About

I started the Deconstructing Yourself blog after years of teaching mindfulness meditation, and three decades of personal practice. I felt that meditation practice had profoundly and positively impacted my life, and wanted to share it with others. I had practiced in many different traditions and felt that often the structures of religious belief—while beautiful, satisfying, and to some extent grounding—ended up making the basic practices more difficult to understand for people living in a Western context. In my teaching and on this blog, I seek to transmit the essence of the practices in a more universal context. People from any tradition, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain, agnostic, or atheist are welcome and will find that they can make use of the material presented here while still remaining true to their faith tradition or belief. This is about meditation, how to do it, and how it affects your life, period.

Recently my friend, and fellow student of Shinzen, Jessica Graham, has contributed her unique and compelling voice to Deconstructing Yourself. I hope you find her articles as awesome as I do.

— Michael

Learn mindfulness meditation with Michael Taft and Jessica Graham.