Why meditate and walk for peace?

I now realize I was practicing walking meditation long before I knew what that was. I’ve loved living in cities - NYC, Albany and now Schenectady. I find cities so delightfully walkable with their beautiful green spaces tucked away in parks like hidden jewels. After walking for a bit, I often find myself in a state of bliss, feeling like a part of everything. 

When I started  my career as an educator over 30 years ago. I watched June Sun create the Grafton Peace Pagoda and walk for peace, drumming as she moved along, just a little sprite of a thing and yet with a majestic, powerful beauty. About that time I discovered Thich Nat Han and read his book “Peace is Every Step”. I copied his lovely prose onto chart paper and hung them up in my Pre K classroom as if they were nursery rhymes. 

All of these experiences were strongly formative for me - creating  fertile ground for my yoga, meditation and teaching practices to grow and flourish. 

While I was musing about the change makers project that has become “Schenectady Steps Toward Peace” and writing my change makers story the Buddhist Monks walk for peace from Texas to DC was being planned and prepared. Their “Walk for Peace began on October 26th 2025 & concluded on February 10th 2026. They walked for 108 days. I truly believe that my heart magically knew of this and was whispering in my ear when I sat down to write my story in September of 2025.

 The origin of my work in community meditation is deeply intertwined with my time at The Unitarian Universalist Society of Schenectady (or UUSS). I joined this congregation when my son was a toddler and stayed until he was nearly a man. UUSS validated my desire to deepen my individual search for truth and meaning. While Theo was in his Religious Education Classes, I was learning about the importance of “being where my feet are“ and of “praying with my feet”. Each Sunday as we repeated the Bond of Union, the words “Service is our Prayer’ began to take root in me. Grounded in the UUs embrace of direct experience as a source of wisdom, I’ve come to trust the transformative power of practices like meditation - not just as personal tools, but as pathways to collective healing.

As I became more and more in love with my yoga practice I began teaching it -  first at the Albany Kripalu Yoga Center and then at Inner Bliss Yoga Studio in Schenectady. Teaching yoga has been an extension of my daily practice. As they say, you teach what you need to learn most! In 2018 Inner Bliss took the initiative to partner with “Global Peaceful Cities” offering “The Schenectady Peace Project”. We offered meditation workshops, drew together a critical mass of meditators and practiced a heart coherence meditation regularly for seven summer days, beaming peaceful vibrations to the heart of our city. A statistician that worked with GPC concluded that the crime rate in our inner city went down for two weeks as a result of our efforts. Practicing heart coherence meditation was profound, syncing my breath to a resting heart beat, visualizing my heart filled with love & appreciation and beaming out those positive feelings created a sense of attunement both within myself and among our community. The experience of participating in the Schenectady Peace Project is indelibly etched in my heart and propels me forward to continue to offer community meditation practices that attune and regulate. I believe that, through attunement and coregulation, individuals and communities can experience a greater sense of well being, resulting in more compassionate relationships, wiser responses to conflict and a deeper sense of shared humanity.

The 2020 global pandemic marked a turning point in my spiritual life.. It felt like I was groping in the dark, trying to teach my class of 2nd graders over the internet from home when I got the news of George Floyd’s gruesome murder. I felt broken and confused. In the depth of my despair, I reached out to the beloved meditation teacher Tara Brach.  Tara recommended Llama Rod Owen’s book “Love & Rage”. Llama Rod is a practitioner of “Engaged Buddhism”, himself an activist before retreating into silence for three years and reentering the world as a Llama - a highly respected teacher and guide. Through my work with Llama Rod I am  better able to understand how anger is powerful medicine. That it is right to feel rage when watching a man murdered in the street by someone sworn to protect public safety. Llama Rod has helped me deconstruct my deep conditioning around the emotion of anger. Though rage was ever present in my upbringing, I myself was not permitted to express it, so I learned to receive praise and validation by being “good”, being quiet, being “easy”. I learned how to make the angry part of myself invisible. This repressed anger hides underground within me as a paralysis of chronic depression and anxiety, treated by healthy doses of regular spiritual practice.

