I read, and re-read, this piece. It is so full of practical wisdom. Thank you so much for your work. You have changed my life for the better. I’m so glad to be sharing this planet with you. All the very best.
Hey Jeff thanks for offering a few free meditations. I was really sad to see the DNP go up behind a paywall. I do appreciate that you give a lot of time to this and you should be financially supported. That’s always the conundrum with meditation. There’s a lot of talent and time and resources required by the teachers. But for many of us, meditation retreats are beyond our financial means. I had looked forward to spending Sunday evening with you and the many people who joined in. And I’m sad that I can no longer do that.
Hi Cyn, thank you for the comment. It is sad! I feel you. I have a LOT of conflicted feelings about it myself. The jury is still out whether I will keep the DNP behind a partial payroll. Partly it was done to create a more cohesive sense of community, and because I wasn’t sure any random person stumbling on it was the best way into meditation. And as you say, the financial piece is also sort of looming in the background. It’s been hard to figure out how to support my family since the Calm work ended. Substack is promising, but it’s also a lot of work, and it requires that I pay my amazing team members as well.
That all said, when it comes to the DNP, I’ve tried to be clear that anybody can email info@jeffwarren.org and get free access to all DNPs. So please don't hesitate to do that, friend. I give out piles of scholarships and I love doing it. By reaching out and asking for one, it tells me this is something that person really values.
It’s also worth noting that roughly 75% of my work is free. Almost all of the meditations on Home Base are free. A big part of my own personal work has been learning to value what I do enough to charge for it. That’s definitely an ongoing thing for me!
Anyway, hope that offers a bit of additional context. And who knows, all of this may shift again - it’s all part of an ongoing experiment about how to support community and be supported in turn. I feel like the questions I’m wrestling with are also important to the whole democratization project that I’ve been writing about. I do feel like community is a big part of what we’ll get us through this thing ❤️
I have followed your your daily trip meditation on the Calm app for years and still do, every day. They have genuinely changed my life. Do you still get any payment for those?
Hey Jane, I’m so glad the Daily Trips have been such a support! It was a true joy making those, and Calm were terrific partners. I haven’t written or recorded a new Daily Trip in a couple years. I do not get paid for the meditations that still play on rotation; I got paid at the time, generously. These days they have me on a small annual retainer fee, for the odd bit of in-company virtual teaching here and there. But it’s pretty negligible.
Like a lot of the meditation apps, Calm have been struggling to figure out how to make a go of it, believe it or not. They’ve had to let go of large numbers of employees, and are not investing much in new “content”.
Jeff please know that I value your work and understand and support the fact that you need to be reimbursed for your contributions and you have a family to support yourself. In no way didn’t mean to infer otherwise. And I hope once I’m finished school I can get in a better place financially to support you and others who help me manage my life better through meditation and mindfulness. I’m really hoping I can make it to the meditation party 2027. Take care and I hope you’re enjoying your time out west. (We did meet at the meditation day that you had in Toronto in May 2025. I came with my niece and my sister. And that was an incredible day.)
I totally understand Cyn. I did not take it in the slightest as you not valuing what I offer - I hope I didn’t come across as defensive! Again, please email to get a scholarship, it’s for exactly folks like you.
Hope to see you at Meditation Party at some point! Oh, you should also know that if you’re based in Toronto, the CEC have resumed in-person sit (free and/or by donation) on Mondays near Kensington market, I will probably be at a bunch of those through July and August. 🙌
If I could, I would give this piece way more hearts than just one. I love how you are open, welcoming, and vulnerable, and the creative way you zero in on what makes meditation and mindfulness more accessible.
I have been meditating on-and-off for over ten years now.
I have been interested in Buddhist practice and non-duality, but over the past year I have learned that some of these practices are currently not helpful for me, especially if they involve letting go of the self. I found that non-duality practice doesn’t help me when working with trauma. I definitely benefit from more grounding, body centered practices.
I really appreciate that you address practicing as a neurodivergent person, and provide many types of practices. It has been incredibly helpful.
I hope that one day you and Ofosu will offer an online retreat for neurodivergent people!
Hi Julie, I'm Joe and I work with Jeff here at Home Base. Thank you 🙏 for this honest and helpful comment and report. Since you asked about Jeff and Ofosu in an online context, I wanted to make sure you were aware of the replay of the YouTube conversation they were both involved in last week, Meditation for Neurodivergent Minds https://podcast.meditationmag.com/neurodiversity/
While not a full online retreat, it was a really great discussion!
