03/04/2026
I’m sharing a live recording from my recent retreat in on our podcast. We had been sitting together with the question of what it means to care in a world that is, right now, genuinely hard to look at?
At this moment, the world is breaking our hearts.
Most of the time, when life touches into what is most tender, our spontaneous reaction is to close up. Like sea anemones, we withdraw from what seems unbearable. Paradoxically, our greatest power lies in turning towards our heartbreak, in cultivating Bodhichitta, the Awakened Heart that longs to relieve suffering, our own and that of all beings.
If our one quest in life was to Care - care for our inner life, care for each other, care for all of nature - there may be no need for any other teaching, philosophy, or religion.
Mettā Bhāvanā, the Cultivation of Care, is one of the four pillars of what I call Yoga Bhāvanā. Its teachings are deeply rooted in the Buddhist practice of Loving Kindness, sometimes translated simply as Friendliness.
It is not an aspiration to feel differently than you do. It is a training in compassion: a deliberate, gradual strengthening of the heart’s capacity to stay open - to oneself first, and then outward, to the world.
This guided mettā meditation, gently held in Yotam’s soundscapes, is a place to begin. You don’t need to have been in our retreat for it to land, but it may help to know that the people in the room were sitting with the same questions you are.
Thank you for your practice 🤍 x
