PODCASTHappiness Break

Take a break from ruminating with Lama Rod Owens as he leads you in a meditation to cultivate a sky-like mind. 

How to Do This Practice:

1. Get Comfortable: Sit or lie down in a relaxed, balanced position.
2. Settle into Your Body: Notice how your body feels and allow yourself to settle.
3. Observe Your Thoughts: Watch thoughts and emotions rise and fall without judgment.
4. Visualize the Sky: Imagine your mind as a vast sky and your thoughts as passing clouds.
5. Detach from Thoughts: Say to yourself, “This is just an experience, passing through.”
6. Return to the Present: Shift your attention back to your body and the support beneath you.

Today’s Happiness Break host:

LAMA ROD OWENS is a Buddhist teacher, author and activist passionate about creating engaging and inclusive healing spaces.   

Learn more about Lama Rod Owens: https://www.lamarod.com/
Follow Lama Rod Owens on Instagram: @lamarodofficial 
Follow Lama Rod Owens on Facebook: @lamarod 
Follow Lama Rod Owens on Twitter: @LamaRod1

Related Happiness Break episodes:

How To Ground Yourself in Nature: https://tinyurl.com/25ftdxpm
Pause to Look at the Sky: https://tinyurl.com/4jttkbw3
A Mindful Breath Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/mr9d22kr

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress: https://tinyurl.com/2hvhkwe6
How To Find Calm Through Walking: https://tinyurl.com/ycervtah
Breathe Away Anxiety: https://tinyurl.com/3u7vsrr5

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. 

Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

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Transcription:

DACHER KELTNER: Welcome to Happiness Break, a series by the science of happiness where we guide you through practices supported by science to help you find more happiness, connection and meaning. I’m Dacher Keltner. We all ruminate from time to time, and the literature shows it’s not good for us. In fact, too much rumination is a pathway to depression and anxiety.

So today, we’re trying a practice to help us create a little more distance between ourselves and our thoughts – so it’s easier to let go of the nagging worries and feelings that aren’t really serving us well.

This practice is often called The Sky-Like Mind: It’s based in Buddhist teachings and grounded in mindfulness principles, like non-attachment, which study after study shows to be helpful in curbing rumination, and improving our mental health.

We’ll be led today by Lama Rod Owens, a Buddhist Minister, Author, and Activist.

Here’s Lama Rod.

LAMA ROD OWENS: Hi, I am living and teaching on the ancestral lands of the Creek, Cherokee, Muscogee people here in the city we now call Atlanta.

So to begin with, I invite you to return back to your bodies.

Allowing your bodies to come into a position that feels appropriate for you, Comfortable. For me a position that helps me to balance both the experiences of comfort as well as discomfort, which in itself is a basic meditation practice.

And so when you’re ready, I invite you to shift your attention into the expression of your mind, beginning to notice thoughts and emotions, rising and falling, coming and going.

Slowly begin to imagine that your mind Is like the sky. Vast, clear, wide open. Boundless.

Can we just be in this moment? Allowing our minds to be wide open and bright, letting the clouds of thoughts and emotions just casually flow through it.

I wonder if you can just say to yourself, “Oh, this cloud of thoughts and emotion is just an experience, passing through the sky-like nature of my mind. And like any experience, it comes and goes, and no experience is inherently who I am, just expressions of my own mind.”

And I wonder what it feels like for you to think of your mind or to imagine your mind as a boundless sky-like experience with clouds of thoughts passing through. Not worrying about feeling overcast or stormy, but trusting the boundless quality of your sky-like mind to just be vast and beyond any hint of being overwhelmed by clouds.

So when you’re ready, I invite you to shift your attention back to the seat, noticing how the seat is holding your body. And as we complete our practice, just completing it within this experience of resting within the sky-like mind.

Thank you so much for your practice, and I hope that this practice continues to benefit you as well as others whom you’re in a relationship with.

Thank you.