deepening mindfuless with biology


In 2010, I attended my first Buddhist retreat at Spirit Rock, a contemplative center nestled in the hills of Marin County. Designed specifically for beginners, the schedule offered ample time for discussion, questions, and answers.

One afternoon, following a meditation guided by instructions to feel the breath enter and leave the body at the nostrils, I raised my hand.

During the practice, I had thoroughly enjoyed the intimacy of breathing, yet my biological training kept wanting to participate. I found myself organically envisioning the nasal mucosa, the airways connecting the nostrils to the throat, and the trachea and bronchial tubes conducting air deep into the lungs. Some of this internal anatomy I could physically feel; some of it was an imaginary visual overlay.

The imagery expanded as I envisioned oxygen diffusing from the lungs' microscopic air sacs into the surrounding capillaries, then flowing through the bloodstream to my brain, enabling me to experience this very moment of breathing.

I wondered if this biological overlay was "permitted," or if I was simply getting lost in abstract thought. A different teacher might have advised me to drop the intellectual knowledge and return strictly to the raw physical sensations. Happily, this teacher suggested the exact opposite. She told me that if the knowledge helped me stay present with my breath, then it was a skillful tool to employ.


The Spark of Mindful Biology

That single validation was an immense gift. At the time, I didn't know it would set the foundation for Mindful Biology; I only knew that the seventeen years I had spent in biomedical study and training had a home in the meditation hall. Biology was central to my life, and it felt healing to integrate it here.

The impulse was reinforced in that same Q&Q session, when a fellow retreatant raised her hand to say my exploration sounded deeply helpful and asked if I would write it down so others could practice it.

That night in the residence lodge, I wrote laboriously on small slips of paper, mapping out my mindful exploration from nostrils to lungs, and from brain to mind. I submitted the handwritten sheets to the teachers. Someone typed them up, and before long, the meditation was posted on the community board for all to read.

Everything that Mindful Biology has since become grew out of that blessed moment.


Where Science Meets Mysticism

Biology, it turns out, is a powerful gateway for connecting mindfully with the body. While there is a slight risk of getting caught up in concepts rather than staying intimate with immediate physical sensations, the benefits outweigh the danger.

Bringing biology to the cushion offers three distinct gifts:

The qualities of love, awe, and wholeness naturally arise when we observe life in action—cognitively aware of its detailed structures and functions, while simultaneously embedded in its real-time sensations. Over years of exploration and a number of profound experiences, I have concluded that love, awe, and wholeness are the hallmarks of mystical awareness.

These hallmarks were intensely active during the visionary experiences that followed the end of my surgical career, but they do not require a spiritual crisis to appear. They can be felt in any ordinary moment when we settle into the mindful feeling of life simply living itself. How extraordinary it is to be alive—that all this intricate biology is collaborating right now to create this exact experience of this precise moment!

Awe, Love, and Wholeness are central in another of the Mindful Biology "Harvests" currently (June 2026) listed on this site's homepage. I have more to say about them and will write something more specific before long. I mention them now because this post is about how biology deepens mindfulness. How deep does it take us? For me and others who've worked with Mindful Biology,  when we sensitively follow the thread of biology all the way down, we meet an essence that is vital and salvational.