I first walked into a Buddhist center in 2008 — anxiously interested to ease my suffering. I had no concept that in 2026, Buddhism would be a central thread of my work and my life — from intensively training new mindfulness teachers to teaching innovative courses like Finding Liberation in Relationship and Fat Dharma.
I walked in the door of the Durango Dharma Center after several friends and healers recommended meditation to me. I was desperately interested in tending to the burnout and overwhelm I was experiencing, as I navigated a rewarding yet challenging job as an executive director of a small town, rural rape crisis center.
I felt curious about Buddhism from a college course. I knew from recovery circles that meditation could be a useful component in my efforts to stay connected to a power greater than myself. I was pretty hungry to learn tools that would help me show up more fully as myself. So Durango Dharma Center felt like a good place for me to be.
Yet meditation felt impossible from the first day I walked in the door. The teachers and community were excellent, but slowing down to connect with my body felt impossible. At the time, I would describe myself as “like a lollipop” — my big full brain held all my energy, while my fat body energetically felt like simply an unflavored stick. I had no internal awareness of my fat body — just decades of external judgment piled on from outside critiques and looking in the mirror.
In meditation, especially mindfulness of breath or body, that meant I could listen and try to follow a teacher’s instructions but the gaps of silence felt painful. Practicing at home would leave me doubled over in physical pain after a few minutes.
After of few weeks of trying and failing, I was pretty sure I should just give up. Mindfulness just wasn’t for me.
I had connected enough with my teacher, Erin Treat, that I asked her if she had any advice or if I should just give up on mindfulness. She wisely informed me that breath was just one option, and I could connect with a different anchor if the breath or other body parts felt too disconnected to cultivate a sense of presence.
I found the senses to be a more accessible place to notice my experience. For me, sound was especially evocative, perhaps strengthened from my teenage years as a performing musician and CD collector. Sound allowed me to tune into sensation without getting lost in the overwhelm of my own body. The Buddha’s description of the senses as ‘sense doors’ helped me imagine and feel into that point of contact.
I can imagine how other senses like sight, taste, smell, and touch could offer a meditator an opportunity to notice and experience the external as it connects with the body. When we found that I could notice sound and have more of a chance to access that peaceful stability of grounding meditation, Erin really encouraged me to stick with mindfulness of sound as my main anchor practice.
With sound, I could stay committed to the practice of developing kind awareness. I stopped worrying about mindfulness of the breath for years.
Coming in Part 2: Why care about mindfulness of the breath?