I try to sit every morning. Have for years. I've meditated in hotel rooms and airports and parking lots before difficult meetings. I've logged thousands of hours on the cushion at this point, sat through retreats, trained at Banyan under two of the people I respect most in this tradition.
I still like having someone to text "Sat today."
Not because I'll forget otherwise. Not because someone else is forcing me. Because witness matters. Because transformation, in my experience, happens in relationship — not in isolation. And because the days I most need to sit are often the days I'm most reluctant to, and having someone who notices when I go quiet is the thing that tips me back toward the cushion.
There's something in the contemplative traditions about sangha — the community of practitioners — that gets at this. It's not that you can't practice alone. Of course you can. But the reinforcement of knowing someone else is on the path with you, that your practice is witnessed, that it exists in relationship to another human being — that matters in ways that solo practice doesn't fully capture.
I've seen people with extraordinary intellectual knowledge about meditation who have almost no practice. They can explain neuroplasticity and the default mode network and the difference between samatha and vipassana — and they sit maybe three times a year. The knowledge doesn't create the habit. The relationship does.
When I check in with someone after I sit, I'm not looking for validation. I'm completing a loop. There's something that happens in naming a thing — "I sat today, it was hard, I did it anyway" — that makes it real in a way that staying inside your own head doesn't. It moves the practice from private intention to actual commitment, witnessed by another person who gives a damn.
This is what I offer when I work with people. Not wisdom handed down from on high. Not a technique you couldn't find in a book. Just consistent, caring presence in the form of: I notice you haven't checked in this week. How are you doing? Did you sit?
The days that question lands on you and you have to admit "no, not yet, but I will now" — those are often the most valuable days in a practice. Not because shame motivates (it doesn't, not sustainably). But because someone caring enough to ask is sometimes exactly what reminds you that you care too.
We are fellow travelers on this path. Not teacher and student in any hierarchical sense — just two people keeping each other honest about showing up. That's the accountability that makes practice sustainable across years, not just weeks.
You don't need a guru on a mountain. You need someone who gives a damn if you sat today.
