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

Why is a meditation podcast chatting with a cookbook author, you ask? It’s a great question. I have been paying a lot of attention to the practices in my day that support my well-being the most because I continue to hear from listeners (and experience myself) that we are doing our meditation practices and yet, we are still struggling. We still feel stress, anxiety or fear.  And so, while this podc...

In today’s meditation practice, we listen to the sounds of melting snow.  Now, I don’t know about you, but it never really occurred to me that melting snow makes a sound. It does. It produces a smooth, slow gurgle. No drips, just a near constant murmur that reminds us that change is happening in every moment. The daffodils are pushing up, the hyacinth will bloom soon. The literal and metaphorical...

This month, we have explored the season of winter as a way into our meditation practice. We have looked at winter in our external landscapes, as well as our internal landscapes. We've listened to the sounds of winter, we've talked about wolves and our animal nature, and today, we're going to dive a little bit more into the creativity of winter. I was deeply inspired by a recent essay written and i...

Today’s meditation practice is one that evokes the emotions of winter, wolves, and a deep connection to our wild selves. It is called Call of the Wolf… and it isn’t for the faint of heart. This practice is an invitation. It is an unearthing of your wild, instinctive nature. Not wild as in exuberant or loud; but wild as in the self that is born of and inextricably connected to the natural world . I...

Today’s episode is a special meditation-only episode, just for your practice!  In this 10-minute meditation, we go on a journey through the winter woods. First, through a snowy pine forest with the wind washing over us, clearing away any lingering tension or worry. Then, we find ourselves atop a frozen lake. Don’t worry - it is steady and safe; so we sit in the middle of this frozen lake and we li...

Walking through the woods is perhaps my favorite activity of all, and there is no better experience (in my opinion) than walking through the woods in winter.  The space. The silence. The biting cold. All of it crackles with a kind of energy, a nudge towards contemplation and reflection. Yet, in a recent conversation, I was reminded that winter can be very, very different depending on where you liv...

While on my winter sabbatical at the end of 2023, I had the profound privilege of reading Jacqueline Suskin’s newest book, A Year in Practice; Seasonal Rituals & Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression, and subsequently chatting with her. I’m delighted to share this conversation with you today as a spark of inspiration, a nudge to burrow in, and an invitation to connect fully with the...

Today’s episode of The Mindful Minute is the second installment of a 2-part series dedicated to the emotion of awe. In this conversation, Jake Eagle, co-author of 'The Power of Awe', and I discuss the concept of 'awe' and its significance in handling existential anxiety and conquering stress. What I love about listening to these two discussions on awe is that you hear from someone who loves medita...

Today, we are beginning a two part series with the co-authors of a powerful new book that I am so excited to share with you guys today. In this episode of The Mindful Minute, I talk with Dr. Michael Amster about the power of awe and an incredible micro mindfulness practice that you can do in 30 seconds.  I'm not kidding. 30 seconds.  And speaking from my own experience with this practice, it will...

Hello Dear Listeners! How I have missed you over the last several weeks; I am so excited to share in another year of meditative exploration with you. There are lots of updates and exciting stories to share with you, but, for today, let us linger in the New Year transition. In this mini episode of The Mindful Minute, I talk about the shift into the new year and the idea of having expectations in Ja...

**This class will be the last podcast episode of 2023 for The Mindful Minute. I’ll be taking a break over the winter months to rest, to practice, to study, and feel through what 2024 will ask of all of us as meditation practitioners. I’ll be back in early 2024 with a new year of meditation classes tied to the natural world and centered on well-being for the Earth, humans, and the more-than-humans...

What does witchcraft have to do with meditation? SO much more than you might have originally thought, dear listeners. Which is why I am so excited to share a conversation with Jamie Della today. Jamie Della is a witch, an ordained Priestess, and the author of ten books, including her newest book, A Box of Magick, as well as The Book of Spells: The Magick of Witchcraft and The Wicca Cookbook. She h...

