Dharma Moon

“The single most powerful ally we have as we explore and awaken from our daydream is gentleness and kindness toward ourselves.” —David Nichtern

Memorial Day can hold many things at once:
rest, grief, gratitude, memory, relief, loneliness, family, noise, silence.

Whatever this weekend brings up for you, may you meet it with a little more kindness than usual.

Most meditation asks you to sit still with your body. This one works with it.

The Body of Meditation is an 8-week course with René Fay and Susan Layden—for deepening your own practice, and for how you guide others.

You’ll work with the body as part of meditation rather than a distraction from it: mindful movement, body awareness, and meeting tension or discomfort with more steadiness.
And it’s built to meet a body where it is—whether you practice on a cushion, a chair, or somewhere in between.

📅 Begins June 25th.
🚨The $300 early registration discount runs through tomorrow night (Thursday, 11:59pm ET—link in bio if the timing’s right.

Meditation usually works on the mind. Movement usually works on the body. The Body of Meditation, an 8-week course with René Fay and Susan Layden, lives in the territory between them.

Pulling from Buddhist meditation, yoga, martial arts, and nervous system awareness, René and Susan offer practical ways to work with tension, anxiety, and disconnection—for your own practice and for the people you teach.

The shift: instead of being stuck inside a stress reaction, you start catching it in real time, with the body as the anchor.

Up to 30 Yoga Alliance CE credits available.

⏰ Free intro talk with both of them tonight. There's still time! Link in bio to register.

Most of the time we’re somewhere else.

Replaying conversations.
Rehearsing futures.
Reacting to things that aren’t even happening anymore.

Mindfulness begins when we notice we’ve left the present moment—and gently come back.

So you've been meditating for a while.

Maybe friends ask you for advice. Maybe you've thought about leading a class at your studio, your office, your community. Maybe you've wondered what it would actually take to teach this stuff.

Tomorrow night, David Nichtern is sharing what he's learned in 50+ years of practice—a free online talk on The Key Elements of Teaching Mindfulness Meditation.

He'll cover what it takes to prepare clear instruction, hold space through deep listening, facilitate inquiry, and deliver a skillful dharma talk. Plus details on Dharma Moon's upcoming 100-Hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, co-certified with Tibet House US.

🗓 Tues, May 5 · 6:00–7:30pm ET
🔗 Link in bio to reserve your spot

There's often an assumption in meditation circles: if you've practiced long enough, you can teach.

David Nichtern would gently push back on that.

Guiding someone else through the experience of sitting with their own mind is a distinct skill — one that asks for real training, careful preparation, and an ongoing commitment to your own growth as both teacher and practitioner.

On Tuesday, May 5th, David Nichtern is hosting a free online talk on the key elements of teaching mindfulness meditation: how to prepare clear instruction, hold space through deep listening, trust your students' intelligence, and keep deepening the practice that makes the teaching possible in the first place.

Drawing on 50+ years in the Buddhist tradition, David will also share what's coming up in the Dharma Moon 100-Hour Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, co-certified with Tibet House US.

🗓 Tuesday, May 5 · 6:00–7:30pm ET · Free · Online
Link in bio to reserve your spot. 🤍

. Drawing on more than fifty years in the Buddhist tradition, he'll explore:

You can meditate for decades and still lose it over a dropped ice cream cone. That's not failure — that's the path.

In this week's Food for Non-Thought newsletter, guest teacher Noel Coakley looks at the Buddhist learning curve—hearing, contemplating, meditating, realizing—and why the real measure of practice isn't how often we lose perspective, but how quickly we come back.

"You may have been to every retreat center from Tucson to Tulumreceiving direct instructions from His Holiness the Dalai Lama himself, but if you're a jerk in traffic then you're still a jerk in traffic."

📖 Read the full piece—link in bio

✦ Want to learn from Noel in person? He's joining David Nichtern and the teaching team at our 5-day retreat at , April 29 – May 3. Online and in-person spots still open.