Daron

Daron Larson is a mindfulness coach and writer behind Phenomenal Awareness, whose tagline is "Come back to your senses. More often than never." He describes himself as a grandfather, a dad and a husband, and as a gay Midwesterner who has been with his husband, Matt, since 1995. He says plainly that he is not a guru, and that he has never been a monk, a Buddhist or a vegetarian.

Daron has practiced mindfulness daily since October 2002. Since 2002 he has also attended dozens of silent meditation retreats, from four days to three weeks, most of them a little over a week. He calls retreats "boot camp" more than escape: the point is to return to daily life with skills for relating to it more effectively. He tries not to make a big deal of what mindfulness has done for his life, and he is not a fan of how it is usually marketed. To him it is a skill, not a commodity.

His approach, Phenomenal Awareness, is non-dogmatic. It emphasizes developing sensory awareness of ordinary phenomena over seeking on-demand calm or profound psychological epiphanies. He compares attentional fitness to physical fitness: easy to talk about, hard to make a habit, and worth the effort. Through multisensory attention exercises and everyday habits, he aims to help people savor pleasant moments more, wrestle with unpleasant ones less, and feel more alive.

Daron writes and teaches in a practical, down-to-earth, often humorous voice. He draws on his own retreat experiences, ordinary situations and films like Groundhog Day. He does not try to change anyone's beliefs. He invites people to change their relationship to their thoughts, to feel what they feel with less resistance, and to feel more at home in their lives as they are.