Your Life Is Your Practice

Awaken where you are, with Martin Aylward


A Path for the Life You Live

Welcome to Your Life Is Your Practice. This online course is an opportunity—across six units of training—to integrate crucial and yet often contrasting elements of Buddhist practice. For example, the serenity of a meditation retreat and the challenges of mindfulness practice amidst the hustle and bustle of life.

This is the thread that runs through this course: We're supporting the potency of formal practices but also taking ourselves off the cushion and into the kitchen so that we can use the stuff of everyday life to inquire, to care, and to grow. This is the taste of freedom into which this practice invites us. 

–Martin Aylward


This course is closed for enrollment.

Features and Benefits

Martin Aylward in the kitchen, hands open in a welcoming gesture
A teacher who knows the way

Martin Aylward is not only an experienced and respected meditation teacher, he has walked the path in the midst of family life and while holding responsibility for a thriving dharma center. He knows the terrain of deep practice in daily life.

Live freely and openly

This online course is about seeing where we are stuck in our everyday lives and freeing ourselves through meditation and wise inquiry. It's a hands-on program that gives you the ideas and practices that make a difference.

An integrated path

The teachings of the Buddha are not meant to be separated from our work, from our family, from our difficulties. This course contains video talks, guided meditations, and practices that will bring the teachings directly into your life.

Stepping stones over a stream in a bamboo forest
Reduce the friction in your life

Meditation outside of retreats doesn't have to be a struggle or a constant search for better conditions. In this course we are turning towards our lives as the raw material for our practice.

A reflection of a person in shallow, brightly–lit water
A playful view of practice

Meditation has often been reduced to overly simplistic techniques. Actually, we can take a broader, more inspiring view as we embrace the endless possibilities and ever–changing situations life brings us.

Martin Aylward in a bedroom, next to a guitar
26 insightful videos

Deepen your practice and understanding over six weeks of carefully guided instruction. At the end of this program, you will have confidence in working with challenges and turning obstacles into the path itself.

Martin Aylward near a Buddhist shrine
Follow Martin through his day

Immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the beautiful Moulin de Chaves retreat center in France. In each of six different locations, Martin brings a new aspect of meditation to life.

Young man walking in street with headphones
Join the community

The path is richer and more meaningful when we walk with others. Connect with committed practitioners and those just starting out in the forums and Live Q&As.

Take the course with you

Learn anytime, anywhere. You don't need to be at a computer to take this course. You can download audio files or the workbook, then head into nature or a cafe. You will also retain access to the course for as long as you need.

Live Q&A


Enroll now to ask questions in two live Q&A Sessions with Martin, hosted on Zoom on the following dates.

  • Tuesday, June 3 at 12pm EST / 5pm GMT.
  • Thursday, June 12 at 12pm EST / 5pm GMT.

Meet Martin Aylward

Martin Aylward is an Insight Meditation teacher, author, and cofounder of the Moulin de Chaves meditation center in France. He is the founding teacher of Sangha Live, and passionate about creating a path to freedom in the midst of life.

How this Exploration Unfolds


This easy-to-use online course is a six-week program of instruction, meditation, and inquiry. Each unit contains around 45 minutes of material to study, as well as contemplative exercises. After the course begins, a new unit will be released each Monday. You are free to study at your own pace, and will retain access to the material ongoing.

You can follow the course on a computer, tablet, or phone.


Unit 1 | Choice and Conditioning

Our life seems to be an endless series of choices that can seem either empowering and intoxicating or overwhelming, pressurizing, and anxiety-provoking. So given how much of our life is carried along in the currents of our choices and decisions, we might be well-served to zoom in on that process to explore what's happening when we make choices. We could also zoom out a little so that rather than just "me and my choice", we make room to see what else is happening.

Unit 2 | Letting Go and Committing

We hear a lot about letting go within dharma practice. I want to explore what that means, because I think "letting go" is an unfortunate or limiting translation of the original term, which literally means nonclinging. There are nuances to explore around when to let go and when to engage, commit, and follow through. Through this exploration we learn to use our responsibilities and relationships as the ground of practice.

Unit 3 | Focused Attention and the Wandering Mind

We have this orthodoxy in meditation practice that mindfulness and meditation are about being focused: We’re supposed to be focused, but we get distracted and then we come back to being focused. Of course, there’s a certain truth to that... but there’s more to it. We’re going to look at different modes of focus. Just as there are benefits to a precise focus, there is a kind of inspiration and creativity that arises out of being unfocused. There is an art to skillful mind-wandering.

Unit 4 | Reactivity and Responsiveness

Many of the Buddha’s teachings are aimed at reactivity: our conditioned tendencies, our unresolved mind-states, our undigested emotions that spill out in various ways. Daily life is the best territory for this exploration because that’s where you come up against other human beings: the provocations and pressures and button-pushing. In this unit we will lean into the space in which we can pause and choose. We'll learn to meet that reactivity, explore it, understand it, and liberate it. This allows us to be more freely and fully responsive to life.

Unit 5 | Relationship and Identification

This practice encourages a willingness to expose ourselves to the world, to be in a deepening intimacy with the world, to fall in love with the world—and yet there is a constantly elusive sense of what a world is. If you have the opportunity to be outside for this unit, I’d encourage you to do so. That might just mean opening a window in your apartment and letting the world in: the sounds of the world, the feel of the world, the aliveness of the world as we reflect, practice, and explore.

Unit 6 | Friction and Freedom

Sometimes we hear the words "enlightenment" or "liberation" connected with Buddhist teachings. I use the word "freeness" a lot. The point of dharma practice—the point of training your mind, freeing your heart, exploring your consciousness, opening to life—the point of it all is to flourish as a human being. We go from friction to freeness in the service of human flourishing.

Sample Meditation: Openness and Responsivity

Get a taste of the freedom that's on offer in Your Life Is Your Practice.

Course Curriculum

Click the arrow below to see the full contents for all six units.

  Introduction
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  Unit 1: Choice and Conditioning
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  Unit 2: Letting Go and Committing
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  Unit 3: Focused Attention and the Wandering Mind
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  Unit 4: Reactivity and Responsiveness
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  Unit 5: Relationship and Identification
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  Unit 6: Friction and Freedom
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  Continuing Your Journey
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