We’re sharing videos of one-minute meditations dedicated to various causes we believe in. You can practice with us in any of the posted one-minute meditation videos and please do contribute your own video of yourself meditating for a cause–we will happily post if you send it to us at [email protected].

We’re not doing anything new–dedicating one’s practice to a cause, being, or intention is an age-old traditional practice. It’s a misunderstanding of the teachings when folks align yoga and meditation with being passive.

With wars, environmental destruction, human rights abuses and more, we all struggle with how to act and avoid passivity in these scary times. How can individuals meaningfully respond and live in this world when we often feel powerless to change it? Yoga’s teachings have a great answer:

No offense intended, but when the Tea Party arrived on the DC scene something cracked in me. I asked one of my teachers, Ram Das, how I could love and find peace with the Tea Party despite disagreeing with them so deeply. Without pause, Ram Das said something like, “You’ll never find peace like that on the outside. Go inside and find peace, then you’ll become an instrument of peace.” And so it clicked.

Hopefully and with practice, as we go inside during our meditations we can find peace and align ourselves with it so deeply that when we open our eyes we can’t help but act according to that peace.