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When we treat ourselves with kindness and gratitude, research shows we feel more motivated and less self-critical. Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield leads in a practice where we gently turn inward.
How to Do This Practice:
- Find a comfortable position to begin the practice. Focus on taking deep breaths, relaxing your body.
- As you recognize the different sensations in your body, consciously envelope yourself in kindness. Thank your body for providing and caring for you.
- Redirect your loving kindness towards your heart and the varied emotions it carries.Thank your heart for all it does for you. Then, focus your kindness towards your mind and all the thoughts and worries it holds. Thank it for all that it does.
- Next, turn towards your consciousness as a whole – your emotions, body, thoughts. Rest in a state of comfortable, loving-kindness.
- When you’re ready, gently open your eyes and reconnect with the world around you.
Today’s Happiness Break host:
Jack Kornfield is a meditation teacher and author who is one of the leading voices to share Buddhist teachings with a Western audiences.
Learn more about Jack’s work: http://tinyurl.com/2wfth7v2
Follow Jack on Instagram: http://tinyurl.com/3zs2bjvx
Follow Jack on Twitter: http://tinyurl.com/bd5r9k4a
Follow Jack on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/mryr839y
More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:
Take Our Self-Compassion Quiz: https://tinyurl.com/yysrf663
How to Bring Self-Compassion to Work with You: https://tinyurl.com/45zkrkam
The Five Myths of Self-Compassion: https://tinyurl.com/2p88vass
How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/2f78cywf
Is Gratitude Good for Your Health? http://tinyurl.com/yc86ve9d
We love hearing from you! Tell us about your experience of gratitude and self-compassion. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.
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We’re living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That’s where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.
Transcript:
Dacher Keltner: I'm Dacher Keltner. Welcome to Happiness Break, where we take a short break in the day to try a practice shown to help us live happier and healthier lives.
Today we're doing a meditation where we turn inward focusing in on our minds and our hearts, which do so much for us, and pausing to express gratitude for them.
Just finding a moment of gratitude, we know benefits the cardiovascular system, it is related to lower inflammation, it helps you with some of the challenges of the 21st century like being less focused on how you compare well to others.
And then what's interesting about that is once you cultivate kindness towards self, you're better at relating to other people. You feel more generous, you feel more cooperative. You have a greater ease in taking other people's perspective. So when we turn kindness and gratitude inward, we actually benefit in our relationship to the outer world.
Guiding us is Jack Kornfield, a meditation teacher, author, and leader in translating Buddhism for the Western world. So find somewhere you feel comfortable. Here's Jack.
Jack Kornfield: Hi, Jack Kornfield here. Let's do a meditation together that uses the quality of mindfulness or mindful loving awareness, and also of gratitude. So let yourself settle in your body in whatever way is stable and easy.
When you're ready, let your eyes close gently. Take two long breaths, let the eyes and face be soft, loosen the jaw, let the shoulders relax and the arms and hands rest easily, let the belly be soft and the breath natural, and let the heart be soft as well to receive whatever is experienced with kindness. And now notice the whole field of your body.
The sensations, areas of relaxation, areas of tension, without judgment, with a loving awareness. Just tune into your body. Warm, cool, pleasant, or painful, different areas.
And as you feel the whole of your body, wrap it with kindness. This body that carries so much, with this kind attention, you can say, thank you.
Thank you for caring so much for taking care of me. You can relax. I'm okay just now. You can rest. Notice the body comes to ease, held in kind attention. Now bring your same loving awareness to your heart and all the feelings and emotions it carries. Longing and love. Worry or fear. Excitement. Delight. Anger. Resentment. Hopefulness. Joy. Grief. Your heart holds so many things, and as you feel the sense of all the emotions and feelings held in this big heart, say thank you. Wrap it in compassion and kindness, say thank you. Thank you dear heart for carrying so much. You can relax. I'm okay just now, just here. You can rest and notice the heart come to ease.
Now bring the same loving awareness to the mind, the busy mind, the mind that's planning and remembering and imagining and creating, telling stories and showing pictures. The mind with all the ideas and the repetitive thoughts that come. The mind that's always working.
And feel the whole energy of the mind tumbling around. And wrapping the mind with kindness. Say thank you.
Thank you for trying to protect me. Keep me safe. Thank you for trying to t ake care of me. I'm okay just now. You can relax. You can let go and be at ease and quiet. Thank you, mind. I'm okay just here and now. And feel that relaxation and opening.
And finally, sense yourself as awareness, as the consciousness itself. You are the consciousness that's been aware of your body, aware of your heart and feelings, aware of your mind and all of its thoughts. And you are the loving witness. You are the gracious space of awareness. Rest in it. Relax into a spacious and loving attention. Open and easy.
You are the loving awareness that's witness to all that's happening in body, heart, and mind.
And you are spacious and peaceful, surrounding it all. And when you're ready, allow your eyes to open gently. And renew your connection with the visible world, and move through it with a sense of loving awareness.
Thank you.
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