What is the Do Nothing Project?

Prepare to be underwhelmed! Every Sunday night myself or a cohost guide a free 25-minute meditation on Substack Live. Our subject is a variation on nothing whatsoever.

You can read more about the Do Nothing Project here, and peruse hundreds of archived weekly meditations here.

Look forward to doing nothing in community with you!

Jeff

Watch Last Week's DNP Here

Enjoying the Do Nothing Project? Check out the Consciousness Explorers Club (CEC), a non-profit meditation adventure group that I founded over ten years ago (anniversary animation here), now run by my friend Erin Oke and a crew of dedicated volunteers. The CEC offers free guided meditations and articles, hosts its own highly exploratory online community meditation on Monday nights, and aims to be a resource for community practice groups around the world.

You might also like The Mind Bod Adventure Pod - an experiential sandbox for mind and body hosted by my friend and me.

Wow! An amazing response from our fearless community to our Meditation Open Mic Night. Thank you! Many of you sent in practices that were grounding and vulnerable, genuine and even weird. We love weird. I can honestly say I’ve never meditated in so many beautiful and varied ways.

These recordings are a direct line into what connects us here. As you practice with them, you’ll be sitting with voices that were once just usernames in the comments. New styles of connection and regulation, new ambient sounds and environments, and at least one restless meditating cat. This is what the Democratization of Mental Health actually sounds like, gathered in this Dropbox folder: (click the button below — if you are on your phone, you won’t need the Dropbox app, just click “open in browser”)

Home Base Community Meditation Practices

Each practice is listed by community member name and theme. You can download the files or listen online. New practices will be added as they come in, so if you’re curious about guiding a meditation yourself, there’s still time:

Record a Practice

Today we’re featuring FOUR practices for your listening pleasure — from both new guides, and one familiar face from the Do Nothing Project:

is a regular in the Home Base community, and you might know her from Home Base Hangouts or our Sunday night Do Nothing Project chat. Tamar guides a caring introduction to dealing with chronic pain (or any type of discomfort). Tamar is a NYC-based visual artist whose work can be found here.

Tamar - An Introduction to Chronic Pain

— a frequent much-loved The Do Nothing Project sub, and (it so happens) a Zamboni driver-in-training — sent in a hypnotic 15-minute practice of a Zamboni ice-machine rhythmically and methodically cleaning the surface of your mind. Andrew will be guiding this coming Sunday’s Do Nothing Project, so come join us!

Andrew - Zamboni Meditation

offers a unique “body kindness” practice for any time your physical body needs some extra love. Angie regularly guides meditation via Zoom on Thursday evenings at 8:30pm PT, focusing on relaxation and easing into the evening and weekend.

Angie - Bodykindness

has been meditating for years, living — in her words — “with a perpetually dysregulated nervous system.” She offers a grounding relaxation practice, helpful for any time the system is revving.

Malaya - Relaxation Practice

There’s still one more week to hop on stage and take the mic. Some final encouragement from Jeff:

I think it’s good to de-mystify meditation guidance. Not so the world can have more would-be-gurus (God help us); more as an exercise in understanding the accessibility of practice. By actually trying it yourself, you begin to get an experiential feel for what can support both you and others. And then - who knows? Maybe one day it comes in handy, in a way you don’t expect.

Select this link on your phone or computer to record directly to us. Share your first name, offer a brief framing (optional), and then go for it. If you’d rather use a phone voice memo app — or send in an audio file you recorded some other way — DM me here on Substack and I’ll share an email address to send it to. Please keep your practice under 10 minutes. And don’t be afraid of silence! That’s when the medicine really lands.

We’ll feature more practices in next week’s post. Until then, enjoy!

Joe

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A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) live meditation, guided by Andrew Lenards, is Sunday, August 16 at 8pm EDT. Link here. Replays are archived Monday mornings on Home Base and YouTube.

