There’s no shortage of advice in the wellness world. What’s rarer is finding teachers whose practice is lived—not performed. People who embody the work they share.
We're back with the Sovereign Teacher Series, a recurring collection of conversations and guided practices with meditation teachers, therapists, movement practitioners, coaches, and sound healers whose perspectives have shaped our own relationship to presence.
Each week we’ll share a new teacher, a guided meditation from their practice, and reflections on what it means to live with greater awareness in a world that constantly pulls us away from ourselves.
This week it’s our dear friend Eduardo Reyes, a Guatemala-born meditation teacher based in New York who teaches as a practical way to train attention, transform perception, and meet life with more freedom, love, and presence.
On depth, performance, and actually inhabiting life.
Eduardo, who are you beyond your practice?
I’m originally from Guatemala and now live in New York. Beyond meditation, I’m someone deeply curious about the mind, consciousness, beauty, community, and what it means to live a life that actually feels alive.
A lot of my life has become an experiment in perception: how much changes when you stop moving through reality half-asleep and start participating in it more fully.
Was there a moment when everything shifted?
I found meditation almost by accident about ten years ago after an experience that gave me the unmistakable sense that there was far more to my mind than I had ever been taught. It felt like touching a deeper layer of truth, a deeper knowing, and once I felt that, I couldn’t really go back.
Meditation was not easy at first, but something in me recognized it as real. I have been following that thread ever since.
What does your practice actually look like these days?
My formal practice is usually around 30 minutes a day of shamatha-vipashyana. But the deeper practice happens off the cushion. Every frustration, awkward conversation, difficult coworker, delayed subway, craving, dream, anxiety, and inconvenient emotion becomes part of the training. Training for what? That depends on what you ultimately seek.
But from my experience, freedom, peace, bliss, love, all of it is available. You do not have to go anywhere to find it. It is already inside you, often trying to speak through your anxiety, your longing, your dreams, even your suffering. Meditation is learning to sit still long enough to hear it.
What does "presence over performance" mean to you?
It means dropping the constant performance of life and actually inhabiting it. When you are trapped in thought, anxiety, self-image, or optimization, you are always one step removed from reality. You are almost there, but not fully in it. Presence is what happens when you stop living in commentary and start living in direct experience. You can wash your dishes, walk to work on a boring Monday morning, sit in traffic, talk to a friend, and suddenly the whole thing has texture again. Life gets less flat. Even ordinary moments start to feel strangely sacred.
What do you hope someone feels after sitting with your meditation?
I hope they feel encouraged. I hope they feel that meditation is not some mysterious talent reserved for calm people. It is training. Just like going to the gym, you start where you are and build capacity. If the mind wanders, good. Now you noticed. Every time you return, you are awakening. The practice is not having a perfect mind. The practice is learning how to return.
"The practice is learning how to return."
Thank you, Eduardo <3
Practice shamatha (breath meditation) with Eduardo Reyes—his guided meditation is available now.