It was 50 years ago this summer that the woman who was then central to my life introduced me to meditation, at the Integral Yoga Institute in Pomfret, Conn. The guru was/is Swami Satchidananda. We went there weekly; I even borrowed her car and went when she was out of town![1]

I practiced sporadically over the years. In 1985, job stress led me to keep a pillow in my office, meditating every day for a half hour. Then, I found peace in other ways. Until Covid, when another woman central to my life (one of my daughters) introduced me to the guided meditation app Daily Calm.

I try to spend 10 minutes meditating every day with guidance from the app. My longest stretch came during 2020 and lasted a year. I am still “on the pillow” (at my age it is a chair) regularly.

Plus I now meditate daily with my wife, for 20 minutes. She is a person of more regular habits than me, so we have only missed three days in two months. We are using a guided meditation based on the principles in Spiritual Intelligence by Dawson Church (details in an essay by my wife). Church’s research shows you can rewire your brain (in a good way) with tapping and meditation. If you’re interested in the science of peaceful time on the pillow, it’s worth a look.

[1] You may have heard that musician Karuna Carole King (an integral yoga teacher) donated the land for it; she sorta did.