• New to Home Base? We have over 80 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 65 extended meditations, over 365 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new live community gatherings happen every week.

• Home Base is best experienced on a web browser (laptop or mobile), NOT the Substack app. To manage Substack emails and notifications, read this.

• Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I made for the apps live on in perpetuity, I’m not paid to record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here; becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that work. If you found this meditation and post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …

Buy Me A Coffee

Many thanks!

Being Human Takes Practice - North Caroline

Art of Living Retreat Center, North Carolina
October 23-25, 2026

A retreat on what meditation teaches us about being human. We explore resistance and fixation, stuck emotions and stuck views. We explore awe, humility, connection and mystery. The aim is for everyone to leave the weekend with a clearer sense of why they practice, and a more intimate feel for the many strange and beautiful ways to move deeper into life.

Learn More / Register

This is Joe, Jeff’s Production Manager here at Home Base. Jeff’s taking some very well-earned time away to rest and so that means … COMMUNITY TAKEOVER!! All of us are going to lead this, because in the Democratization of Mental Health, there is no leader!

In Jeff’s recent post Release The Amateurs, he made a pretty audacious claim:

“…you don’t need to be an expert meditation teacher to share a simple practice any more than you need to be an expert cook to show someone how to boil an egg.”

Honestly, I wondered if that was true. But when I thought about how I first began my own practice — while in a place of deep anxiety and a noisy nervous system — all I needed was a simple prompt to pause and notice the space around my thoughts. A prompt (and permission) to offer some self-compassion. Simple, boiling-an-egg-level nourishment that really could come from almost anyone.

And while there’s only one Jeff, there are thousands of us. That’s the real magic of this community.

Think of these next few posts like a party that’s gone late into the night and everyone is feeling that comfort that only comes from being with lifelong friends. Someone to the left of you feels vulnerable and brave and shares that they’ve recently begun writing poetry. They offer a first draft of a poem that is so gorgeous and fragile the flaws in meter aren’t even noticed. Another friend spies a guitar across the room and plays a song they’ve been writing, explaining halfway through that the bridge isn’t finished yet. And then another shares part of a short story they’re writing on the notes app on their phone.

Before you know it, it’s a full-on open mic night of heart-forward imperfect sharing.

So for the next few weeks, in honor of Jeff’s challenge, welcome to Meditation Open Mic Night. I’m kicking it off with a guided practice in this post, and now each of you is invited to take the mic.

How to step up to the mic:

1. Find a practice: Write one from where you are, or use Jeff’s Community Practice Activation Kit, or use a practice from here on Home Base - there’s a great ready to go practice in Release the Amateurs. It doesn’t matter if ten people pick the same one. Each will be unique.

2. Record it (10 mins max): Click this link on your phone or computer to record directly to us. Say your first name, offer any brief framing, and just go for it. (Note: If you’d rather use a phone voice memo app or send in an audio file you recorded a different way, just DM me here on Substack and I’ll give you an email address to send it to).

3. Don’t overthink it: Don’t do ten takes. Don’t worry about perfect audio. Just be you, sharing a simple practice with a friend who needs it.

What will Home Base do with these?
Great question! We’ll organize them into a shared Dropbox folder and share a link with you in upcoming posts so the whole community can access them. We may publish a few in the upcoming posts too. That means if you send a guided practice to us, you’re agreeing to allow us to use it in this way.

You’re up next, friends. Grab the mic! (Click that link to record)

Share

Extended Meditation

A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) live meditation is Sunday, August 9 at 8pm EDT. Link here. Replays are archived Monday mornings on Home Base and YouTube.

• New to Home Base? We have over 80 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 65 extended meditations, over 365 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new live community gatherings happen every week.

• Home Base is best experienced on a web browser (laptop or mobile), NOT the Substack app. To manage Substack emails and notifications, read this.

• Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I made for the apps live on in perpetuity, I’m not paid to record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here; becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that work. If you found this meditation and post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …

Buy Me A Coffee

Many thanks!

