CREATIVE MEDITATIONS AND MATCHING MINDFULNESS TALKS

Mindfulness Talk: This isn’t just an lofty expectations thing. There is a very good reason why the summer slowdown doesn’t often bring us the happiness we want. Good news is, it’s perfectly designed to bring us something else.

Meditation: A meditation for leaning into the gifts that a lovely soft sadness can bring to us.

Mindfulness Talk: Bouncing back has its place, but there’s a good chance that isn’t what you need. Let’s talk about the difference between bouncing back and resilience.

Meditation: This meditation is not for solving a situation, but instead it’s for trusting your voice and the message of resilience that it is forging.

Mindfulness Talk: It stinks when you find yourself in a situation that brings you back to your ugly inner teenager. But so much freedom when you use the ugly to your advantage instead of disadvantage.

Meditation: This meditation takes you through the process of embracing your ugly inner teenager.

The Mindfulness Talk: Messy emotions, messy energy, even messy headaches can sometimes be the result of societal messages that are messing with us. We all hold so many idealistic pictures in our heads about what life could look like and feel like. In some seasons, these images come closer to the surface.

The Meditation: This meditation helps us identify the idealistic societal images that are messing with us, and provides a little ritual for thanking them and then letting them go.

The Talk: During busy seasons, we spend so much of the day in our heads. When we finally sit down for a breather, we notice with surprise that our body is thirsty or hungry or headachy. But this isn’t a great plan for our emotional health. To stay emotionally healthy and whole (especially when life is busy), we need to get our bodies involved. 

The Meditation: Step out of your head and into your body by imagining your body as a flowing emotional river.

The Talk: Thich Nhat Hanh describes mindfulness as the difference between “real” and “ghost”. This mindfulness talk uses the simple french fry to explain this complex concept. Hopefully by the end, you’ll have a new understanding of this aspect of mindfulness.

The Meditation: This meditation has us finding a piece of food and using it to explore a physical meditation practice.

Mindfulness Talk: Little bits of negativity stick to us like staticky socks, making us feel...off. As we interact with our people, our normal words and actions reflect that subtle off-ness. Intention matters. So what do we do when we realize we are...off?

Meditation: A meditation for becoming aware of our off-ness, and shedding the subtle negative intention.

The Talk: Olympians have evolved from mental health strategies of “zoning out” to better strategies of mindfulness. Mindfulness brings us into conversation with ourselves.

The Meditation: Using an Olympic moment to tap into our own memories.

The Talk: Did you know that everything in nature breaks in the same way? There is a valuable lesson in this, especially when we are in a season of breaking.

The Meditation: Using the image of breaks and crinkles to find peace within a season of breaking.

Knowing the difference is crucial to giving ourselves some holiday grace.   

Navigating our current world of cynicism.

A Values Affirmation Exercise

Rethinking Rest

Mind Body Connection

“You are simultaneously a masterpiece and a work in progress.” 

When the “enoughs” creep in, there is Aparigraha  non-attachment

The nuances of Ahimsa.

We have lots of strategies to deal with everyday stressors.  But what helps when our stress isn’t for today but for tomorrow?