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

“To learn how to ask for what we need, only to practice accepting what we’re given. This is our journey on earth.” ~Mark Nepo

Join me for this mini meditation designed to help us attune to the feeling behind our desires.

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/ 

***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

We kicked off this series with acknowledging the importance of slowing down and seeing what’s here rather than rush to respond to wants with busyness. Now, we are going to pay attention to what we really want… We are paying attention to desire.

It is so interesting to talk about desire within a meditation practice, isn’t it? So often, we are focused on letting go and non-attachment, but, let’s be real. We are human and we want stuff. We want things, we want achievement, and we want better for ourselves and our families. So, I think the more important teaching might be to differentiate between unhealthy desire and healthy desire.

It isn’t that we can’t have wants - but rather can we let go of grasping and driving and instead pay attention to softening and listening.

Tune into today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we work with desire within our meditation practice and our daily lives!

P.S. This year, for the first time, I am offering a Winter Solstice VIRTUAL meditation retreat! Visit https://merylarnett.com/workshops-training/ to get all the details. Be sure to use code “MindfulMinute2019” to save $5 on registration.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ 

***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

This week, let’s use Mark Nepo’s wise words as our guidepost:

“If you can’t see what you are looking for, see what’s there.”

Join me today for a 15-minute mindfulness-based 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 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/ 

***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, this is destined to be a good one… Working with abundance is THE WORK, isn’t?? Either we are following our passion and don’t want to cloud things with “money” or we are desperate for things to turn around and all we can see is the lack surrounding us. Either way, quite often, it shows up in our life as an ignoring (intentionally or not) of what is already there. It shows up as a lack of appreciation for what is already there, and a lack of intentionally stating what we want to grow. 

Whenever we are aware that something is missing from our lives, whether that is money, time, love, connection, etc., the innate tendency is to HURRY UP AND FIX IT.⁠

GET THE THING. AND, THAT OTHER THING.⁠

Yet, busy-ness is a sure sign of a small, fixated mind. In this mode, we can't see past the tip of our nose. ⁠

The antidote is suppleness. The antidote is an open, curious and flexible mind.⁠

Can't see what you are looking for? Try broadening your view to see what's in front of you in this moment.⁠

Catch more in this week's episode of The Mindful Minute, and be sure to tune in next week as we extend our exploration of abundance and enough-ness.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ 

***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

My sincere apologies for the delay in the last two episodes. I've had some serious IT challenges with my website the last two weeks, and I am thrilled to be back up and running! If you haven't subscribed to my newsletter yet (merylarnett.com) I encourage you to do so! Even while my site was down I was able to email out this episode to my subscribers last week ;-)

October always feels like such a full month, doesn’t it? There is much to do and enjoy as fall settles in, and, in times of fullness, I am increasingly aware of my own inner dialogue when it comes to my daily meditation practice. It often sounds like, 

* There is too much to get done and not enough time! I don’t have time to meditate today.* XYZ on my to do list is much more important and must be done first. I’ll fit meditation in sometime later in the day.* I’m too stressed, anxious, tired, etc to meditate right now. I need to chill in front of the TV instead.

I think there are two ways to work with this type of energy, and both are good options.

Option 1 is what you will hear me teach most often. It offers all the #hacks that might make meditation do-able in these overly full times. Meditate for only 10 minutes {or less!}. Meditate wherever you are - in the office, in the car, on the couch while your kids watch TV… 

YES. These hacks work. You really can build a deep and sustaining meditation practice on ten minutes a day.

AND, there is something vitally important in placing and honoring the value of stillness. There are some seasons of life when really all you have to give is 10 minutes. There are many, many more seasons of life when you can give more to stillness. 

Choosing stillness over all to dos {even the first one on your list for the day} holds weight, power and value. I don’t want you to use this as weapon - this isn’t a reason to beat yourself up if you don’t meditate for more than 10 minutes. Yet, I encourage you to be deeply, kindly curious when you say the words, “I can’t”.

Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we explore our relationship to stillness. I’ll share my own personal “I can’t” story and I’d love to hear yours too. What are you not seeing because you are seeing what you are seeing?

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ 

***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

Inherent within our mindfulness meditation practice is an element of devotion. Not of religion, not necessarily “greater being” based, but certainly an ever-expanding sense of loving connection to the world and our place in it. As our practice opens our eyes to the beauty of everyday, messy moments, our devotion to being continually awake deepens. Join me today for a short 10-minute meditation as we remind ourselves to stay awake to the beauty of this human experience.

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/ 

***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

A student once asked the Buddha:

“Are you a god?” He responded, “no.”

“Are you a regular person, then?” He responded, “no.”

“What are you?” He responded, “I am awake.”

In The Way of the Pilgrim, a story about a Christian Monk, the only instruction he receives from his teacher is to pray without ceasing. When we practice mindfulness, our instruction is to be awake without ceasing. 

In a recent newsletter, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings {http://brainpickings.org} wrote of fall and impermanence as a time that “reminds us to cherish the beauty of life not despite its pershability but because of it.”

When we think of the element of devotion within a mindfulness practice, it is all of this and more. It can be a practice of prayer. It is a practice of awakening. Devotion appears in many forms but all of them share the thread of love. Devotion within our practice is an inherent quality as we grow our awareness of connection, compassion and everyday beauty. 

In today’s episode of The Mindful Minute, we are wrapping up our series on Discipline & Devotion with a deep dive into what it means to practice devotion within our meditations. Tune in today for our discussion and 20-minute practice.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ 

***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

Equanimity is a mind-state that is often defined as calmness, composure, or an evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations. Within our meditation practice, we can use the breath as one way to stay in the present moment long enough to actually see “this is what is happening now,” and  we can use the practices of both discipline and devotion to guide us in cultivating the ability to stand in the middle of it all and see with patience.

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/ 

***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

In last week’s episode we talked about the breath as a tool of both discipline and devotion within a meditation practice, and, naturally, the question arises, “why does this matter?”

Ultimately, one of the outcomes of a mindfulness practice is a cultivation of equanimity - a mental calmness, composure or evenness of temper. Gil Fronsdal, a meditation teacher, defines equanimity as “This is what is happening now. Let’s see what happens next…”

We can use the breath as one way to stay in the present moment long enough to actually see “this is what is happening now,” and  we can use the practices of both discipline and devotion to guide us in cultivating the ability to stand in the middle of it all and see with patience.

Patience is a virtue I personally struggle with so I’m particularly excited to share today’s discussion and exploration with y’all. Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we think through and then experience the qualities of equanimity within our practice, and, maybe one day, within our day-to-day lives.

Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/ 

***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 inspired by the breath and by Rumi’s beautiful words:

“With every breath, I plant the seeds of devotion. I am a farmer of the heart.”

Join me for a 15-minute mindfulness-based 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 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/ 

***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