Practice Enlightenment - CEC Meditation

St Stephen-in-the-Fields, 103 Bellevue Ave and online via zoom
August 10, 7:30pmET

In this meditation on nothing happening, nothing much happens. A few pauses. A bit of something. Back to nothing. Long long waiting for something to happen, then we realize waiting for something to happen is actually nothing, which is where we want to be. This week at the , we practice enlightenment, and irreverence, and irreverent enlightenment.

Register Here

Read more

Then he cries! Then he shares a video of a sunset! What the hell is wrong with this sop? A beautiful community night.

Every day, I forget that I’m mostly swimming in the choppy surface waves of my mind, a set of preoccupations – and a way of relating to those preoccupations – that dictate so much about the course of my relationships, the things I find important, my urgencies and my denials. It all seems so all-encompassing from up there.

Meditation drops me into the broad oceanic sense of life just happening. There’s a kind of neutrality here that comes as a relief. I don’t have to prove to reality that I’m allowed to be here. Nobody does (although some of us do need to prove it to our institutions, to other countries, even to our neighbors).

There isn’t a human on the planet who can’t benefit from this kind of space and repose, however they get there. The urgency can settle, at least temporarily. Fewer thoughts in the moment = fewer problems in the moment. We breathe out, feel our feet on the ground, and maybe remember the blessing of being here in the first place.

This week, a guided meditation on first principles, with an extended version for die-hards.

Love to my community,

Jeff.

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Extended Meditation

A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) live meditation is Sunday, August 2 at 8pm EDT. Link here. Replays are archived Monday mornings on Home Base and YouTube.

• New to Home Base? We have over 80 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 65 extended meditations, over 370 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new live community gatherings happen every week.

• Home Base is best experienced on a web browser (laptop or mobile), NOT the Substack app. To manage Substack emails and notifications, read this.

• Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I made for the apps live on in perpetuity, I’m no longer paid to record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here, and becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that. If you found this meditation or post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …

  Buy Me A Coffee

  Many thanks!

New York Insight - Two Upcoming Events

31 Days of Practice (online): Starts August 1, 2026
and … Where Meditation Leads (in-person): August 13, 2026

I have two events coming up with New York Insight. The first – 31 Days of Practice – is part of their annual benefit. Donate, and every day in August receive a new guided meditation from a different teacher in your inbox. It’s a great way to sample different styles of teaching, and of course build-up momentum in your practice.

31 Days of Practice

The second is an in-person evening event with me at their West 29th Street location, called “Where Meditation Leads.” We explore moving between the turbulent surface layer of mind and the deeper stream of life just happening. The kind of awareness that lives here is both ordinary and sacred, and available to anyone at any time. Expect guided meditation and discussion. More details here:

Where Meditation Leads

Read more

Home Base Hangout is one of the additional signals of support available to paid subscribers, along with customized meditation practices, and more on the way.

Read more

As a math teacher and meditation guide, shares this as a helpful framing for how our meditation practice relates directly to our world. Brooke gently guides us to settle in, notice, and become available to what we long for, while encouraging us to practice exactly that - because, like fractals, when we practice our longing, it spirals out and sets the pattern for our whole world. It’s math! We are romanesco broccoli.

You might panic at the thought. (I did – more on that below.) Assume you’re not worthy, as though guiding meditation were an esoteric mystery requiring years of yogic cave-dwelling: “Only once I have purified the golden reaches of my True Self and defeated the demons of Mara can I come down from this mountain and share my wisdom with regular mortals.”

But you don’t need to be an expert meditation teacher to share a simple practice any more than you need to be an expert cook to show someone how to boil an egg.

“In a light way, pay attention to X. If your mind wanders, come back.”

Seventeen years ago, my teacher Shinzen Young suggested I guide meditation. I told him I wasn’t qualified, that I was still learning. I also told him I was mentally deranged, and then I rolled my eyes like a mad horse.

