Long before neuroscience had the tools to measure it, contemplative traditions across the world knew that sound had the power to transform consciousness and heal the body. From the Vedic rishis chanting the Rigveda to Tibetan monks intoning om mani padme hum, from Sufi dhikr to Gregorian plainsong — every contemplative tradition has developed sophisticated practices using voice and sound as tools of inner transformation. Today, science is beginning to catch up with what practitioners have...

Two of the world's oldest and most sophisticated systems for working with sexual energy and consciousness developed, largely independently, on either side of the Himalayas: Tantra in India and Tibet, and Taoism in China. Both traditions recognised something that most spiritual systems have either denied or ignored — that sexual energy is not an obstacle to awakening but one of its most potent fuels. Understanding the parallels and divergences between these traditions offers a rich map for any...

There is something that happens when gay and queer men gather in a space that is intentionally created for them — where they do not have to code-switch, perform, or navigate heteronormative assumptions about how a body should be or what a man should feel. Something relaxes. Something that has been held tightly, often for decades, begins to release. This is the essential gift of the GBTQ+ men's retreat: not the activities or the facilitators or the beautiful location, but the permission to be...