I like the way you tier bulleted the forms of meditation and especially that instead of linear swim lanes you venn diagrammed them showing the overlapping of the 3rd tier — made me think of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline - and how perhaps all the disciplines overlapped as sort of as ancient forms of cognitive behavior therapy for a people trying to find themselves in a monetary world driven by wealth from dying cloth that cause death of workers or maybe a people still adjusting to the monetary change from blessing was rain at the right time and dry at harvest verses a million dollar financial portfolio- humans are difficult animals but I think we were hard coded to seek community in whatever form we find - God save us from our algorithms and echo chambers - we need tier 3
Sorry to hear it’s been so hard Mars. Those times definitely come, I’ve had to personally think about it in the long game. Practice, struggle, breakthrough, struggle, boredom. Remembering you’re not alone. Repeat. Forever. Having the tools is invaluable
As always Jeff, a big thank you. Going through a tough time lately has made me mostly drift in a different direction than usual but tonight this meditation has helped me to understand things in a more speculated way. I haven’t felt this settled for a while and have more confidence, so, thank you!
I really relate to your experience of coming back to something after a bit of time away from it. It's so interesting to hear what is said again and to find that it lands differently than it did on a previous occasion.
There is a podcast that Jeff and Tasha did on the Mindbodadventure pod with Chelene Knight called The Slow Fire of Reading. I can't recall who says it but all three agree that the same passage is different every time we read it and that the second reading is where things really start to get interesting. Since Jeff is linking to the mindbodpod at jeffwarren.org, pointing out where content overlaps seems appropriate.
Hello Rosemary, thanks for saying that. I haven’t completely stopped meditating but as Jeff has said sometimes he realises how the pile up of stressful things in life will be making you forget how meditating will help you to see sense! It is his meditations linking so many of us that I simply hadn’t given myself time for which has had a negative effect on me. I will certainly check out jeffwarren.org which I’m sure will give me more positivity.
Hey Phoebe, nice to hear from you. After 25+ years of meditating, I still forget how helpful it can be (sometimes), and that’s even with the meditation having a very dependable and immediate beneficial effect. The fact that that can still happen is bananas to me. Forget, come back. That’s the rhythm.
And yeah, sometimes the same instruction can land completely differently at a different point in life. That definitely happens to me all the time. Glad you’re here Friend.
Thank you Jeff. It’s the rhythm which I found out certainly works for me! When I tell people about meditating they seem to be rather surprised when I say I drift off!
Jeff, there are so many useful nuggets to absorb here before I even sit with the meditation. As I've written elsewhere, I completely agree with you about not proselytizing as well as conveying that meditation practice does not require adherence to a rigid formula or set of rituals. In my earliest experiences with meditation, I found that the insistence of (unnamed famous teacher) that practice had to done a certain way to be authentic completely undermined my attempts to explore it.
Yes, to observing and affirming what a friend is already involved with, spiritually or otherwise, that has elements of concentration and insight.
Yes, to making connections between an existing practice and what meditation can offer that goes beyond that.
Yes, to clarifying that there are different forms of practice.
Yes, to offering support in a friendly and non-judgmental way.
But I'll also add that I think it's helpful to follow up on a friend's curiosity with gentle persistence -- it's takes more than a single conversation or walk in the forest. It takes noticing the moments in a conversation that offer a spontaneous opportunity to share a bit more of how practice has changed the way I move through this life. It isn't evangelizing, but it does feel to me like a moral commitment to help make the world better for all of us.
“A moral commitment to help make the world better for all of us.” I’m going to save your comment here Tamar (I have a long note to myself with important reminders, and this is one of them).
Yes, to the gentle persistence, particularly if someone is struggling AND curious. And yes, to spontaneous sharing in the right moment.
I just love that you named this. I feel the same way. I tend to be easy-going in my big picture teaching, but when it comes to specific people in my life who are struggling I can definitely be persistent around getting them to do… something!
Really interesting piece. I know what you mean about hesitating to recommend meditation. Despite loving it deeply, when friends are genuinely anguished and actually asking for advice, I find myself suggesting a walk. It feels more immediately useful and less loaded.
Your piece made me think about phones. I've heard a lot of people say their mind never gets a proper rest. They know they shouldn't use even more stimulation to rest, but the flood of bad feeling in the silence is difficult to navigate. And it's hard to believe that doing nothing can actually help, that the benefits would compound over time.
That gap - between knowing you need rest and being able to tolerate the silence - feels like where most people get lost.
