Sundog Stories

This walking meditation helps you to become more aware of the sounds that appear in  consciousness as you walk through your city or through nature.

It sometimes feels as though memories are awakened and tugged upwards by the finely tuned strings of our senses,  linking a forgotten past to the here and now. Wet Wool is about sounds and smells, and the link between sensations and memories.

This long Yoga Nidra takes you through a meadow of goldenrod, thistles and milkweed to an old apple tree.

To ruminate,  to  revisit a thought over and over again, comes from the word ‘ruminant’ - an animal that eats grass;  chewing, swallowing, regurgitation and rechewing the same fodder over and over again. It is the same with us humans, we constantly consume our thoughts.

February 6. The earth is still spinning on its winter arc, though days are growing longer: a minute in the morning, another one at night. A very brief story about loss and life unfurling.

It wasn’t just Rosa’s voice I'd overheard; slowly, I picked up the many whispers that drifted out of other neighbours’ open pipes and widened seams. It was as if I’d discovered new frequencies on my dial, found private stations that I had never known.

This walking meditation helps to ground you in your step by step movement. 

My grandmother kept chocolate, an apple and a paring knife in her apron pocket, read to us, cheated at cards but let me win. She knitted socks and liked her tea with cream, told us stories about talking pigeons and rabbits and owls.

This Yoga Nidra practice takes you on a walk to a small lake and a hollow tree.

Transition sometimes patiently waits, and works, in the  regeneration of a fallow field, a metaphor to describe the seemingly  barren possible, the creative in-between of what was and what might become.

An old man once told me that not so long ago this city was a forest, then the Algonquin people called it their home, later Europeans came, took and cleared the land and farmed the rocky ground. Someone  built a tram line from east to west, then came sidewalks and hydro lines. Who is to say when a neighbourhood should freeze in time? When is it at its prime? This story is about my neighbour, 3...

Happiness comes from the Icelandic word “happ”, meaning luck or chance. We do tend to tie the two together, as though happiness were a thing we might hopefully trip over one day, should we be so lucky. Sehnsucht is about our yearning for happiness, and the challenges we face in its search. Photo Credit: Fridolin Walcher "Sehnsucht".

This Yoga Nidra practice takes you on a walk to a small lake and a hollow tree.

We seem to seldom give ourselves the opportunity to experience our minds without the noise and clutter of our busy lives. Like a night sky polluted by city lights, we might, through the haze, only recognize and attend to the brightest and loudest experiences. But In the wilderness the stars are more clear, less distorted.  Mindful meditation is a practice to begin to notice and better underst...

One might think that the show is over once the flowers of the Milkweed have flashed their beauty, and the leaves have fed the hairy black and orange caterpillar; but no, the best is yet to come. This story is about Milkweed and a silver tour bus.

Yesterday, weeks after that first day of the deer hunt, on a snow covered path along a line of now bare trees, I saw a large Barred owl, perched high, still, waiting, watching for its small furry prey.  And then, quite suddenly, it lifted and waved its powerful wings, and dove towards the frozen earth. On Balance is about expectations, uncertainty and hope.

A story about loneliness and connection. 

While travelling, eating hard-boiled eggs comes second only to apples, which, by the way,  happens to be my only party trick - I eat them whole, apple seeds and all.  My kids have grown up  eating eggs on trains and planes, on mountain tops and on park benches. For years they hissed at us, embarrassed, but now they follow suit, peeling eggs around the world. A story about eggs and e...

This foundation meditation practice brings you into the present moment.

This practice will walk with you through a fall field.

1979 is the year my family emigrated from our small town in Switzerland. The story is about that time, Canadian lunch boxes, and crossing disorienting gaps.

Years ago I broke a pale yellow water pitcher that I’d received from a close childhood friend.  We’d lost our connection but I kept the shards in a drawer, feeling pangs of regret and guilt for my carelessness.  I asked my mom how I might fix the pitcher. She suggested I repair my friendship instead.  A story about regret, my great grandmother and her broken hip, and precious moment...

Journey deep into a tunnel and rest on the shores of a moon lit beach.

This foundation meditation practices bringing back the wandering mind.

Through the lens’ furthest reach the scene loses its shape, colours merge and blur, as I zoom out and drift into space and slip through a narrow gap. I follow the sun, as does the earth, as does the moon. All of us, tiny electrons spinning and circling. This story travels along a wild coastline, where the scene changes constantly, yet seemingly repeats itself again and again.