Our Mindful Nature: Meditation Inspired by Nature to Soothe the Overwhelmed Mind and Ease Anxiety

*This episode originally ran in 2018, and I am delighted to replay it for you this week as we celebrate the mamas.  Happy Mother’s Day, mamas! This short meditation is a chance to sit and be with it all. Being a mother is its own complex mess of emotions, feelings and thoughts. And, we are here for it. All of it. Celebrating the joys, the sorrows, the triumphs and the defeats. Celebrating the mund...

We are so entrenched in our sides, our tribes, our ideological beliefs, that it feels almost impossible to comprehend how someone could feel or believe differently. Take any political issue, and my guess is that you can’t even believe how someone on the other side could think their choice is a good one, and yet -  Even in this inability to comprehend, we know that ‘they’ are thinking the exact sam...

This month, we are paying attention to the overlap of Easter, Passover, and Ramadan, and the way the universe seems to be reminding us of what is most important -  Our connection to each other and to the planet.  In our meditation practice, we can also explore our sense of unity. One of the tenets of a mindful meditation practice is non-judgment. We talk about this idea of not judging ourselves, o...

In our meditation practice, we are invited into the present moment. But the cool thing is that the present moment isn’t a static place. In fact, the present moment is more like a precipice, an edge… The present moment is a continually expanding experience of what is NOW. I think of it as a verison of the universe itself. Scientists know that the universe is continually expanding - and it feels lik...

April 2022 is a powerful month this year. For the first time in 31 years, the sacred holidays of Passover, Easter & Ramadan all overlap in the same month. These holidays respectively celebrate themes of liberation and expansion, rebirth and renewal, and forgiveness and self-restraint. Unrelated, I went on a foraging hike this weekend in the North Georgia mountains. I learned about some of the...

In the last episode, Rhizomatic Meditation, I created and shared this term - ‘Rhizomatic Meditation’ which is really just another way to describe the process of becoming a meditator, in my opinion. A rhizome is “a continuously growing horizontal underground stem which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals” like ginger or iris plants. I think this is an interesting lens to vie...

I recently attended a forum titled ‘Democracy Under Siege: Authoritarianism and the Psyche’. It was fascinating; just in case you were wondering exactly how nerdy I am… During the panel discussion a comment was made that democracy asks us to embrace rhizomatic thinking or rhizomatic imagination. This phrase immediately jumped out at me because I had just taught the last ‘Way of Roots’ meditation c...

In physics, entanglement refers to particles that “have correlated attributes such that they act not as individual particles but as an inseparable whole.” Within our meditation practice, I think we see entanglement on two levels: First, our practice becomes entangled with our lived experience. Initially perhaps, our practice feels like this thing we do on our meditation cushion and then we go live...

Within this meditation series, we have discussed how rootedness is innate to us {part 1}, and how paths carved by our rootedness lead us to a rewilding of the spirit {part 2}, and now in the last part of the Roots meditation series we discuss entanglement.  In physics, entanglement refers to particles that “have correlated attributes such that they act not as individual particles but as an insepar...

If we look at ancient meditation teachings as roots, they allow us to understand the path that has been carved by practitioners of the past. And then crucially, the teachings always invite us to explore for ourselves. To question. To advance. We don’t have to accept without experiencing for ourselves. We use wisdom teachings - through books, through teachers or classes or podcasts -  to help guide...

This meditation series, The Way of Roots, began with an exploration of our own rootedness - our own ability to be present and awake to the moment as it is.  Now, we add a bit to our understanding of Roots.  Roots travel in search of nutrients, water, and community with other trees.  One of the first things I think about is the big oak on the side of my house, near the road. It has been there a lon...

Roots, in botany, are the part of a vascular plant normally underground. Its primary functions are  To anchor of the plant  To aid in the absorption of water and minerals To store a reserve of food. Our practice serves much the same purpose. It anchors us to the present moment, it allows us to absorb the benefits of being present, non-judgmental and compassionate, and it prepares us to face diffic...