Really interesting thoughts. That’s definitely the gap where people get lost - it’s where I get lost. I feel like you put your finger on what is so powerful about meditation in particular. It’s all about learning to be OK with that discomfort, sitting in that gap. Plenty of other practises can be healing and insightful and transformative, but I’m not sure any quite get at that gap the way meditation can! That’s the great promise of meditation, learning to be free inside the challenges
That's it perfectly! I feel like that's a hugely relevant problem now.
Meditation is the best playbook for the age of overstimulation. When people do lay down the phone it's not restful like so many pretend. Meditation not only helps us in that moment as you say, but it also teaches us the compounding benefit. I vividly remember your muscles of concentration, clarity and equanimity. And looking for the gains 24/7 rather than directly after. Without that I would have given up and just phone fiddled all the time.
People enjoyed restorative gaps before, waiting for the bus, and likely without knowing why they probably felt better as a result. But now the phone fills all the holes, and I'm convinced we have to intentionally recreate them. Without some of the lessons from meditation, we just try one day, say ugh and give up.
What you wrote in your last sentence -- about the gap between knowing you need to rest but not being able to tolerate the silence -- actually offers a way to begin, or continue a conversation. I agree that introducing meditation is often not the best approach, but taking a few minutes of shared quiet is a good start. It is sitting alone with silence that unnerves many people.
It's a map of the silence that people really need right now. You might even argue that meditation was an optional extra before people invented these stupid things!
That's a beautiful example. Silence is something of enormous value, but that's a truth that needs to be learnt. Sounds like you arrived at that invaluable truth through a harder path than me.
Thank you Jeff. You have given me so much. I appreciate the community that has come together around your meditations and ideas. Your new website is so creative and so YOU. Love it! Thanks again for all of it.
Dear Jeff,
I read, and re-read, this piece. It is so full of practical wisdom. Thank you so much for your work. You have changed my life for the better. I’m so glad to be sharing this planet with you. All the very best.
Thanks friend, so happy it’s helpful.
Thank you, Jeff; enjoyed today’s thoughts and meditation! I really needed both today! 🙌🏻🌏🌈
Hey Jeff thanks for offering a few free meditations. I was really sad to see the DNP go up behind a paywall. I do appreciate that you give a lot of time to this and you should be financially supported. That’s always the conundrum with meditation. There’s a lot of talent and time and resources required by the teachers. But for many of us, meditation retreats are beyond our financial means. I had looked forward to spending Sunday evening with you and the many people who joined in. And I’m sad that I can no longer do that.
Hi Cyn, thank you for the comment. It is sad! I feel you. I have a LOT of conflicted feelings about it myself. The jury is still out whether I will keep the DNP behind a partial payroll. Partly it was done to create a more cohesive sense of community, and because I wasn’t sure any random person stumbling on it was the best way into meditation. And as you say, the financial piece is also sort of looming in the background. It’s been hard to figure out how to support my family since the Calm work ended. Substack is promising, but it’s also a lot of work, and it requires that I pay my amazing team members as well.
That all said, when it comes to the DNP, I’ve tried to be clear that anybody can email info@jeffwarren.org and get free access to all DNPs. So please don't hesitate to do that, friend. I give out piles of scholarships and I love doing it. By reaching out and asking for one, it tells me this is something that person really values.
It’s also worth noting that roughly 75% of my work is free. Almost all of the meditations on Home Base are free. A big part of my own personal work has been learning to value what I do enough to charge for it. That’s definitely an ongoing thing for me!
Anyway, hope that offers a bit of additional context. And who knows, all of this may shift again - it’s all part of an ongoing experiment about how to support community and be supported in turn. I feel like the questions I’m wrestling with are also important to the whole democratization project that I’ve been writing about. I do feel like community is a big part of what we’ll get us through this thing ❤️
You deserve to get paid for your work!
❤️
I have followed your your daily trip meditation on the Calm app for years and still do, every day. They have genuinely changed my life. Do you still get any payment for those?
Hey Jane, I’m so glad the Daily Trips have been such a support! It was a true joy making those, and Calm were terrific partners. I haven’t written or recorded a new Daily Trip in a couple years. I do not get paid for the meditations that still play on rotation; I got paid at the time, generously. These days they have me on a small annual retainer fee, for the odd bit of in-company virtual teaching here and there. But it’s pretty negligible.
Like a lot of the meditation apps, Calm have been struggling to figure out how to make a go of it, believe it or not. They’ve had to let go of large numbers of employees, and are not investing much in new “content”.
Hope that’s some helpful context!
No.
You deserve to get paid for your work!
