Daron Larson, Mindfulness Coach

10/28/2026

I’m developing a 10-part series for my Tuesday Mindful Midday Pauses on exploring the restful side of sensation.

The exercises start separately: noticing visual rest, auditory rest, physical rest. Eventually, we’ll start combining them—learning to notice how one restful sensation can lead us to another.

The point isn’t to relax for 20 minutes. It’s to get better at detecting and savoring small instances of rest, again and again, even when the rest of your experience isn’t particularly restful.

I got an unplanned demonstration of that while practicing this morning.

Toward the end of my meditation, the phone rang in another room. Matt answered it and began a work conversation. I could hear his voice and felt the familiar pull to listen to what he was saying.

Instead, I let his voice become another sound and kept noticing the rest I could see, hear, and feel.

When I began meditating daily 24 years ago this week, I was much more protective of the conditions. I closed the door. Turned off the phone. I even hung a Christmas ornament on the doorknob as a friendly DO NOT DISTURB sign.

Eventually I let the phone ring. Then I opened the door. Pets and people wandered in as easily as thoughts and feelings while I kept practicing.

This morning reminded me why this is important.

The interruption didn’t make the exercise less successful. It made the exercise more relevant.

I’m not particularly interested in getting good at finding rest only when everything around me is restful. I want to practice finding it when it’s harder to spot. I don’t want circumstances to always dictate what I pay attention to—or how.

10/19/2026

Rest can be easy to miss when unrest keeps grabbing our attention.

This fall, join me for Find Rest in the Unrest, a series of ten guided attention exercises exploring silence, visual ease, physical comfort, and quiet moments in the mind. Together, we’ll build a repertoire of restful practices to help us wind down the year and move into the next one with a greater capacity to meet whatever happens with ease.

We begin October 20 with "How to Hear Silence." Join the Mindful Midday Pause, Tuesdays from 12:30–12:50 pm Eastern.

Each session stands on its own. No meditation experience needed. I send out recordings of these sessions to everyone who registers, as well as to all subscribers.

10/16/2026

“I think playing music is such an exercise in mindfulness. You have to be absolutely where you are inside that piece. This is one of the answers to that question, why art? Music takes you outside of your petty woes and cares.”

—Barbara Kingsolver

The challenge for Barbara Kingsolver and Yiyun Li: capturing how dedication to the piano can be a source of joy and pain.

09/20/2026

What if emotional regulation begins not with getting rid of an unpleasant feeling, but learning how to feel it?

We don’t have to wait for a panic attack, a confrontation, or another high-stakes moment to practice meeting unpleasant feelings differently.

Lower-level discomfort—the tightening chest, heated face, sinking stomach, or quiet buzz of agitation—gives us opportunities to become familiar with emotional sensations before they take over.

In this week’s Phenomenal Awareness, I explore what can happen when we pause before explaining or trying to eliminate an unpleasant feeling and instead ask: What does this particular “ugh” feel like right now?

Read the commentary—or listen to the guided attention exercise—on Substack.

Practice meeting unpleasant feelings as sensory experiences, not problems to solve.

09/20/2026

komorebi (木漏れ日)
noun, Japanese

sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees

A word for something that is always changing and easy to miss.

09/20/2026

“Just as you must sometimes drink even when you’re not thirsty, you must sometimes hang out even when you’re not lonely.

I know why we’re so willing to opt out of hanging out—I mean, have you seen people? Do you know what they’re capable of? Every hurt, every heartbreak and letdown you’ve ever had, you best believe there’s a homo sapiens on the other side of it. There is no safe level of exposure to our species. So why not keep them at bay if you can?

I suppose because the things that make you crazy are the only things you’ll ever truly love. We evolved to tangle with each other, and we shrivel up and die if we don’t.”

—Adam Mastroianni, There is Mo Loneliness Epidemic, but There is an Epidemic of Scurvy

OR: hey buddy, your teeth are falling out

09/14/2026

Nearly 60 university faculty and staff members joined me this morning to exercise their attention—and begin the new month with a mental and emotional reset.

This monthly program has drawn steady interest for three years, typically bringing together 40 to 80 people. Today, participants reflected on what they had noticed during the past month: hummingbirds and a fawn, cooler evenings, baby coos, crickets at night, lawn mowers, mosquitoes, rain, sunsets, and the dark quiet of an early-morning walk.

When I asked what they were taking into the week ahead, 48% chose “a chance to slow down and reset,” while another 40% chose “greater awareness of my sensory experience.”

That’s what attentional fitness can look like in everyday life: not escaping what’s happening, but becoming more available for it.

08/24/2026

The past tugs at my attention, always ready to be rearranged. The future, too, beckons—posing as a puzzle with a single, elusive solution.

But sensory experience plays by different rules. It happens only in the present, unfolding moment by moment as a shifting blend of sensations and perceptions.

Experiment with noticing small endings during your day.

Follow the sound of a closing door until silence returns. Notice the final notes of a song or musical phrase. Feel one step end as the next begins. Notice the moment one task gives way to another.

Notice a bite of food leave your fork, then follow the sensations of chewing and swallowing until they come to an end.

You might discover that endings don’t create an empty space you need to fill. They help position your attention for renewed contact with your life.

Whenever you notice something ending, pause long enough to wonder: What’s beginning now?

Noticing when sensations end positions you to notice whatever arises next.

08/13/2026

The Anthropocene Reviewed book (featuring this essay and 49 others)...