Llama Rod teaches me the importance of remaining resourced while working for greater justice. I did participate in protests around this time. I loved the feeling of unity I found there and the comforting strength of numbers present in the crowd. Yet I felt uneasy with some of the energy embodied in the messaging. I wasn’t hearing the peace songs and the messages of love over hate that were so integral to the Civil Rights movement and longed for the same feelings of love and peace experienced in my yoga and meditation practices. Llama Rod suggests that activism without the refuge of loving self care is unsustainable. The fire of anger that burns too brightly for too long eventually burns out.

A few years later I was invited to participate in a book group to discuss “See No Stranger” by Valerie Kaur. Valerie is a activist who reminds us that rage is a natural byproduct when something we love is being threatened. Think about that for a moment - about the many things we love or value that are being threatened just now. It’s no wonder there’s so much angry discourse out in the ethos-

Valerie reminds us to process our rage in “safe containers” - such as: spiritual practice, art, music, writing and on and on. This wisdom has helped me excavate the rage that I bury deep down inside to be processed, digested, integrated so that I can emerge from my yoga mat & meditation cushion with a little more courage and a little more compassion, ready to do that small kind act that feels like the next best step. Valarie’s call to subtle (or sacred) activism is what drives me in the creation of “Schenectady Steps Toward Peace”.

And so I end with gratitude for Thich Nhat Hanh’s inspiring words, Valerie Kaur's call to sacred activism along with Llama Rod’s teachings on radical dharma and the Unitarian Universalist’s principles and sources for providing the spark, along with my daily discipline of yoga and meditation (or sadhana) for igniting the flame that has given birth to “Schenectady Steps Toward Peace” - a kind of physical manifestation from this internal journey. SsTP is a testament to the idea that peace is not merely a goal to seek, but a practice to embody. It is through these deliberate, courageous and compassionate practices that we learn to reshape ourselves, our families, our beloved communities, our nation and our world one small step at a time.

I often say, “I am a woman of many names”. I wrote this poem 13 years ago to tell the story of “becoming Mati”

-Becoming Mati

My father's crumbling hands are holding his face

He’s Kneeling on the dark wood pew

...Hallowed be thy name…

Christian

Holding the generational curse of mental illness

A slow drip of neglect and abuse 

Oozing from his fingers

 I say

...I pray dear lord my soul to keep…

Miles Davis, Matisse, Thelonious Monk, Rothko, De Kooning, Okeefe

Worshiping 

In a cathedral of art.poetry.music

Then-

yes the

Yogaaaaaa

A full body prayer

And Louise Haye telling me

You Can Heal Your Life!

And I say - 

Today is a wonderful day. I choose to make it so

And

I love and approve of myself exactly as I am at this moment, I love and approve of myself as I am exactly at this moment, I love and approve of myself exactly as I am at this moment I love….

Back at the ashram

The Guru betrays

“Bolo Shri Sat Guru”…

Bapuji says

“tears are the highest form of prayer” 

I cry

I cry

I cry

watering the flowers of friendship

crisp road maps in my worn out toyota

Going and going and going

Honoring all directions-

Through many adventurous giggles 

...merry meet and merry part and merry meet again

In the eyes of this one 

I see my child waiting for me

a tree of life 

Calling to me

through the sound of

 “Om”

I hear the wisdom of my ancestors

I feel the hope of my descendants.

I get my ass kicked-

In the tangled mess of motherhood

I am humbled

I lose my father and my marriage on the same auspicious weekend

Beginning on 

Good Friday

Now

My name is Mati

Mother

I am learning to be a loving mother to myself

So I can be a loving mother to my son

“Jai Ma Jai Ma Jai Ma Jai Ma”

on the quest for my true self

I say 

“Neti Neti”

Not this/not that

Not the father

Not the husband

No not even the beloved sun...

I hold my face in my crumbling hands

Breathing in stardust

Forgiveness floating from my fingers

I say 

“So Ham”

I am 

That

I am

that

I am

that

I am

that

I am