Mindfulness Meditation with Dawn Mauricio

The truth is, awareness of the world can be exhausting. Being in a marginalized body or being an ally to marginalized bodies can leave our nervous systems fried. We need to rest in order to remain resourced to continue resisting the very systems that oppress us. Not to mention, that under a capitalistic and patriarchal society, resting itself is an act of rebellion and resistance! This meditation will guide you towards feeling and finding rest in your body.

Many meditators become attached to the idea that meditating must be done with the eyes closed, but how can we use sight - much like we've used sound in the past - as an anchor and a window into a budding self-awareness? Observing your body's responses and reactions to visual stimulus is a beautiful way to practice. Try it with me!

Whether it is peace, energy, love, kindness, understanding, or something else you are looking for, this meditation will help you find pieces of yourselves that already contain that which you are seeking. It's a practice in resourcing from within. Which isn't meant to eliminate the need for others, only to keep us feeling sturdy and in harmony with ourselves.

Sound is an amazing tool for observing our natural reactions and inclinations. Noticing how we physically receive certain sounds, what happens in the body when we can't seem to find a sound after the meditation we are listening to *told us to hear*! This meditation will use sound and the sense of hearing as a portal to observing the self. It will sort of replace the more frequently used anchors like breath, etc. Give it a listen! See what comes up!

Sometimes a simple check in is incredibly powerful. This meditation will guide you through a little self-diagnostics check, to notice what is present in you in a precise moment. Doubt? Agitation? Fatigue? Practice saying "I see you! It's all good!" before diving deeper. Removing judgement allows us to be honest with ourselves and those around us about what we're navigating in a given moment which can create space for compassion towards yourself and others.

One of the most common misconceptions I come across as a meditation teacher is the belief that you need to be able to empty your mind or stop it from wandering in order to meditate. The practice of meditation is a continual returning from wherever your mind wanders to. This meditation focuses on that very fundamental part of every practice: Returning. Over and over.

Some days we just feel a little bit wired and unsettled. This meditation is a simple yet effective tool for helping to settle the mind, the nerves, and the spirit. In the meditation, I use the visual of a snow globe all shaken up and slowly settling. Think of this as *that* but for your mind.

In a highly individualistic society that celebrates independence, it can feel hard sometimes to accept and embrace support. But the truth is, there is massive strength and freedom in allowing loved ones and our communities to support us. This meditation will tune into the ways your body and mind are resisting support as a practice in leaning into it.

The body naturally wants to move towards balance. We don't really need to *do* anything about it. The mind however, often seeks perfection. This meditation will invite you to notice the way this mental tendency towards fixing and adjusting manifests in the body. The more we practice this, the more easily we can respond when we notice it happening in our day to day lives, slowly healing our perfectionist minds.

This meditation is part of my end of year rituals I do to honor the past year and to usher in the next year with connection, intention, and purpose. The meditation includes visualizing the year that is ending in reverse chronological order and letting any memories of whatever happened during the year arise naturally. Afterward, you can fill out the template available for download via the link below. The template prompts you to specify one to two highs and lows from each season, reflect on the one biggest lesson you (re)learned, and contemplate on how you want to feel in the coming year.

For those familiar with the practice of cultivating loving-kindness, you probably have done so through a recitation of phrases. Reciting phrases is just one doorway into this particular heart quality, and it doesn’t always work for everyone. In this practice, you’ll be guided to use images or a memory to inspire the sensations of loving-kindness to arise, and then to share it outward.

The acronym RAIN - recognize, allow, investigate, non-identification - was created by Michelle McDonald and popularized by Tara Brach. Often taught as a tool to deal with overwhelming emotions, this twist on a more traditional RAIN practice is guided so that it can be an essential technique you refer to regardless of what your current experience is.

Inspired by teacher Martine Bachelor, altruistic joy asks us to be joyful for others even if we may be not feel like it. In this meditation, you’ll be guided through a number of doorways into cultivating this heart quality.

