A Philadelphian’s Guide to Learning … Anything

Sometime in the Foreseeable Future

Do Japanese rope bondage
Leave it to the Japanese to make sex a complicated practice. In kinbaku (literally “tight binding”), one partner ties the other up using rope and complex patterns. Sexploratorium offers regular courses in the kinky art.
THE TIME: They’ll show you the basics in one two-hour session, but like Japanese calligraphy, kinbaku can take a lifetime to master. At least you’ll have fun, er, doing it.
THE TAB: $60 per couple the day of the class; $40 in advance. Plus lots of rope.

Control yourself
I’m sitting in the office of Brian Gallagher, a psychologist with Einstein Healthcare Network, because I have a problem. I cry too much—at sad movies, at maudlin TV commercials, but most infuriatingly during my annual reviews at work. Read the rest of Sandy Hingston’s essay on learning to stop crying here.

Climb
Instructors at Go Vertical are rock-scaling Mr. Miyagis, dispensing sage advice like “Trust your feet” and, more obliquely, “Use your skeleton—not your muscles.” Such adages actually make sense once you’re on the rock: You don’t understand these lessons with your brain so much as feel them with your body.
THE TIME: Two hours for an intro lesson, but that’s mostly just to learn the ropes (literally). Serious climbing skills take longer to build.
THE TAB: Day passes are $18; $153 covers 10 days.

Meditate
Because the path to peace ain’t easy: You can ease yourself into (secularized) mindfulness with the help of Jen McGown’s introductory classes at One Yoga PhillyShambhala Meditation Center.
THE TIME: There’s no timetable for transcendence.
THE TAB: McGown’s “21 Minutes for 21 Days” program is $121; Shambhala’s introductory weekend workshop is $100. (BYO cushion), or take the Buddhist route at one of the welcoming workshops at the