MAKING SPACE TO CREATE A MINDFUL LIFE

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Tara Rook grew up immersed in Tibetan Buddhist practice, surrounded by teachings that emphasized compassion, awareness, and the art of being present. Over the years, she has continued to learn from a wide range of teachers, traditions, and life experiences. She began sharing her practice through leading guided mediations, hosting & participating community wellness events & retreats around the world, creating immersive visual art and ambient music as engaging tools for your meditative journeys.

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Love Land, Tara’s virtual mediation studio, was born from her wish to create a space where all of that wisdom could meet—a sanctuary not tied to any single religion or philosophy, but open to everyone. A place where mindfulness, creativity, and community come together to nurture peace, alignment, and connection. Love Land is both personal and collective: it’s the sanctuary Tara longed for on her own journey, and now it’s here for you too.

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This is a full transcript from a live interview for The Sweet Spot. It has been edited and condensed for clarity by interviewer + community healer, HIERO. Watch a part of our interview.

H = HIERO

T  = Tara Rook

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H: Tell us your name, preferred pronouns, and what your calling is.

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T: My name is Tara Rook, and my pronouns are she/her/hers. My calling in life is to help as many people as possible, whether that's through meditation or the arts, different types of forms of healing like body work, energy work, and to help people be in the present moment. I hope to guide them out of their daily suffering. Whatever that means in their life, to bring them to a moment of peace and calm and presence.

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My meditation studio, Love Land, is a place to create a mindful life. My music, Just Milk, is an electronic music project where I produce and compose electronic music. I sing over both ambient and experimental beats. I curate DJ sets and curate gatherings as well.

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And then finally, I have my artwork, which I either use for the different elements I have, like the meditation studio, meditation offerings, designing things to help my mission. And I also sell art prints and have commission-based work.

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Tara at COMMUNE, where she hosts a monthly Meditation Club

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H: What were your family’s views on healing practices outside of the Western context and specifically plant medicines?

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T: That's such a good question. This is something I've been thinking about a lot in terms of healing. I wasn't raised to think of meditation as healing. I was raised to think of it as a practical tool in your daily life; as practical as brushing your teeth or drinking water. It’s something that you just do–every day. However, there are definitely healing benefits to meditating and different styles of meditating. But growing up was never seen as a healing element.

As for my family, we didn't really practice a lot of alternative medicine growing up. I would say we had a lot of very nourishing food in my home. We weren't really allowed to drink a lot of soda or eat really unhealthy foods. I had a diet of vegetarianism, which was my own calling as well. Influenced by my two older sisters, I started at age nine. But I would say just being exposed to alternative modalities of, maybe it's healing, or practical practices like meditation already just naturally expanded me. Growing up Tibetan Buddhist, I was always around it.

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It's really hard to even think of any sort of difference that my life would have been if I hadn't. It just exposed me to this different world in general, this different alternate reality than we have in Western society. That it's really hard to even see a separation sometimes of how body and mind work together.

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H: What advice do you give to people who say they “can’t meditate”?

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T: When someone says they “can't” or “don't” meditate. Yeah, I feel like I “can't” is more of the word that I hear. I really try to encourage them to practice for like two to three minutes because a lot of times meditation is not what people think it is. It's not even what you might think it is after doing it a couple of times.

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The act of meditating is the time you choose to sit and train your mind to be present. Sometimes you get these moments of clarity or bodhicitta, an enlightened mind, which is essentially a flash of stillness or a flash of being completely awake. You might start to enter the state of samadhi, or bliss, but the actual meditation is the time you spend training your mind to be present in whatever way you choose to train that in. Whether it's focusing on the breath or focusing on a part of the body while doing a body scan or focusing on a sound. 

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So if you can just sit for two minutes and focus on your breath, even if you have a thought that comes up during those two minutes, that's okay. Just come back, focus on the breath. There, you meditated. 

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H: Why do you think so many people feel that meditation is inaccessible  to them?

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T: I think a lot of people are just scared to sit with themselves. 

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I think a lot of people are used to being distracted. You know, this isn't something that's new. It's not because we have more technology now. No, this is why meditation has been around for thousands of years, because humans have always been distracted by something. This isn't like a new phenomenon. This is a practical tool for any state of where our society is, whether we have phones to distract us or not. But I think ultimately, we are really scared of being able to sit with ourselves, to sit with the thoughts that come up, the feelings, to not react to things. Even an itch on your body, to choose to sit through that and sit through the discomfort is such a big challenge that people don't want to face. 

Why would we face that? Because ultimately, when you are able to sit through the pain and suffering, you can cultivate a life of more joy. You can cultivate a life of more love and kindness, which are not things that don't magically appear. They're always there. You just have to get through the gunk to let them shine out. 

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H: Although oftentimes, our biggest inspirations and realizations come from a place of boredom, how do you engage people enough to get them to see the value in sitting through a 30-minute meditation session?

