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

This month, as kids are transitioning back to school in the Northern Hemisphere, I thought it would be fun if all of us meditators also ‘go back to school’ and revisit some of the key teachings {and primary obstacles!} that help us recommit to and deepen our meditation practice.  This week’s obstacle is far too important to ignore: Forgetting the Instructions I know you know the basics of how to m...

This meditation is focused on connection to self and others as a source of support in tough times. I shared it as part of the launch of my new meditation community: Awakened Heart.  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 longer, deeper practice. Learn more about my A...

Today, I am going to talk to you about something near and dear to my heart, but first let me start with some truths: These last several years have been incredibly tough.  Being a parent during a pandemic challenged me in ways far deeper and more complicated than I could have ever guessed. The political landscape in this country creates a constant state of deep fear in my body. The eco-crisis has m...

Today’s mini episode is a practice dedicated to helping you discover the sneaky ways that laziness shows up in our meditation practice and helps us listen for the antidote that we need in order to move deeper into our practice. Join me for this guided meditation. These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episode...

Summer is often a season of fluid, flexible schedules. There might be camps for the kids, vacations, dealing with other people’s vacation schedules… Every week feels a little different and when that is the case, I notice that my meditation practice shifts. The time of day that I practice is a little less consistent. Sometimes I practice for shorter periods. I practice indoors more with the extreme...

Today’s mini meditation, led by Mara Branscombe, is a practice of connecting with the energy of the elements as a way to reset and shift our energy. This is a short, powerful practice. Don’t miss it! You can learn more about Mara at https://marabranscombe.com/   And you can find her new book at https://www.ritualasremedy.com/   These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tun...

Today’s episode of The Mindful Minute is a conversation with Mara Branscombe about the power and simplicity of everyday rituals as a form of soul care.  Mara is a mother, writer, yogi, artist, teacher, mindfulness leader, ceremonialist and spiritual coach. She is the author of a new book “Ritual As Remedy: Embodied Practices For Soul Care.” Mara is passionate about weaving the art of mindfulness,...

In today’s class, we stop trying to fix what we feel. The grief, the fear, the rage, the numbness - all the things we ‘shouldn’t’ feel but wow, do we ever feel. Loudly. Insistently. And importantly. These aren’t feelings to be ignored, sugar-coated, covered up or silenced. Our meditation practice enables us to feel with courage and compassion, and when our meditation practice ends, we have the str...

This class was recorded just after the Supreme Court’s official overturn of Roe v. Wade in the United States. In the aftermath, women across the country are dealing with the heartbreaking loss of autonomy over our own bodies.  It is incredibly poignant to be teaching the final installment of the ‘When We Suffer’ meditation series. In the previous 2 classes, we discussed how to acknowledge what we...

It is quite common to be inexperienced at allowing our difficult feelings to be as they are. When we are scared, often we run. When we are angry, often we fight. When we are sad, often we numb. Our meditation practice allows us the opportunity to return to the present moment, to acknowledge what it is that we are truly feeling, and then to ask ourselves -  “Can I be with this?” The answer to this...

When we suffer, when we struggle with big emotions, step one is to consciously acknowledge what you feel. Step two is to stop being afraid of what you feel.  This fear of feelings might show up as: I can’t bear this It will always feel this way I SHOULDN’T feel this way This SHOULDN’T be this way These thoughts are often cues that we have left the present moment, and that we have left our mindfuln...

Meditation can’t make you feel better about school shootings. Meditation can’t make you feel better about hate-based violence being perpetuated over and over again. Meditation can’t make you feel better about political decisions you disagree with. What meditation can do is help us acknowledge and allow how we feel, and in a way, this does make us feel a bit “better”. Meditation is an invitation to...

Do you know what Ontological Anxiety is?  Ontological Anxiety is what we feel when our state of being or our existence feels unsafe and/or threatened. Over the last several years, I’ve noticed that my meditation practice, which started out as a way to help me feel less stressed at work, has really morphed into a practice that helps me mitigate my own ontological anxiety. Every new crisis - pandemi...

I’m doing something a little bit scary this month… I am taking off the entire month of July. For the last six months or so, I’ve been wondering - how does someone who is self-employed take a sabbatical? And what I finally realized is no one else is going to give me permission. I’m the only one who can make that choice. And so {gulp} I am doing it.  For the next 6 weeks, there will be no live class...

Often, we are scared to fully enter time because we operate from a place of deficit. Somewhere, someway, we were sold the belief that there isn’t enough time and that we are not in control of what little time we do have… The secret truth is that time is ours to play with.  The time we dedicate to eating, sleeping, making money, and caring for others - this time is sacrosanct and given priority. Bu...

In this 2-part series, we are looking at meditation as the nexus of space, time, and body-soul. Last week, we explored how we might fully enter space, the heartbeat of the earth and our resonance when we fully connect in this way.  This week, we tackle the concept of time. Perhaps the most frequent refrain I hear as a meditation teacher is…. “But, I don’t have time?!”. Often, we are scared to full...

In today’s mini meditation, we investigate what it means to be fully connected to space. If meditation is the nexus of space, time and soul - how do we step into our space completely and mindfully?   In electromagnetic fields, a form of space, there is attraction, repulsion, movement, holding together, and transformation from one type of energy to another. Join me for a mini meditation inviting yo...

Recently, I was having a discussion regarding the nexus of space, time, and soul - a meeting point I think of as the practice of meditation - when someone suggested that this exploration was a form of Spiritual Physics. If you’ve listened to this podcast for any length of time you know I often pull in theories, quotes and ideas from physicists so this term feels spot on for the work we do in medit...

Today’s mini meditation is a special self-care practice. You will hear poet James Crews read his poem, Self-Care, and then I will share his invitation for reflective journaling. Grab a notebook, a pen, and a cup of tea. Settle into a comfortable seat and join us! You can find this poem and reflection {and many others!} in James’ new book, The Path to Kindness.  You can find The Path to Kindness at...

For quite awhile now, I have wanted to bring a conversation about poetry to The Mindful Minute. Over the years, I’ve found more and more a connection between reading poetry and my meditation practice, and today, I get to finally explore this connection with poet James Crews! James Crews’ work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and The New Republic, as well...

Dr. Andrew Newberg, a neurotheologist, shares a short practice with us of defining our innermost values and making sure that our actions support those values.  You can listen to his full interview on the 5.19.22 episode - Spirituality and Meditation.  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 releas...

Dr. Andrew Newberg, one of my favorite former guests, is back with us today to talk about mindfulness, spirituality and our mental well-being. I’ve just wrapped a meditation series, Can Meditation Unite Us, that has reflected on the overlap of several spiritual traditions, and I thought it would be interesting to talk to Dr. Newberg about what happens in our minds and our bodies as we engage with...

2+ years into a pandemic, when we’ve been enforcing various levels of separation in our daily lives, we are mentally and emotionally unwell. And we find ourselves in this moment with time, space and nature all reminding us that to heal is to connect.  Yet, this is really hard at this moment because we’ve created neural pathways of separation. Luckily, we know that meditation is a practice of creat...

Within this series, we are exploring the concept of unity through our meditation practice. So often, we look at our meditation practice through the lens of its 3 tenets: presence, non-judgment, and compassion. Most of the time, I break these tenets down into their individual practices so that we can explore them each in a deeper way - BUT, this can create the mistaken belief that we can ONLY focus...

Being a mom; trying to become a mother; or not becoming a mother is likely one of the most difficult experiences of your life. We love our children, we worry endlessly, and we often experience the vast extremes of emotions with them or with our own seeming successes or failures. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves in relation to the word ‘mom’ is a practice that refills and strengthens...