PODCASTHappiness Break

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Take a moment to connect with your body and make space for difficult emotions with compassion and care. This embodiment practice is guided by Lyla June Johnston, a Diné musician, scholar of Indigenous land management, and community organizer.

How To Do This Practice: 

1. Ground yourself in the present: Find a comfortable seated position and take four slow, deep breaths. Notice the feeling of your body supported by the chair or the floor, bringing your attention fully into the present moment.
2. Reflect on a difficult truth: Gently bring to mind a challenging truth—such as the lasting impacts of colonization or another painful reality. Approach it with curiosity rather than judgment, allowing yourself to stay present instead of becoming overwhelmed.
3. Notice where your emotions live in your body: As you reflect, pay attention to your physical sensations. You might notice tightness in your chest, heaviness in your stomach, warmth in your heart, or another sensation. Simply observe where your emotions show up.
4. Hold your feelings with compassion: Rather than pushing difficult emotions away or getting lost in them, imagine holding them with the same care you would offer a crying child. Let each feeling be seen, heard, and acknowledged without trying to fix it.
5. Replace shame with love and solidarity: If guilt or shame arises, gently set it down. Instead, invite feelings of compassion, hope, and connection. Consider one way you can move toward repair, understanding, or solidarity—even if it's simply bearing witness with an open heart.
6. Return to the present with intention: Bring your awareness back to your breath, your body, and your surroundings. Relax your shoulders, soften your muscles, and take four more deep breaths. As you finish, carry forward an intention to meet difficult truths with courage, love, and compassionate action.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

LYLA JUNE JOHNSTON is the founder and Dean of Instruction at The Rehuman School.

Learn about Lyla June Johnston's work: https://www.lylajune.com/

Related The Science of Happiness episodes:  

How to Feel Less Lonely and More Connected: https://tinyurl.com/2s3tbchd

When It's Hard To Connect, Try Being Curious: https://tinyurl.com/mr32nwtv

An Awe Walk Through History and Possibility: https://tinyurl.com/mr3arrbc

Related Happiness Breaks:

A Meditation on the Uniqueness of Your Own Voice: https://tinyurl.com/36x3fbk7

A Meditation on Original Love and Interconnectedness: https://tinyurl.com/mu2uzs2c

Our Deep Interconnectedness: https://tinyurl.com/y2epxyxn

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

Help us share Happiness Break! Leave a 5-star review and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription:

SHUKA KALANTARI: When difficult emotions arise, we think about them. We may judge them, feel shame, or push them aside. But research in embodiment science suggests that our emotions aren't just thoughts in the mind—they're experiences that live throughout the body. 

I'm Shuka Kalantari, welcome to Happiness Break, where we explore practices inspired by the science of well-being.

Studies show that when we do pay mindful attention to our bodily sensations, it can help us regulate difficult emotions, letting us become less reactive, and creating space for empathy, repair, and thoughtful action.

Today's embodiment practice is led by Lyla June Johnston, a musician, scholar of Indigenous land stewardship, and community organizer. Lyla June gently invites us to reflect on the enduring impacts of colonization, encouraging us to notice how these truths are experienced in the body—not to judge those sensations or make them disappear, but to meet them with compassion and love.

Let's join Lyla June.

LYLA JUNE: Yá'át'ééh shik'éii adóó shidine'é. Greetings, my relatives and my people. Shí éí Lyla June, yínishyé. My name is Lyla June. Naashá'éjí Táchii'nínshłí. I come from the Naashá'éjí Táchii'nii clan of the Diné Nation. We are also incorrectly known as Navajo. We are Indigenous to what is now called New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah, but we call it Diné Bikéyah Dinétah, the People's Land And I'm so happy to be sharing with you a guided meditation. And this meditation is all about helping us to reckon with the hard truths of colonization in a way that is gentle, in a way that is brave, in a way that is encircled in forgiveness and constructive movement forward, and so what I'm inviting us to do, and it's a bit challenging, I'll admit, but my invitation and my, my challenge to us all is to sit with some of the hard facts of colonization and how it has impacted Indigenous communities, and to recognize within our bodies somatically what comes up for us. Because I think when we think about colonization, we often shut down, or we go into guilt, or we go into avoidance, and that's preventing our country from moving forward. 

Let's take four deep breaths to honor the four directions as my nation does [4 breaths].

 And a lot of meditation is just remembering that you're in a room, that you're in a body, that you're not in your fears or your worries or all the things that our mind contrives, but we're actually just sitting in a place, and that this place and this moment is actually what is real. 

And so as we sort of get in touch with this present moment and with our body, we can begin to think about the situation we find ourselves in. If you are a listener in what we call the United States or Canada or Mexico or anywhere really that has faced colonization, we're just gonna gently ease into some really challenging truths. And I want you, as I share these truths with you, to try to notice how your body reacts and where is it reacting?  Is it in your stomach? Is it in your heart? Is it in your head? And instead of getting lost in that feeling, we're gonna hold that feeling if we can. We're gonna be the loving parent to that feeling, holding it. 

And so one of the things I wanna share, which is, which is a hard thing, is that through the process of colonization, Indigenous peoples were wiped out either through disease or through violence.  Huge nations of people just went up in smoke And so I know that's a hard truth, but instead of getting lost in that truth, notice your body. Notice how you feel. Do you feel grief? Do you feel anger? Do you feel guilt? Do you feel hopelessness? And just to allow that feeling to be and to observe it. Don't get lost in it, but observe it and honor it. Because beyond that feeling, there is power. Beyond that feeling, there is capacity within us to begin to remedy things. And if you felt guilt, which many people do from what they've told me, I want you to understand that, that was not your intention for that to happen to people, and that guilt is not yours to carry. And perhaps an alternative to guilt is a feeling of solidarity, a feeling of alliance with the descendants who survived that are still here today in the nearly eight hundred distinct Indigenous communities that live in the United States today. Even if that solidarity is being a witness, that is a huge help for us.

Guilt does not help Native nations. Guilt is not of the Creator. Hope is of the creator. And self-love is of the Creator. And the more we love ourselves, the more we can love others. The more we get swept up in guilt and shame, the less we are able to love ourselves, and therefore, the less we are able to love others. Put down that shame, put down that guilt. 

When we come together with bravery and apology and forgiveness. When we come together remembering we are one family and despite our incredible mistakes of the past, we have an incredible opportunity to plant the seeds of a beautiful future. And those seeds are made of love. And those seeds are watered by love. And love is the stepping stone towards that beautiful future together. 

And so as you allow those feelings to be felt, honor where that rage was felt, where that sorrow was felt, which part of your body is that felt?  If your feelings were hopelessness, where is that felt? Can you apply the balm of love to that place? And as we move back into our more general awareness, we can come back to our body, back to our feet on the ground, back to ourself on the chair.  Being in this present moment again with each other And coming back to this present moment. And allowing your shoulders to drop. Allowing your eyelids to relax. Allowing all of your muscles from the top of your head down through your chest, through your midsection, through your hips, through your thighs, calves, lower legs, and feet to allow all that to rest. And again, we're gonna close with four deep breaths to honor the four directions as my, as my nation does. 

 Thank you for being brave with me. I thank you for beginning to let a little bit of this reservoir out that wants to be seen and felt and heard. And may we walk forward together in truth, in love, in forgiveness, in apology, in repair, in, in unity. Thank you all for listening. Hágoónee'. Goodbye