PODCASTThe Science of Love: The Science of Happiness

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Cultivate a sense of original love — a universal connection that nurtures joy, safety, and belonging — with meditation teacher Henry Shukman.

How to Do This Practice:

1. Find a comfortable position, either seated with a balanced, unsupported spine or resting back into support.
2. Sense the solidity of your body resting on the earth, recognizing your deep connection with it.
3. Observe the sounds around you, the sensations in your body, and any passing thoughts.
4. Remember that you are not separate. Your nervous system, your emotions, and even your breath are part of a vast, shared experience. You are connected not only to other humans but to all living beings.
5. Sense the loving quality in this awareness—an unconditional, foundational love that is always present.
6. If continuing, remain in stillness and deepen your awareness.
7. When finished, bring small movements into your body, breathe deeply, and return to your surroundings with a sense of connection and calm.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

Henry Shukman, is a poet, mindfulness teacher, and author of Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening. 
Learn more about Shukman’s work: https://henryshukman.com/about
Order his book, Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening: https://tinyurl.com/mwv5cuxr

This is part of our series The Science of Love, supported by The John Templeton Foundation.

Related Happiness Break episodes:

Loving Kindness Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/2kr4fjz5
How To Ground Yourself in Nature: https://tinyurl.com/25ftdxpm
Our Deep Interconnectedness: https://tinyurl.com/jthxkpjd

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

How Water Heals: https://tinyurl.com/utuhrnh3
How To Show Up For Yourself: https://tinyurl.com/56ktb9xc
How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress: https://tinyurl.com/2hvhkwe6

Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod

We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

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Transcription:

DACHER KELTNER: This episode was supported by the John Templeton Foundation initiative, "Spreading Love Through the Media." 

I'm Dacher Keltner,  welcome to Happiness Break— where you can take a moment in your day to cultivate calm, peace, and kindness, for yourself and those around you. 

Research shows that strong, loving relationships are key to our mental and physical health, bringing us joy and a sense of security.

When we feel a deep sense of love for others, our bodies release oxytocin, the love neurochemical, and that helps strengthen emotional bonding and trust.

We also experience a surge of dopamine, contributing to pleasure and rewarding interactions, and serotonin which can help regulate our mood. 

So today we're doing a practice to tap into a transcendent form of love.

Guiding us Henry Shukman, a poet, mindfulness teacher, and author of Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening. 

Here's Henry.

HENRY SHUKMAN: In this meditation, we're going to explore what I mean by the term original love, many meditation traditions speak of original nature  as some kind of substrate of experience that can be found through meditation  where there is much less separation between things, where there's a kind of common ground that all beings perhaps share. There are different ways it's described, but it's something that all of us can actually experience in our sitting from time to time. I think of it as a very loving place. It's a place where we feel extremely connected. 

And as primates, we really need to feel connected in order to feel safe. And the idea that we meditate kind of alone, that mindfulness is a practice we need to do in a solitary way, is, I believe, not quite right.

I think it's a key part of mindfulness practice to actually discover how connected we already are to the world we're in. You know, we're made of the same stuff, our nervous systems are pretty much, you know, the same among all human beings and actually the limbic system of our emotions is shared with all mammals. And so we're very much not alone. So let's see if we can get a little taste of this connectedness and this original loving nature that's deep in us in this meditation.  

So let's come into stillness. If your back is supported, then really rest back into the support. 

If you're sitting upright with an unsupported spine,  just see if you can bring it into balance so that there's no need to hold yourself up.

We're going to let the body relax. Imagine there's a velvet pillow just under your chin  and you're letting your jaw rest on it. A lot of us hold tension in the jaw, and it's a quick, easy way to relax.

Let the arms be really limp, like old ropes. Let the chest and belly be soft. 

Let legs and feet be slack, relaxed. Let the whole body be at rest. 

So, I invite you to kind of open up your awareness to the space around you. 

Of course there's air, there's atmosphere. And as you breathe in, you're intimately connected with that atmosphere. It flows into you. And as you breathe out, you're returning  the atmosphere to itself. 

Notice that there's the solidity of your body resting on your seat, which is resting on the floor, which is resting on the earth.

So there's a kind of continuity between you, your body, and the Earth. You're made of the same stuff, and you're connected  with the Great Earth. You're really part of it. Connected with the atmosphere, connected, actually, with the whole biosphere of this planet.

Notice your own awareness of being here, of your presence.

Aware of the gentle soundscape, of the sensations of the body, of thoughts that perhaps come and go. 

And notice how that very awareness simply welcomes whatever arises. It welcomes all your experience. It welcomes everything that's here in your experience. Right now. 

Can you sense a loving quality in it? A way that it embraces you, welcomes you, and loves your experience, right here and now. 

A kind of original love. A fundamental, foundational love that's always here, waiting for us to recognize it. 

If you'd like to continue this meditation right now, please hit pause. If it's time for you to  get back into the flow of your day, I invite you to bring a little movement into the body.  You might gently rock backwards and forwards. Come back to the space you're in. 

Breathe in and breathe out. Perhaps stretch a little. Thank you so much for joining me in this meditation.