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T: It's really important to guide someone through things like how to sit correctly, and how to land into their body. Having that somatic relationship is so important. Integrating things like more mindful-based practices like walking, meditation, or yoga, or movement, or even a little bit of dance can help. It's a huge somatic bridge to get someone to settle their body into meditation. Art is like a key because there is a lot of visceral and somatic reaction to artwork and music. Whether you're super tapped into that or not, it's already there. And I think healing modalities like Thai body work or energy work are really on that bridge. 

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Having a guide or a teacher is so important in that sense of being able to remind people you can stay here, you got this, you can settle your body right now. Accessibility is one of the things that I hope to grow in the space with my virtual studio. I know that the people who show up regularly to practice don't have that community around them where they are. You don't even need a computer. You can use a phone and, like, put on the meditation and settle in.

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H: What is your relationship with cannabis? Has it evolved?

T: I've gone through phases in my life where I use it more, whether it's for specific intentional purposes or just consuming it more for fun or leisure. And I've used it topically a lot as well, especially for like physical ailments. I have found that as I get older, I tend to lean away from cannabis in my day-to-day. 

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Other plant medicines are something that I'm exploring more and more every day. Like right now, I'm cutting caffeine out. I love using what I already know with plant medicine and my relationship with it in the past, which is learning from trying different plants that something might energize me more. 

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A lot of it is understanding where I'm at in my life and if I know it's going to help or hurt whatever my situation is. So yeah, I would say my relationship with plant medicines is always developing and always growing where I can integrate them more into my life for different purposes. With cannabis, it's the same.

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H: Does consuming cannabis hurt or aid in your meditation practice? 

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T: I find that, not that it hurts, but that it's not necessary. I think that this also goes back to my childhood roots with meditation where I was taught to not combine any substances with meditation. So for a very long time, for I guess it would be like 16 years of my life before I first started using cannabis, that my meditation practice never incorporated that. Since that time I was starting to use cannabis socially as a younger person into my adulthood and also not getting the best quality of cannabis at that time, maybe not really knowing much about what I was using. It just never was something that I weaved together.

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However, I have found there have been times where I've used cannabis and have gone into amazing, deep relaxation states that have been so transformative. While that's not like a sitting meditation practice, it is a time where I have found really, really transformative experiences by using cannabis, being still, focusing on my breath, doing body scans, and just going really deep.

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H: What other plant medicines do you reach for to go deep? What is your favorite way to consume plant medicines for daily practical use?

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Similarly to cannabis, with mushrooms, whether that's psychedelic or not psychedelic, I’ve had experiences that do really help me to drop in. I've explored tea ceremonies or like cacao ceremonies where you're really able to sit with the plants and feel that shift. Plants can help with that bridge and that integration as well.

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But, yeah, I love brewed stuff like cacao, tea… Oh, capsules and tinctures I like a lot too.


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H: Who would be in your dream elevated meditation sesh? People who are living, deceased, whoever.

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T: Georgia O'Keeffe, David Lynch, Jeff Buckley, Bjork, David Bowie, Frank Ocean. Mm-hmm. Honestly, my family, I would love them, like my parents and my sisters. Debussy would be cool too, like Claude Debussy, like what's his mind like? You know, being able to sit with someone like that.

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H: So you’re an ambient sound DJ, a meditation guide, a visual artist, a community leader, and so much more! What is the thread that you believe ties all of these paths together?

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T: The thread is connection. Let me just say, if I could only do one thing, it would be to teach meditation. So, that is the thread. Helping people to connect to themselves, to let go, to be present, to grow, to expand.

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H: What are some challenges you’ve faced in bringing your offerings to life?  What are some ways that you've circumvented this to be able to sustainably and consistently give to your community, as you do?

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T: Some obstacles and challenges, definitely financial. Money, that's always a big, big challenge in community work. It’s kind of getting out of that trapped mindset of I don't have enough money to do that. There's money out there and it's there for you. You just have to be open to receiving it and trusting that you're going to use it for something that's good and to make an impact. Another thing is focus. Holding a vision for what you want is super important and to be able to come back to that, but knowing as well that you can rest in between it and you don't always have to go, go, go. 

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I love flyering and in-person networking and physical marketing tactics. I have a whole list of community boards all around New York. Doing pop-ups is also really great. Obviously you can make sales there too but you're also networking and marketing yourself and building brand awareness which has helped a lot is overcoming the obstacles that i mentioned.

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H: What’s next for Love Land and your personal offerings through Tara Rook Studios? Is there anything else you would like to emphasize?

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T: Next for Love Land is continuing to develop this virtual platform where meditation can feel really accessible and you can connect in community and with the teachers. Something that I would love to really start building is more of the arts element, like building a music program for meditation music and ambient music that is directly aligned with Love Land. Then, eventually, finding a brick and mortar place to be able to fold everything together in a physical realm. So hopefully that's in a couple years, location TBD. Right now, I'm really pushing for more like pop-up sanctuaries, which I'm calling them where people can come listen to ambient music and be in connection. So those are things, and just continuing to keep building in my mission of Love Land being a place to create a mindful life. 

Stay in touch: Follow Tara on Instagram | Join Love Land | Explore Upcoming Events

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