Jeff please know that I value your work and understand and support the fact that you need to be reimbursed for your contributions and you have a family to support yourself. In no way didn’t mean to infer otherwise. And I hope once I’m finished school I can get in a better place financially to support you and others who help me manage my life better through meditation and mindfulness. I’m really hoping I can make it to the meditation party 2027. Take care and I hope you’re enjoying your time out west. (We did meet at the meditation day that you had in Toronto in May 2025. I came with my niece and my sister. And that was an incredible day.)
I totally understand Cyn. I did not take it in the slightest as you not valuing what I offer - I hope I didn’t come across as defensive! Again, please email to get a scholarship, it’s for exactly folks like you.
Hope to see you at Meditation Party at some point! Oh, you should also know that if you’re based in Toronto, the CEC have resumed in-person sit (free and/or by donation) on Mondays near Kensington market, I will probably be at a bunch of those through July and August. 🙌
If I could, I would give this piece way more hearts than just one. I love how you are open, welcoming, and vulnerable, and the creative way you zero in on what makes meditation and mindfulness more accessible.
Thanks so much, Sandy, I appreciate it! Hearts received
I have been meditating on-and-off for over ten years now.
I have been interested in Buddhist practice and non-duality, but over the past year I have learned that some of these practices are currently not helpful for me, especially if they involve letting go of the self. I found that non-duality practice doesn’t help me when working with trauma. I definitely benefit from more grounding, body centered practices.
I really appreciate that you address practicing as a neurodivergent person, and provide many types of practices. It has been incredibly helpful.
I hope that one day you and Ofosu will offer an online retreat for neurodivergent people!
Hi Julie, I'm Joe and I work with Jeff here at Home Base. Thank you 🙏 for this honest and helpful comment and report. Since you asked about Jeff and Ofosu in an online context, I wanted to make sure you were aware of the replay of the YouTube conversation they were both involved in last week, Meditation for Neurodivergent Minds https://podcast.meditationmag.com/neurodiversity/
While not a full online retreat, it was a really great discussion!
thankyou for this life… thankyou for your life Jeff. You know just what to say and when to say it- you bloody legend!
🙌🤪🙌
Thanks Jeff
I like the way you tier bulleted the forms of meditation and especially that instead of linear swim lanes you venn diagrammed them showing the overlapping of the 3rd tier — made me think of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline - and how perhaps all the disciplines overlapped as sort of as ancient forms of cognitive behavior therapy for a people trying to find themselves in a monetary world driven by wealth from dying cloth that cause death of workers or maybe a people still adjusting to the monetary change from blessing was rain at the right time and dry at harvest verses a million dollar financial portfolio- humans are difficult animals but I think we were hard coded to seek community in whatever form we find - God save us from our algorithms and echo chambers - we need tier 3
“ God save us from our algorithms and echo chambers” - amen to that brother. Have a whole post coming out on tier 3, I’m with you.
Thank you jeff! Today im in an a place that its so hard to stay afloat and to detach. But i guess with repetition i will manage
Sorry to hear it’s been so hard Mars. Those times definitely come, I’ve had to personally think about it in the long game. Practice, struggle, breakthrough, struggle, boredom. Remembering you’re not alone. Repeat. Forever. Having the tools is invaluable
As always Jeff, a big thank you. Going through a tough time lately has made me mostly drift in a different direction than usual but tonight this meditation has helped me to understand things in a more speculated way. I haven’t felt this settled for a while and have more confidence, so, thank you!
Hey Phoebe,
I really relate to your experience of coming back to something after a bit of time away from it. It's so interesting to hear what is said again and to find that it lands differently than it did on a previous occasion.
There is a podcast that Jeff and Tasha did on the Mindbodadventure pod with Chelene Knight called The Slow Fire of Reading. I can't recall who says it but all three agree that the same passage is different every time we read it and that the second reading is where things really start to get interesting. Since Jeff is linking to the mindbodpod at jeffwarren.org, pointing out where content overlaps seems appropriate.
Cheers,
Rosemary Foulds
Hello Rosemary, thanks for saying that. I haven’t completely stopped meditating but as Jeff has said sometimes he realises how the pile up of stressful things in life will be making you forget how meditating will help you to see sense! It is his meditations linking so many of us that I simply hadn’t given myself time for which has had a negative effect on me. I will certainly check out jeffwarren.org which I’m sure will give me more positivity.
Phoebe
Hey Phoebe, nice to hear from you. After 25+ years of meditating, I still forget how helpful it can be (sometimes), and that’s even with the meditation having a very dependable and immediate beneficial effect. The fact that that can still happen is bananas to me. Forget, come back. That’s the rhythm.