How are you right now? How are you really right now? Is it possible to go beyond the label, or concept, or construct of sadness or joy or busy and drop into the body? How does whatever you’re feeling manifest right now? Sensations are information! This meditation follows the thread of your experience back to an immediate awareness of what is felt in a moment. Over and over again.

Tuning into the embodied experience of a phenomena–a sound, a thought, a sensation–can give us important insight into how we are feeling at any given moment. This meditation will invite kindness in as we practice returning over and over again to the most present sensations in our body.

In a society obsessed with productivity and "doing" it can be really challenging to honor moments of stillness, even though these moments often hold vital wisdom for our well-being. This meditation is simple, yet can be challenging since. You'll be guided to put down the doing–seeking out the next instruction or thinking about the next thing to "do– and to direct your attention in a way that is mindful of whatever is attracting your attention.

Whenever an emotion or a sensation arises and we get caught in thinking that it shouldn’t be this way, what is happening is simply nature living through us, being expressed in the moment. Much like how the heat or the air in your body comes and goes, much like the expressions of fire and wind in daily life fluctuate and waiver, so it is that all things come and go, arise and pass away. This meditation helps us tune into the elements as they live within us.

In a news-obsessed, 24-hour information cycle society, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of suffering there is in the world at any given time. Between the people closest to us, those who challenge us, and those we know only from a distance ... It can be a lot to hold. This meditation introduces a few sentences to help you focus your care and attention where it needs to be, while also letting go of the urge to control every outcome. 

One of the biggest barriers many people face when starting their meditation practice is the idea that they are inherently either “good” or “bad” at it. In reality, though, a lot of meditation is the practice of coming back over and over and over again. This 10-minute meditation, which is my "go-to" when I'm in a pinch, is a simple and yet effective practice that kindly reminds you to begin again and again. The good news is that this practice will always be there to welcome you back each time.

"Balance" and "ease" are words used interchangeably to mean equanimity, while equanimity itself can be defined as a steadiness of the heart and mind. In other words, it is the groundwork for freedom and compassion through wisdom. Like many parts of mindfulness practice, discomfort can't be bypassed to an equanimous state, however, practice helps to cultivate the conditions for equanimity to arise naturally. In this meditation, you'll be guided into cultivating a balanced heart and mind.

Anyone else feeling some overwhelm right about now? I'm finding myself in a new cycle of news addiction and the regular and constant exposure to it is certainly leaving me feeling anxious and overwhelmed. This meditation was originally created in one of my last cycles of overwhelm, and yet, it is serving me yet again. If you're feeling it, too, I hope this meditation can be of support.

A natural human reaction is to avoid that which is unpleasant, especially anything painful. Like so much of mindfulness practice, the most immediate way in which we can find any sort of freedom is by moving toward it. Beware, though, because jumping into feeling pain without first establishing a foundation could alter your relationship to what you’re feeling but not for the better. This meditation invites you to gently lean into pain so that you can eventually establish a new relationship to it.

When sayings like “forgive and forget" are commonplace, being quick to forgive someone without ever really tending to your own hurt feelings, or letting someone back into your life despite your better judgment. For these reasons (and more), forgiveness can be a challenging and  commonly misunderstood quality. Forgiveness doesn’t condone the past, doesn’t mean you need to stay connected to anyone who has caused you pain, nor is weak or naive. It takes time and is really about not leaving anyone out of your heart, including yourself, for any hurt that may have been caused.

Mindfulness is a simple yet powerful practice that can be integrated it into anything we do. So much so that even if you don’t have the time or space to practice regularly, you can find countless opportunities throughout the day during which you can be mindful. In this practice, you'll be guided how to eat mindfully, which suddenly creates at least three opportunities daily to practice. For this meditation, it’s best to have some food in front of you, whether it's a whole meal or a snack.