To allow an emotion to be simply means to let the feelings come and go without needing to DO anything about them.  Simple to understand; much much more difficult to put into practice.  In today’s episode of The Mindful Minute, we use myth as a pathway to understanding the practice of allowance. Rather than trapping an emotion - giving it a label, a meaning, and box to live in - what if we track th...

Oh friends,  I am sure, like mine, your heart is broken over the horrors we are witnessing between Israel and Palestine, as well as the hate crimes we are seeing in response to this crisis. In a moment of pure serendipity, I had an interview that was scheduled months ago with poet James Crews to chat about his new book, The Wonder of Small Things; Poems of Peace & Renewal. I originally planned...

*While this series was recorded several months ago, it continues to feel incredibly timely as we bear witness to the horrors unfolding in Israel and Palestine, as well as the hate crimes happening in response to this crisis. May we stay steady, may we stay awake, may we soothe our hearts so that we can continue to engage.  A Lifeboat in Turbulent Times: When emotion overwhelms our system, it is ca...

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with emotion and empathy expert, Karla McLaren, about her new book, The Language of Emotions. In it, she shares a powerful definition of emotion from sociologist Dr. Arlie Hochschild “Emotion, I suggest, is a biologically given sense, and our most important one. Like other senses - hearing, touch, and smell - it is a means by which we know our relation to th...

I have noticed the prevalence of two difficult emotions both in my own life as well as in my conversations with others - grief & anxiety. Difficult emotions to be sure. Over the next four episodes, I want to explore working with difficult emotions in our meditation practice.  It can appear, at least on the surface, that there is no place for big emotion within our meditation practice - as if,...

"What if your discomfort was a portal to a rebirth, a remembering, an attunement to your true Self?"   - Tracee Stanley Tracee Stanley is the founder of Empowered Life Circle, a sacred community and portal of practices, rituals, and Tantric teachings inspired by more than 20 years of study in Sri Vidya Tantra and the teachings of the Himalayan Masters. As a post-lineage teacher, Tracee is devoted...

In this series, I named three things that regularly inspire awe for me - Birds Books Meditation All 3 regularly stop me in my tracks, and they make my jaw drop. They make me smile, wonder, and listen. They weave their way into my conversations and my dreams. In short, they inspire awe within me.  “Awe experiences are what psychologists call self-transcendent: they shift our attention away from our...

I adore a good book, and I’ve noticed that often I feel a sense of energy or connection between what I’m reading and my meditation practice. Sometimes it inspires a question, a curiosity or even just a feeling. It isn’t something that can easily be named or explained, which is exactly what this series is about… The unknown, the mystery, the awe of an experience.  In meditation, often we want to di...

This year, I have fallen in love with birds. I know, I know - it's an odd entry to a meditation class, but stay with me -  We added a few bird feeders and a bird bath to our backyard garden at the start of the year, and the bird population has absolutely exploded. And, since I sit outside to meditate everyday, I have a front row seat to the show. At first, I found the constant birdsong a distracti...

What if emotions weren't a problem? What if you didn’t need to fix or change your emotions? What if they were actually not only helpful but vital to our survival?  Today, I am delighted to share a conversation with author and researcher Karla McLaren. M.Ed.  Karla is an emotions and empathy expert, and she's recently revised and updated one of her books, The Language of Emotions. In this conversat...

It is an unbelievably beautiful gift to be alive and awake. The world will break our hearts both through its cruelty and its beauty. Our job is not to fix that paradox, but to learn how to live within it with resiliency and reciprocity. We grieve, we give thanks, and we act in some personal way in response to the gift of being alive. This last class in the Resilience & Reciprocity series will...

Do you know the refrain in Amazing Grace? Amazing grace how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I'm found Was blind but now I see This refrain has been running through my head as I created this month’s meditation series - “but now I see.” Last week, we talked about really ‘seeing’ the earth, and today, we will talk about really ‘seeing’ others, people that are diff...

In this mindfulness series, we are exploring resilience & reciprocity as skills we build when we bring mindfulness to our relationships with the earth, with others, and with ourselves. In today’s class, we bring the lens of mindfulness to our fractured relationship with nature.  Diagnosis like plant blindness and nature deficit disorder, not to mention climate crisis, highlight how removed we...