And yeah, sometimes the same instruction can land completely differently at a different point in life. That definitely happens to me all the time. Glad you’re here Friend.
Thank you Jeff. It’s the rhythm which I found out certainly works for me! When I tell people about meditating they seem to be rather surprised when I say I drift off!
I’m rather glad to be a Friend.
Jeff, there are so many useful nuggets to absorb here before I even sit with the meditation. As I've written elsewhere, I completely agree with you about not proselytizing as well as conveying that meditation practice does not require adherence to a rigid formula or set of rituals. In my earliest experiences with meditation, I found that the insistence of (unnamed famous teacher) that practice had to done a certain way to be authentic completely undermined my attempts to explore it.
Yes, to observing and affirming what a friend is already involved with, spiritually or otherwise, that has elements of concentration and insight.
Yes, to making connections between an existing practice and what meditation can offer that goes beyond that.
Yes, to clarifying that there are different forms of practice.
Yes, to offering support in a friendly and non-judgmental way.
But I'll also add that I think it's helpful to follow up on a friend's curiosity with gentle persistence -- it's takes more than a single conversation or walk in the forest. It takes noticing the moments in a conversation that offer a spontaneous opportunity to share a bit more of how practice has changed the way I move through this life. It isn't evangelizing, but it does feel to me like a moral commitment to help make the world better for all of us.
“A moral commitment to help make the world better for all of us.” I’m going to save your comment here Tamar (I have a long note to myself with important reminders, and this is one of them).
Yes, to the gentle persistence, particularly if someone is struggling AND curious. And yes, to spontaneous sharing in the right moment.
I just love that you named this. I feel the same way. I tend to be easy-going in my big picture teaching, but when it comes to specific people in my life who are struggling I can definitely be persistent around getting them to do… something!
Really interesting piece. I know what you mean about hesitating to recommend meditation. Despite loving it deeply, when friends are genuinely anguished and actually asking for advice, I find myself suggesting a walk. It feels more immediately useful and less loaded.
Your piece made me think about phones. I've heard a lot of people say their mind never gets a proper rest. They know they shouldn't use even more stimulation to rest, but the flood of bad feeling in the silence is difficult to navigate. And it's hard to believe that doing nothing can actually help, that the benefits would compound over time.
That gap - between knowing you need rest and being able to tolerate the silence - feels like where most people get lost.
Really interesting thoughts. That’s definitely the gap where people get lost - it’s where I get lost. I feel like you put your finger on what is so powerful about meditation in particular. It’s all about learning to be OK with that discomfort, sitting in that gap. Plenty of other practises can be healing and insightful and transformative, but I’m not sure any quite get at that gap the way meditation can! That’s the great promise of meditation, learning to be free inside the challenges
That's it perfectly! I feel like that's a hugely relevant problem now.
Meditation is the best playbook for the age of overstimulation. When people do lay down the phone it's not restful like so many pretend. Meditation not only helps us in that moment as you say, but it also teaches us the compounding benefit. I vividly remember your muscles of concentration, clarity and equanimity. And looking for the gains 24/7 rather than directly after. Without that I would have given up and just phone fiddled all the time.
People enjoyed restorative gaps before, waiting for the bus, and likely without knowing why they probably felt better as a result. But now the phone fills all the holes, and I'm convinced we have to intentionally recreate them. Without some of the lessons from meditation, we just try one day, say ugh and give up.
What you wrote in your last sentence -- about the gap between knowing you need to rest but not being able to tolerate the silence -- actually offers a way to begin, or continue a conversation. I agree that introducing meditation is often not the best approach, but taking a few minutes of shared quiet is a good start. It is sitting alone with silence that unnerves many people.
So true.
It's a map of the silence that people really need right now. You might even argue that meditation was an optional extra before people invented these stupid things!
In my attempts to support friends who were grieving the loss of a beloved, I began to understand the power of shared silence.
That's a beautiful example. Silence is something of enormous value, but that's a truth that needs to be learnt. Sounds like you arrived at that invaluable truth through a harder path than me.
Thank you Jeff. You have given me so much. I appreciate the community that has come together around your meditations and ideas. Your new website is so creative and so YOU. Love it! Thanks again for all of it.
Aw, thank you, Angie. I appreciate it. So nice to know you.
I love this! Thank you!
More goodness! Thanks Jeff!! And I'm so excited about your retreat with Ofosu. Sounds amazing. I'll share it. Peace my friend.
Thanks, Linda, always nice to see you in here ❤️