After only 54 minutes of meditation divided over 6 months of school, my high school student completed a survey, and the results are impressive. I've added a page to the toolbar of this blog sharing the progression of events that lead to meditation in my classroom called "Ryan's Classroom." If you have thoughts, ideas, or questions, let …
Author: Ryan Shelton
While my job description is to lead the science department and teach physics at Padua Academy in Wilmington, DE, my calling is to prepare teenagers to lead their communities towards a vibrant and healthy future. This purpose has lead to the creation of Loving Lives Delaware.
Before becoming a teacher, I explored many careers and had many adventures in search of the best way to make a difference in the world. I hiked over 1700 miles, traveled to 5 continents, managed a bakery, started a meditation center, counseled troubled teens, attended Duke, UNC, and Harvard, protected forests as a wildland firefighter, volunteered thousands of hours with Americorps, rafted the Grand Canyon, and SCUBA dived on the Great Barrier Reef.
My next adventure is starting a family with my beautiful wife in our Wilmington home. I'm sure there will be many mistakes along the way, but I hope we're able to create a loving household that's a beacon of support and clarity for others in our community. Thank you for all of your support throughout our journey.
Success vs. Love
One reason I believe daily meditation is hard is because it's not simply about setting aside time in your busy day to sit. It's about actively shifting the way you live your life. For decades, most of us have been taught to measure the quality of our lives by our successes and failures. This implies …
Community Building Through Insight Timer
Insight Timer is a great free app used by over 3,000,000 meditators. The app supports many different traditions by giving access to many different teachers and their teachings. I use the app because it allows me to log my daily meditations and connect to nearly 20,000 other Vipassana meditators trained by SN Goenka. I'm currently …
How Do We Live Loving Lives?
Since the first talk to my high school classes titled Are We Living Loving Lives? was well received, I gave a second talk that linked meditation to a life centered on truth and love. You can see the presentation slides here if you're interested. I now have around 60 high school juniors choosing to meditate for …
My Humble Authentic Voice
Goenka's stories and discourses are so good that for years I found myself using his language and sharing his stories in casual conversation as if they were my own. Vipassana was so novel and different from anything I had ever experienced that I hadn't developed the necessary language to articulate my personal thoughts and feelings …
A Missed Opportunity?
As the mindfulness movement grows, I wonder if the Goenka organization is missing an opportunity to lead. While focusing on preserving Goenka's teachings and enforcing the 2 hour a day minimum, teachers from other traditions have shown that as little as 3, 5, or 10 minutes of meditation a day can make a positive change …
Love and Truth in My High School Classroom
With mass shootings and teen suicide on the rise, there is a need to discuss what is important in life, and what is not. Most of us are running around trying to accomplish short term goals not realizing that our efforts are leading us towards an undesirable destination harming ourselves and others along the way. …
People Can Change
Vipassana has a special message to share with the world; People can change. Youthful optimism transforms into frustration, stubbornness, and pessimism with age as individuals repeatedly run into the same barriers in their efforts to make the world a better place. The expectation that everyone is acting according to their own volition has created the …
I Believe
Dreams are a funny thing. When I believe my dreams are possible, I'm willing to sacrifice everything and work tirelessly to achieve them. When I submit to the struggles of life, I escape the difficulties through sensual pleasures and surrender to long term failure. Over the last few years I've been waiting for someone to …
Social Creatures
Meditating daily is great, but it's not enough to be a healthy human being. SN Goenka made an amazing contribution to our planet by helping to spread the practice of Vipassana around the world, but after your 10-day course you're essentially on your own, and this practice is too demanding for most of us to …
Living Vipassana 