He said that’s exactly why I should do it – the world needs more ignorant, deranged, vigorously horsey role models. No, he didn’t say that. But he did say it was good for me to recognize my own fallibility, how none of us knows much in the big scheme of things, and what we do know is imperfect and incomplete. He said that shouldn’t stop us from acknowledging what we do know.

So I started to guide. It worked out.

Question: What do you know about meditation?

If you know how to close your eyes and follow the breath for a while, and how not to get too uptight about thoughts, and how to let things be imperfect … well, if someone asks, those are solid tips.

That’s the accessible end of practice. There’s also a diverse creative end. I used to host workshops that encouraged people not just to share practice, but also to invent them.

In groups of two or three, people would take turns guiding each other in simple ten-minute practices of their own design. I was always moved by the personality and originality of what emerged.

Intentional practice can be reconfigured in many ways, across many forms. It’s a powerful creative medium because it works directly on your in-the-moment experience of reality. Some practices involve a lot of instruction. Others, very little. Each practice is a mystery when you guide, because you never quite know how it will land. Also, it’s never about you. Understanding how it is never about you is both the guide’s primary learning, and their primary teaching. It’s part of the mystery. Because … who or what IS it about?

As we get more experience with the core skills of meditation, we develop more confidence around how to customize practice to work for us. This can lead to more curiosity about others. What does this person need? What practices do they already do? What difficulties have we personally encountered – and what have we done – and how might all that be relevant for this particular human sitting in front of us?

I get emotional watching people take turns caring for each other through guiding. I can see their unique quirks and hard-won truths start to come through.

Sharing practice has changed me. I can’t believe I get to do this. The trust of my fellow humans, their bravery and sincerity. It feels like I get more than I give, like the healing itself has no boundaries. It’s like a wave around the room, a wave around the world. Each new guide is a lineage in waiting.

Obviously, we still want experienced teachers. We want them to help us navigate specific challenges and techniques and traditions. We want all levels of professionals. And, when it comes to connection and love and the capacity to be present with each other, we want everyone else, too.

Healing and growth, self-regulation and self-understanding — these things are too idiosyncratic, too personal, too fundamental to depend on specialists-only. We also need to depend on ourselves and one another.

In my mind, nothing will accelerate this more than re-casting “teaching” as a creative social activity that any informed person can engage in. This is the democratization of mental health.

Release the amateurs!

Today’s guided meditation offers a few tips on how to guide a friend in a simple practice. If someone asks, try it out and see what happens. And share how it goes in the comments!

Much love!

Jeff

PS – One way to make mental health practices and support structures more accessible is to start your own modest meditation group with a few friends, and then learn from each other. To that end, download my free kit. A life of practice has incalculable benefits. We can help each other get started.

A Seven Minute (or so) Meditation Script For Beginner Guides

INTRO

Imagine a friend or co-worker or family member says “You meditate, right? Can you show me how?” At first, you say, “I am not worthy, for I have not yet reached the depths of enlightenment attained by my guru, Jeff Warren, a radiant being whose perfect words dribble like golden nectar down his chin and into his beard.”

Your friend says … “Ew.” Then they say, “Even so, I’m interested. Can you share the basics?”

So … you do. Because you don’t need to be a professional meditation teacher to share a basic meditation any more than you need to be an expert chef to boil an egg.

As a guideline, try this simple script. A bit of framing off the top can be helpful, something like: “So you’re going to sit there and not do much. Your mind will probably think the whole thing is boring or trivial or impossible. Try to ignore those thoughts and do it anyway.”

Let’s go.

MEDITATION

Eyes can be open or closed, whatever feels comfortable. Sit or lie down. If lying down causes you to fall asleep, then sit up. Take a few slow, deliberate breaths. Maybe extend the exhale a bit. Imagine as you breathe out that you’re also breathing out any uptightness. Let things be imperfect.

