If you missed the Dalai Lama last weekend, not to worry. Because: a) Though it was lovely just to be near His Holiness, you needed a blackbelt in Buddhism to fully enjoy the three-day, spoken-in-Tibetan teachings and b) MeditateNYC is coming to a St. John the Divine near you.

I’ve gotten emails and postcards from three different people on this event, so I thought you should know about it—mainly because it seems incredibly accessible to both hardcore meditators and the meditator-curious. On Sunday, October 21, from 1pm to 6pm, a wide variety of Buddhists will be teaching a plethora of meditation techniques. A detailed schedule is pending, but lots of people with Bhante and Roshi in their names will be instructing and the day will be "interspersed with movement and music."

Oh and it’s all free—sponsored by by the New York Buddhist Council and co-sponsored by the Interfaith Center of New York and the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine.

And following the event is a week of meditation Open Houses, which sounds really quite neato. With dozens of meditation groups and dharma centers around the city opening their doors, this is a veritable restaurant week for meditation. Surely one of the schools involved will meet your sitting style needs. And the idea that we can sample away is certainly appealing. Go here for more info: MeditateNYC.org

I’ve recently decided I want to commit to a meditation practice myself. I just wrote an article about the brain and found studies that show the brains of meditators are actually bigger in certain areas than the brains of non-meditators. If the stress-reducing, heart-rate lowering effects weren’t enough, you can add that to the list of reasons of why you should try and sit once in a while. This fest certainly seems like a gentle way to start.

Without sounding all desperatey, I’d love to start hearing from you about any yoga-related events I talk about, or any of the ones that I don’t. It’s much more fun if I can figure out how to meet your NYC-yoga –knowledge needs. And tips on events (ahem, free press if I write about it), are always welcome. To email me outside of the comments: Valerie at ValerieReiss dot com. (But with the appropriate @ sign and all—just trying to fake out the spammers.)