Lion’s Roar live meditation highlights member-supported shared practice

Lion’s Roar’s June guided meditation landed less like a one-off clip and more like an appointment. The June 3 session aired live as part of the site’s resident teacher series, and Lion’s Roar said the series was made possible by its community of members and donors. That matters because the pitch was not just meditation content, but participation in a shared practice with a built-in sense of timing, continuity, and accountability.

Susan Piver led the June series with live online guided meditations every Wednesday in June. Each session ran approximately 30 minutes on Zoom, with live access beginning at 8:30 a.m. PDT, 11:30 a.m. EDT. For readers who want structure without signing up for a retreat or a formal course, that format does something an on-demand recording usually does not: it gives the practice a recurring place on the calendar and makes showing up part of the point.

Lion’s Roar also promoted a members-only live talk and Q&A, “Meditation for Mystics,” scheduled for Thursday, June 18. The June theme framed meditation “not as technique, but as gateway,” which put the emphasis on practice as an entry point rather than a productivity tool. That language fits Lion’s Roar’s broader live-events push, where monthly resident teachers offer online teachings, inspiring dialogues, and weekly guided meditations meant to keep people grounded, consistent, and connected.

Piver’s background gave the series extra weight. Lion’s Roar identifies her as a New York Times bestselling author, a student of Buddhism since 1993, and a graduate of a Buddhist seminary in 2004. In 2012, she founded The Open Heart Project, which Lion’s Roar describes as the world’s largest online-only dharma center. Her author bio at Lion’s Roar also points to a long teaching arc that includes books such as The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships, The Buddhist Enneagram: Nine Paths to Warriorship, Inexplicable Joy: On the Heart Sutra, and Inexplicable Magic: Meditation for Mystics.

The bigger picture helps explain why this format resonates. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says meditation use among U.S. adults more than doubled from 7.5% in 2002 to 17.3% in 2022, and that meditation was the most popular of seven complementary health approaches measured that year. Pew Research Center estimates there were around 4.4 million Buddhists in the United States in 2020, about 1.3% of the population, with Buddhist practice in America tracing back to Chinese migrants in the 1800s. In that setting, a 30-minute Zoom session is doing more than filling a schedule slot. It is turning meditation into a shared weekly rhythm, with members and donors helping keep the room open.