(10 seconds silence)

Choose a simple sensation to pay attention to. Maybe the feeling of the breath at your nostrils, or a sense of your whole body sitting. Or a sound — the hum of a refrigerator, wind in the trees. We call this a Home Base. Choose a Home Base, and then stay for a while.

(30 seconds silence)

Mind wanders. That’s normal. Bring it back to your Home Base. You’re being present with not much happening. Can you pretend not doing anything is kind of satisfying?

(45 seconds of silence)

Mind wanders. You come back. If there are lots of thoughts and feelings, no need to get rid of them. See if you can have an easygoing, companionable attitude towards all of it, like: “Welcome thoughts, please hang out in the background while I return to my Home Base.” Keep going.

(45 seconds of silence)

Face relaxed. Dropping any agendas. You’re just existing without needing to prove yourself.

(60 seconds silence)

CONCLUSION

When you’re ready, open your eyes.

That’s it. Congratulations, you meditated! Then you can say: “I charge $800 an hour, friends and family discount, 15 minutes of my time … let’s call it $150, or just buy me an oat milk matcha latte. As for your homework … try ten minutes a day for a couple weeks, let me know how it goes!”

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A Seven Minute (or So) Meditation Script For Beginner Guides

96.6KB ∙ PDF file

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Extended Meditation

A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) live meditation is Sunday, July 19 at 8pm EDT. Link here. Brooke Thomas will be guiding us. Replays are archived Monday mornings on Home Base and YouTube.

• New to Home Base? We have over 80 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 65 extended meditations, over 370 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new live community gatherings happen every week.

• Home Base is best experienced on a web browser (laptop or mobile), NOT the Substack app. To manage Substack emails and notifications, read this.

• Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I made for the apps live on in perpetuity, I’m no longer paid to record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here, and becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that. If you found this meditation or post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …

Buy Me A Coffee

Many thanks!

Read more

Thats my metaphor for a better world. Simply the understanding woven into the culture that to be at our best, we also need to slow down. A column of light in every classroom and workplace and hospital.

Another way of saying it his is: let’s not do anything right now!

The retreat’s curriculum poses a fun intellectual challenge for me, as a neurospicy human. How do I balance an understanding of the diversity of our nervous system needs, on the one hand, with the healing universality and simplicity of meditation on the other? Every decent meditation teacher comes up against this contradiction in different ways. It’s just more exaggerated with neurodivergent practitioners, since – in matters of sensitivity, emotional regulation and other processing differences – many of us live at the outer range of our respective spectrums.

For this retreat, the solution we’ve come up with is: options. Lots of them (spaced out, to avoid overwhelm). Lots of ways in, and – crucially – lots of ways down. As in, down-regulation. In the neurodiversity context, this means regular check-ins around what folks need, and when. It means ensuring a sensory-safe space away from the group is always open – a space to rest and move and make art and lie on your back repeating the Lord’s Prayer. It means breaking things up with movement and nature practices and sharing special interests and restorative soundbaths and (if my master plan works out!) a neurodiversity-themed video viewing party for maximum amusement, insight and co-regulation.

Once we’re down – or down-ish – it’s easier for the medicine of meditation to land.

That medicine, in my way of thinking, is, basically: finding and resting in the “no problem,” amidst all the problems. A radical proposition. It’s being genuinely available to the sensory moment, to our own bogglement and hopeless desire for certainty, and ultimately to the many surprising ways our minds and bodies start expressing themselves when we get out of our own way.

Practicing this kind of equanimity, again and again, is healing and transformative for both those on the mental health edges, and for those more in the middle (the non-existent middle). You could say it’s the practice of our own innocence. The care in this – the love – radiates out. It can become the paradoxical basis of how we approach change in ourselves and the world.

