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

This meditation is 10-minute ocean-side meditation I recorded at sunrise one morning. Simple, sweet & peaceful. It is a great way to start or pause your day! I chat briefly at the beginning to set-up this meditaiton, if you want to skip right to the meditation, go to 1:00.

Enjoy! xx,

Meryl

merylarnett.com

sacredchillwest.com

#meditatewithmeryl

The Overview Effect is described as a cognitive shift in awareness while viewing the Earth from space. A perspective that allows us to erase national boundaries, forget personal differences and move into the collective consciousness of a planetary society...

Interestingly, the same effect can be found on our meditation cushions. Join me for a brief talk and a guided meditation that allows us to both experience the self, and forget the self.

This month at Sacred Chill {West} our theme is Unlearn.

To remove preconceived ideas/beliefs and look with beginner's eyes. Today we are unlearning COURAGE.

This is a brief dharma talk and meditation addressing our practice in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy in Charlottesville. Our practice is to WORK the light, rather than love it.

For more, visit merylarnett.com and sacredchillwest.com

For the days when even a 5-minute break doesn't feel possible. Rather than think, "I SHOULD pause and meditate" let's really do it... One minute to wake up, reconnect, and move forward with clear intention.

This meditation is recorded by Meryl Arnett. For more meditations and my class schedule, visit MerylArnett.com

Join me for a 7-minute classical meditation - The Smile Meditation - to cultivate joy or, at least, the space for joy in the heart, mind and body <3

This meditation shifts our formal practice to a "mindful minute". In the midst of our busy days, can we find moments to re-awaken? To become present to the full experience of whatever it is that we are doing? Even if it is simply washing dishes.

#artofchill

Every single moment has a feeling tone to it: pleasure, pain or neutrality, and each of those tones is accompanied by an automatic reaction:

If it is pleasurable - we cling and grasp, not wanting it to end.

If it is painful - we respond with aversion or anger. doing anything to escape the moment.

If it is neutral - we drift off - remembering pleasure or fearing the next painful moment. 

Most of our lives, we are ricocheting between joy and despair (or denial).

Equanimity is the spaciousness that allows us to be present fully with all the different changing experiences of our lives. It allows us to feel pleasure fully with clinging, to feel pain fully without condemning and to feel neutral experiences while being present. We learn to trust in life's rhythms.

As we sit in moments of uncertainity or stress, can we come back to the balance of equanimity? Trusting that life's rhythms will carry us through. I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to today's free meditation and explore equanimity for yourself.

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances."  ~Viktor Frankl

Being a native Atlantan, I feel pretty confident this meditation will be useful! How often do you get stuck in traffic or waiting on the bus? How often have you thought you planned enough time to get somewhere and then, lo and behold, with zero control of the circumstances, you find yourself 10, 15 even 30 minutes late thanks to traffic.

What does that feel like? Is it frustration? Is it anger? Is it fear that the waiting person will be mad or judge you or not wait for you?

This 5-minute meditation is meant to be listened to in the car. You can continue to drive, obviously eyes open (!!) and let these words guide you back to an awake presence, to help you reconnect to the humanity that surrounds you.

Bookmark the link and the next time you find yourself stuck and feeling some kind of way about it, press play. *please do this safely, only accessing your bookmarks while the car is stopped.*

When I teach meditation, I almost always get some push back when it comes to offering love/kindness/compassion to oneself. Some of the comments I've heard include:

"It feels selfish"

"I don't deserve it"

"It is easier to love someone else"

These comments are in part why I love teaching Metta. Metta is a traditional practice often called "Lovingkindness" meditation. And it always starts with ourselves. Why? Because it is the hardest work. Because it lays the ground work for us to be able to see, hear, and accept all others as they are. Because we can't love anyone else in a healthy way if we are busy hating ourselves in secret.

Enjoy this 5-minute meditation; it is an invitation to acknowledge and welcome kindness towards yourself, and, by extension, to expand our capacity to love others.

During the course of the day, we experience ourselves in many different roles. As a friend, an employee, a partner, a parent... With some people we act one way; with others we act differently. Today's meditation reunites the fragmented parts of our soul and offers a chance to reconnect to our self, to our inherent loveliness.