Often, when we talk about simplifying, getting back to basics or our foundation, we say “getting back to our roots”...  and my offering this month is exactly that -  It is an invitation to get back to our roots in the most literal way possible. To explore our rootedness and how this relates to our meditation practice.  When I think about the roots of a plant, I see this as something innate, someth...

Today’s mini meditation is offered with the reminder that community is a valuable part of any meditation practice. It is what helps us to explore meditation off the cushion and to put our practice into everyday use. Join me! These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episodes are released every Thursday for a lon...

One of my intentions for 2022 is to truly pay attention to and foster community both in my work and my personal life. This is a value I hold so dear, and I’ve felt the impact of the last 2.5 years as it has asked us all to reimagine community connection. I’ve recently introduced a monthly community discussion class in my live Monday night meditation class as one way to foster this sense of connect...

Mini Meditation: Elemental Awakening to Fire In today’s mini meditation, I’m sharing another elemental practice with you in celebration of my upcoming program Elemental Awakening! We have explored two different wind-based practices recently and now we will revisit an old favorite - fire. Today’s meditation is one of my original offerings in Roots - my nature-based meditation app. In this practice,...

Show Notes: Astronomical Mindfulness with Sarah Scoles “Back when humans lived in communal caves and tribal encampments, we told stories about the stars. When we started sailing, we used these same pinpricks of light to estimate our own location. When we began planting, we relied on the constellations and the Sun to plant and sustain crops. Yet today, most modern humans have lost this deep connect...

Mini Meditation: Delight, Sorrow and What Lies Between When we reflect on opposing forces such as good & evil or joy & sorrow, it is easy to see them as existing on a scale with one force on each side - thesis and antithesis.  But, what happens when we introduce a third force? Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis.  Fire. Water. Air.  Rabbi Jill Hammer writes, “ when we come to presence, we are ab...

You’ll remember that this month’s meditation series is a series about the ever-changing wind and the play of opposite forces in our daily lives. Good & evil, praise & blame, joy & sorrow, etc. Last week {part 2} we looked through the lens of Buddhist teachings on the 8 Worldly Winds, and that we never know when the wind will change directions. We were offered a solution of learning how...

Mini Meditation: Elemental Awakening to Wind My newest program, Elemental Awakening, is an exploration of the elements and their corresponding sacred practices. It runs from the Spring Equinox to the Fall Equinox, and it is a chance for 12 of you to study in-depth with me over the course of the next 7 months.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing a few mini meditations that correspond with e...

This is a series about wind, about good and bad, about our struggles with the state of the world; but mostly, this is a series about wind.  I love wind.  Sometimes, I resonate with the sensation of being blown around. Chaotic, uncontrolled. Other times, I resonate with the sensation of my feet on the ground. My body, a steady anchor as the wind whips around me.  It is a both/and situation, and it...

You guys. I have something BIG to share with you today! I have just released my newest offering into the world. This is something that has been incubating in my meditations, my dreams and my daily walks for a full year, and I am so delighted to finally share this with you! ⁠ Elemental Awakening is an exploration of the elements and 6 corresponding sacred practices. This program will run from the S...

I spend a lot of time reflecting on the teachings of meditation and their intersection with the specific moment we are living in. For most of us, I believe this feels like a scary time, as if there are two sides battling out for domination with no chance of reason or clarity being heard.  As I dance with the anxiety of mid-term elections this year, and continued reports of rising extremism, I remi...

Why do we love Encanto so much? Why has “We don’t talk about Bruno” taken over the charts in such an unexpected way?  Perhaps it is that the music and the lyrics remind us we are not alone in what we feel, what we struggle with… and I think it is so important to make this connection alongside our meditation practice. It is far too easy to mistakenly believe that meditation is an isolating practice...

I am obsessed with Encanto. Are you? We have watched the movie several times, and basically listen to the soundtrack on repeat these days… The song “We don’t talk about Bruno” has taken over the charts beating out the previously unbeatable “Let it Go”... The spin class I recently took that was themed to the Encanto soundtrack had three times more people in it than any other class at that moment in...