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

Today’s mini meditation is an extra special offering. This 10-minute guided meditation is led by Dr. Rick Hanson as he walks us through the 7 practices of awakening as outlined in his new book Neurodharma.

This is a practice you can come to again and again to explore the profound contentment that is possible from your meditation practice.

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.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

Are y’all ready to geek out with me today? We are going deep!

Today’s episode is a special interview with Dr. Rick Hanson about his new book Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom, and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness

Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, and New York Times best-selling author. He’s lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford, and Harvard, and taught in meditation centers worldwide.

I am so thrilled to share this conversation with Rick today; his book Buddha’s Brain is one I reference all the time as a meditation teacher, and this new book couldn’t arrive at a better time. The book is described as offering “effective ways to find profound contentment and inner peace in a turbulent world,” and I truly found many of the practices he offered to be timely in this pandemic.

Rick outlines 7 practices that he’s seen through many different traditions {Christianity, Sufism, Buddhism, etc.} that all lead towards increasing levels of happiness. In this interview, we talk about

All 7 practices of awakening

love and anger in the time of Corona

the truth of the mind grounded in the truth of the body

The neuroscience behind our meditative experiences 

and more

Be sure you keep listening for the meditation Rick leads at the end of today’s episode; he guides us through all  7 stages of awakening in a 10 minute practice to give us a taste of what is possible in a meditation practice. This conversation goes deep quick; stay with us as we explore some of the places a meditation practice can lead!

You can learn more about Rick via rickhanson.net and you can access the Neurodharma online class he mentions in this episode here: https://www.rickhanson.net/teaching/neurodharma-online-program/

Big thanks to our sponsor, MOON Organics {https://moonorganics.com}. Mindful Minute listeners can save 10% on products and services {like virtual facials!} with code “MINDFUL10”.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

Oh, how my heart is hurting. I am angry and scared and overwhelmed with our local government’s decision to open the economy back up despite the science saying this is far too soon. It is precisely in this moment I turn inward for the calm and the confidence I need to move forward with courage. Today’s mini meditation is an invitation into spaciousness and timelessness that I hope offers a sense of alignment and an ease in making the decisions and taking the actions you/we/all need to make for the good of humanity. 

May we all be well and live with ease. 

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.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

What is working for you right now? Has anything felt easy? Has there been an auspiciousness or a synchronicity that has shown itself to you? Even something that has just made you go... hmmm.⁠

⁠These questions are not to lessen anyone’s pure struggle and grief in this moment; rather it is to draw attention to our relationship to TIME.⁠

Unknown to many of us, there are TWO ideas of time out there. Chronos and Kairos.⁠

Chronos is what we know {sort of} as clock time. The time invented to allow for scheduling, accomplishing and always for rushing. ⁠⁠

Chronos is the battle cries we are beginning to hear in response to the Covid-19 shelter-in-place orders of “open the economy. open. open.”⁠

Kairos is something different. Kairos is mythic time, divine time, timelessness. This is when we sit inside a single moment as it unfolds and it changes the entire trajectory of our lives.⁠

And this moment that we are in right now, well this moment is so fractured and confused and has so thoroughly jumbled all that we know, and it is just this type of moment that often opens us up to what is timeless. It is the clarity amid the chaos.⁠

We find this clarity through our meditation practice with patience and precision. The patience to stay in the present moment; the precision to feel and to allow what we feel. ⁠

The gift is what we walk away with. ⁠

⁠If like me, you are feeling a new swell of anxiety over when will the world re-open; will it be too soon; what will happen next... I hope this invitation into a different awareness of time might help bring alignment and an ease in decision and action.⁠

May we all be well and live with ease.

Big thanks to our sponsor, MOON Organics {https://moonorganics.com}. Mindful Minute listeners can save 10% on products and services {like virtual facials!} with code “MINDFUL10”.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

Today’s mini meditation is another short meditation practice designed to help you through the emotional & mental struggles of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the moment we must LET GO of convention and constraints. This is the moment we must let go of the shoulds, the coulds and the pressures of self-inflicted guilt. 

There is so much pressure right now to do and be a certain way, and yet none of us have done this before. Who is to say there is a right way to live through a pandemic?

Join me for this brief guided meditation as we explore what is real for us, what is true and what false beliefs are adding to our struggle.

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.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

I want to talk about letting go today. Today marks week FOUR of our shelter-in-place, our quarantine. 

And, the longer I sit and meditate and breathe and work and live and love in this time, the more I realize there has never been such a moment of “Both. And.”

We are home and resting AND we have never worked harder and are exhausted.

We are meditating AND freaking out on our kids.

We are acknowledging the silver linings AND we are in the throws of profound grief.

We are organizing and cleaning and gardening AND we are drinking too much, eating too much and wishing we could just go see our friends.

Both. And.

This is the moment we must LET GO of convention and constraints. This is the moment we must let go of the shoulds, the coulds and the pressures of self-inflicted guilt. 

There is so much pressure right now to do and be a certain way, and yet none of us have done this before. Who is to say there is a right way to live through a pandemic?

And, so our practice today is to work with the phrase Real and Not True. It is an invitation to eat rules for breakfast. It is catching the judgments that cause pain, and the beliefs that may not actually be true for us.

Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we explore what is both real and not true in this moment. We will sit together for a 20-minute guided meditation at the end.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

The beauty of the human experience is that we are fully capable and innately wired to feel seemingly conflicting emotions simultaneously. It is true. We can feel joy and pain. We can feel fear and trust. As long as we are willing to feel, we can feel it ALL.

Sometimes as we awake our senses in meditation practice, what we feel isn’t necessarily beautiful… We might feel pain, fear, heartache or sadness. Learning to let it be allows us to savor our full sensorial experience. If we are quick to shut one feeling down, we are quick to shut them all down. So sit and feel. And, cry if you need to cry. Laugh if you need to laugh. Smack the floor in rage if you need to… Let your senses be. 

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.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

As the days of quarantine tick by, I’ve discovered a new, intense mental rhythm to daily life. It is marked by many, cyclical, consuming thoughts that often take the shape of planning:

What will I offer the kids for school

When will I work

When will my partner work

What will we eat

Who do I need to call and check on.

I should make a list.

Repeat. 

For others that I’ve talked with, their days too have a new mental rhythm. It goes something like: 

I can’t deal with this.

I need to lie down.

Someone else pls tell me what to do.

Repeat.

BOTH of these are stress responses. BOTH are totally normal. And, BOTH keep us trapped. We are trapped by thoughts and stuck living only in our actual brains. As if there was no body beneath these giant heads of ours. 

Up here in the head, things get very tight. Very small. Very narrow. There is little joy here. So, I offer an invitation today - 

Let’s reconnect to feeling. Let’s awaken our senses and our sense of awe. Let’s reacquaint ourselves with beauty.

This is not to diminish your experience of this pandemic. This is not to chide or shame or suggest you are doing anything wrong. This is not to create the appearance of meditation allowing you to be perfect in tough moments. I firmly believe that if we let ourselves feel in this moment, we will each discover grief here.

And.

And, we have to keep living. 

We only get this ONE wild & precious life, to quote Mary Oliver, and I’m not about to dump a whole year into the garbage and I hope you aren’t either!!

My belief is that if we want our lives to have a sense of fullness, we need to find a way to appreciate beauty. 

Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we explore our capacity to feel seemingly conflicting emotions in the exact same moment. We will talk and then share in a guided meditation for about 20 minutes.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

Are you riding the waves of grief as part of this COVID-19 pandemic? I know I am - some days the hurt and the worry feels all consuming {and other days, thank goodness, not as intense…}. Today’s mini meditation is something I’ve been using on the tough days.

Our innate response to pain is often to contract, to stuff down and resist… “I don’t WANT to feel this…”

And yet, feeling is the only way to get through, the only way to ride that wave without being completely knocked over. So today’s practice is 12-minutes to allow. 12-minutes to allow the feelings to be present with a sense of softness and a trust that taking the time to feel is far more helpful than trying to ignore. After all, the only way to heal is to feel <2

IMPORTANT: This practice can be tremendously beneficial for many of us, and equally, if you are feeling completely overwhelmed and unable to handle the feelings coming up for you, if you are dealing with significant mental health challenges or have PTSD, please wait and practice with the support of a licensed mental health therapist.

Sending you all my love <3 We will get through this together.

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.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl

Today’s episode is something totally new for The Mindful Minute - I am sharing my first ever podcast-interview and boy is it timely!

I had no idea when I recorded this interview with Rachel Peavy of Blissful Budget that it would air amidst a global financial crisis. If you or your business has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, I am so sorry and I feel your pain. I hope that this episode offers some tools to help.

Perhaps most importantly, Rachel has just published an article with tips on mindfully getting through a financial emergency {https://blissfulbudget.com/5-tips-for-getting-through-a-financial-emergency/} that has been incredibly helpful for me so far.

I started working with Rachel back in November 2019 in conjunction with my “Abundance” meditation series. Rachel’s work to bring mindfulness to our money-relationships has been a real game changer for me. 

It is almost embarrassing to admit that even with 10 years of mindfulness practice, I wasn’t applying any sense of mindful awareness to my money. Rachel is going to talk us through some of her top tips for bringing compassionate awareness to our relationship with money. She shares about her use of Tarot cards {y’all know I loved it when she pulled those out in our first session! I love any kind of oracle cards…}, and, best of all, at the end of today’s episode, Rachel will guide us through her Bliss List meditation. 

This meditation is one of her tools for creating a budget that brings joy rather than restriction. Although I’m not out buying my weekly cup of coffee right now, it was such a shock of delight when she told me I didn’t have to cut out my weekly coffee splurge once things are back to normal!

Tune in today and be sure to drop me a line at merylarnett.com and let me know if today’s episode resonated with you. Would you like more bonus episodes with interviews?

You can find Rachel here:

https://blissfulbudget.com/

https://www.instagram.com/budgetblissful/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/291328891764021/

Learn more about Sacred Chill {at home} virtual meditation and yoga classes by visiting https://sacredchillwest.com/sacred-chill-at-home/

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ and if you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews help others to find this podcast!

***Did you know I have a FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com? It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***

#meditatewithmeryl