Bonus Meditation - End of Year Reflection
The meditation includes visualizing the year that is ending in reverse chronological order and letting any memories of whatever happened during the year arise naturally. Afterward, fill out the template available for download. In the template, specify one to two highs and lows from each season, reflect on the one biggest lesson you (re)learned, and contemplate on how you want to feel in the coming year.
Radiating Metta (S3E9)
For those familiar with the practice of cultivating loving-kindness, you probably have done so through a recitation of phrases. Reciting phrases is just one doorway into this particular heart quality, and it doesn’t always work for everyone. In this practice, you’ll be guided to use images or a memory to inspire the sensations of loving-kindness to arise, and then to share it outward.
RAINish (S3E8)
The acronym RAIN - recognize, allow, investigate, non-identification - was created by Michelle McDonald and popularized by Tara Brach. Often taught as a tool to deal with overwhelming emotions, this twist on a more traditional RAIN practice is guided so that it can be an essential technique you refer to regardless of what your current experience is.
Altruistic Joy (S3E7)
Connecting to the experience of joy is a practice. This meditation offers some phrases and questions to repeat to yourself as part of a practice of tuning into joy.
Felt Sense (S3E6)
How are you really right now? Is it possible to go beyond the label, or concept, or construct of sadness or joy and drop into the body? How does whatever you’re feeling manifest right now? Sensations are information! This meditation follows the thread of your experience back to an immediate awareness of what is felt in a moment. Over and over again.
Tuning Into the Body’s Wisdom (S3E5)
Tuning into the embodied experience of a thing - a sound, a thought, a sensation - can give us important insight into how we are feeling at any given moment. This meditation will invite kindness in as we practice returning over and over again to the most present sensations in our body.
Put Down the Doing (S3E4)
In a society obsessed with productivity and "doing" it can be really challenging to honor moments of stillness, even though these moments often hold vital wisdom for our well-being. This meditation is simple, yet can be challenging since. You'll be guided to put down the doing–seeking out the next instruction or thinking about the next thing to "do– and to direct your attention in a way that is mindful of whatever is attracting your attention.
Honoring the Elements (S3E3)
Whenever an emotion or a sensation arises and we get caught in thinking that it shouldn’t be this way, what is happening is simply nature living through us, being expressed in the moment. Much like how the heat or the air in your body comes and goes, much like the expressions of fire and wind in daily life fluctuate and waiver, so it is that all things come and go, arise and pass away. This meditation helps us tune into the elements as they live within us.
Sidestep Compassion Overwhelm (S3E2)
In a news-obsessed, 24-hour information cycle society, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering there is in the world at any given time. Between the people closest to us, those who challenge us, and those we know only from a distance ... It can be a lot to hold. This meditation introduces a few sentences to help you focus your care and attention where it needs to be, while also letting go of the urge to control every outcome.
Your Go To Meditation (S3E1)
One of the biggest barriers many people face when starting their meditation practice is the idea that they are inherently either “good” or “bad” at it. In reality, though, a lot of meditation is the practice of coming back over and over and over again. This 10-minute meditation, which is my "go-to" when I'm in a pinch, is a simple and yet effective practice that kindly reminds you to begin again and again. The good news is that this practice will always be there to welcome you back each time.