
Through this kind of observation, the mind begins to reveal its own patterns. What initially seems solid and personal is seen more clearly as a flowing process of changing experience.
The insight that develops here is not a belief or a temporary state. It is a direct understanding that arises from seeing things as they are and once something has been clearly seen, it cannot be unseen.
At first, meditation can feel like we are trying to do something with the mind — trying to calm it down, trying to stay present, trying to do it “right”. But in Vipassana, the emphasis moves away from controlling experience and the mind, and towards simply seeing it as it is.
In this practice, there is no such thing as a good or bad experience. There is no experience that is more “correct” for meditation than another. Thoughts, feelings, sensations, restlessness, calm — all of it is simply what is happening.
Contact Improvisation
Contact Improvisation – Content
Contact Improvisation was initiated in 1972 by the American choreographer Steve Paxton. Its roots lie in the experimental spirit of modern dance, as well as in influences from Eastern movement practices such as Aikido and Tai Chi. From its beginning, it developed as a touch-based and non-prescribed form of collaborative movement, where attention is placed on bodily awareness, responsiveness, and relational movement rather than fixed choreography or pre-designed form. Unlike many dance forms that are based on learning and reproducing fixed techniques or sequences, Contact Improvisation is primarily principle-based. This means that rather than aiming to master a specific set of movements, practitioners work with guiding principles that shape how movement emerges in real time.
Principle-based practice involves continuous inquiry and responsiveness to both familiar and unfamiliar situations. It is a form of learning that takes place through direct experience, experimentation, and ongoing adjustment rather than through repetition of predetermined forms.
In this sense, it differs from training models that rely primarily on replication of expected outcomes. Instead, it emphasizes the ability to remain attentive and adaptable within changing
conditions. Within this framework, it is one thing to understand the principles intellectually, and another to embody them in real-time situations. Practice gradually develops the capacity to recognize and apply these principles within the constantly shifting reality of improvisational movement. Importantly, this process is not considered something that can be completed; rather, it is understood as an ongoing and open-ended mode of inquiry.
Some of the core principles of Contact Improvisation include mutual care, shared responsibility, spatial awareness, listening, multi-directional reach and perception, moving from self-centerdness to shared-centerdness, responsiveness, and the exploration of mutual freedom through mutual dependence. A central aspect of the practice is also the suspension of fixed agendas, allowing movement to emerge through interaction rather than control.
“The mind wants to be free of suffering. Reaching for what we want feels like the path to happiness. But it is the way of suffering.” – Ajahn Mike
An experience only becomes a problem when it is seen as a problem. Otherwise, it is just something that is being experienced. Vipassana is subtle in this way. It is not so much about the content of experience, or about what is happening in the mind, but about how experience is being known in the first place. It is less about the objects of attention, and more about the fact that there is awareness of those objects.
As long as there is an effort to control experience or to make meditation into something it should be, there is tension in the practice. But when that effort is relaxed — when we stop trying to shape what is happening — awareness is simply there.
In this sense, Vipassana is not about doing meditation correctly. It is about allowing experience to be as it is, and recognizing awareness. Craving presents itself as the solution — if this changes, if I get that, if that happens — then I’ll be happy. The mind accepts this logic completely. It has been accepting it without question for a whole lifetime.
Resistance works the same way. The impulse to push away discomfort feels like protection. In practice, it trains the very pattern that generates suffering.
The mind that can’t accept what is here, and can’t let go of what is leaving — suffers. Not because of reality but because of the resistance to it. This cannot be resolved by understanding it intellectually. The logic is clear, the pattern runs anyway. It has to be seen in the body and mind, in real time, in the middle of it happening. That is what the practice is for.
Bringing together meditation practices with movement and authentic relating.
For many years, I have been exploring practices that help us live with more awareness and compassion. Through meditation, retreat, study, movement, and somatic inquiry, I continue to investigate how we can become free from suffering and open to new ways of being in this world and with each other.
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