So. In this post, something a bit different. First – at the top – a 14-minute guided meditation about this, taken from my recent Hollyhock retreat on Cortes Island, B.C. The full 27-minute version of the meditation is below, for those seeking something more substantive. Second, I’ve embedded a teaching video from the end of that same retreat that expands on what I’ve written above. It goes into how meditation deepens over time, into what it means to “awaken,” and it unpacks the radical creativity and healing potential of equanimity. Also – bonus! – I talk about what a shitty palliative caregiver I was. Because, before I understood anything about equanimity, I stressed out a lot of almost-dead people.

Read more

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Toronto is wildly multicultural: Portuguese, Koreans, Italians, Iranians, Senegalese and Mexicans (among others) all cheering both for their home countries, and for Team Canada itself, who’ve played phenomenally well. My eldest son in particular was electrified by the fabulous costumes and the honking cars and the general vitality of the street life. So much joy.

Also: so much intensity!

While getting the kids takeout karaage chicken, I took a time-out in the corner of the restaurant. I sat, closed my eyes. Checked in. Noticed a low-level headache, some tiredness from the jet lag and the heat. Just becoming aware of that made me more relaxed, freed up energy I hadn’t realized I was spending managing all of it. I put my hand on my belly. The cool breeze from the air conditioner. Buzz of happy voices. My karaage oasis.

Ten minutes later I felt genuinely refreshed. Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to have a meditation practice. While I was gone, the kids got free hotdogs from Pride’s family zone, so I spent the rest of the day walking around with fragrant fried chicken steaming in my knapsack.

In the spirit of quick resets, here are three 5-minute meditations to add to our quick-hit library. They form a loose sequence: first finding care in the hands and resting the body, then being part of the landscape, and finally cultivating some appreciation for ourselves and the people – and world – all around us.

Here you go:

– Care in Your Hands

Read the full post - and listen to the longer version - here

– Part of the Landscape

Read the full post - and listen to the longer version - here

– Mutuality

Read the full post - and listen to the longer version - here

Enjoy these long summer days, friends (and short winter ones, for my antipodean community). I’ll share a longer practice next week.

Much love,
Jeff

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A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project (DNP) live meditation is Sunday, July 5 at 8pm EDT. Link here. The DNP is for paid subscribers three times a month, and free for everyone the first Sunday of the month. If the cost of a subscription is not accessible to you, full scholarships are available at info@jeffwarren.org. Replays are archived on Monday morning.

• New to Home Base? We have over 75 free guided meditations in our audio library, over 60 extended meditations, over 365 meditations on YouTube, and a growing number of community practice videos. New writing, new audio meditations, and new live community gatherings happen every week.

• Home Base is best experienced on a web browser (laptop or mobile), NOT the Substack app. The app is great for finding new authors who have much to say, and, like any social media platform, it will suck out your eyeballs and, eventually, your brain. To manage Substack emails and notifications, read this.

• Did you find me on Calm or Happier? While the meditations I made for the apps live on in perpetuity, I no longer record new meditations for them. My latest work happens here; becoming a paid subscriber is the best way to support that work. If you found this meditation and post helpful, but becoming a paid subscriber isn’t an option, you can also …

Buy Me A Coffee

Many thanks!

New York Insight - Two Upcoming Events

31 Days of Practice (online): Starts August 1, 2026
and … Where Meditation Leads (in-person): August 13, 2026

I have two events coming up with New York Insight. The first – 31 Days of Practice – is a virtual benefit; sign up, and every day in August receive a guided meditation from a different teacher. It’s a great way to sample different styles of teaching, connect to the large New York meditator diaspora, and of course build-up momentum in your practice.

31 Days of Practice

The second is an evening event at their West 29th Street location called “Where Meditation Leads.” We drop down from the turbulent surface layer of mind into the deeper stream of life just happening. The kind of awareness that lives here is both ordinary and sacred, and available to anyone at any time. Expect guided meditations and discussion. More details below:

Where Meditation Leads