As humans, we have become really good at avoiding what we don’t want to feel or experience, especially if it's painful or unpleasant, resulting in us (consciously or unconsciously) spending a lot of our time running away from perceived or future pain. What then happens is our past pains start to dictate our future. Although that might be true in many circumstances, we can learn how to cultivate a skillful relationship to pain and discomfort through self-compassion.

Some days, the thought of loving ourselves can feel impossible, while other days it can feel selfish, leading us to offer love to others instead of ourselves. But it’s imperative that we start with ourselves, much like how we are told in an airplane to secure our own oxygen mask before helping others. 

This meditation, inspired by Susan Piver, is a remix of a traditional loving-kindness, or metta, meditation in which we practice sharing this quality with the different parts of ourselves.

Maybe it's stress and anxiety, maybe it's prolonged periods of looking down at our devices. Regardless of the reason, many of us have tense neck and shoulders. With sustained and consistent practice, mindfulness can act as a preventative tool, cueing you to adjust your posture and to manage your stress better. If you add this to the simple movements in today's practice, you can also awaken these areas in a way that may not have been possible before.

As beings with eyes positioned to see forward and minds conditioned to think ahead, we often forget about the back of our body. As a result, once we start practicing mindfulness, we don’t realize we often focus on the front of our body when we tune in to our breath or physical sensations. This mindfulness practice, which includes movement, aims to balance things out by enlivening this area that we so often ignore as well as to strengthen the muscles in our back.

Since we can’t control our lives or our surroundings, the next best thing we can do is learn how to navigate whatever comes our way despite the discomfort. Luckily, mindfulness helps us do exactly that.

In this 7-minute meditation (with ending bell), you’ll be guided to turn toward what is unpleasant or challenging, as a way to simultaneously takes care of yourself while also broadening your comfort zone.

This 33-minute meditation with proceeding talk was part of the Morning Instructions given at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center retreat Journey Into Refuge.

The meditation explores grounding in the body and eventually opening up to the sense doors. The talk touches on using our practice to transform our bodies into a refuge so that we can be home wherever we are.

Being mindful of the breath is often the first instruction given to beginners, yet it can be supportive no matter your level of experience. One of the reasons why the breath is a common meditation anchor is that it is always with us, wherever we go.

This 5-minute meditation (with ending bell) was written with that in mind—no matter where you are, tuning in to the breath, even if for just one breath, can help shift your perspective in profound ways.

Meditation can often be mistaken as a mental or “heady” practice, but really, it is an embodiment practice. Most mindfulness meditation techniques aim to bring the body and mind into the same place—right here, right now. As easy as it sounds, it can be challenging because we are so used to running from one thing to next, planning, strategizing, or worrying.

This 5-minute meditation (with ending bell) was designed to help you live in and through the body.

Often times, we may be aware of the breath in a generally broad sense, whether noticing a certain quality of the breath or a part of the body moving with the breath. Although that can be incredibly supportive, we sometimes miss the breath as a full body experience.

This 15-minute meditation (with ending bell) guides you to sense both your breath and body, tuning into the energy getting sent to your entire body with each inhale, and how each exhale cleanses your entire body.

If you’re unable to sleep at night and you reach for your phone, play this meditation instead of reacting to notifications or scrolling through social media, to better increase your chances of falling back asleep.

The guidance in this meditation is 7 minutes long, while the soothing music of Drew Bathory tenderly carries you for another 25 minutes into relaxation. Don’t worry, there’s no ending bell to jar you awake once you’ve floated off into dreamland.

Walking is something most of us get to do on a daily basis, whether we're walking to our car, from one place to another, or simply from our bedroom to the bathroom in the morning. During these times, however, we are often lost in planning the next thing we have to do, rehashing what just happened, fantasizing about something, or as mentioned in yesterday's session, jumping into the information stream.

In this 10-minute meditation (with ending bell), you'll be guided through a formal practice of walking meditation. Afterwards, you will be prepared to try to integrate this knowledge during non-formal opportunities of walking.

Anxiety has the power to lock us in a tunnel vision that, when unmonitored, starts a chain reaction of reactivity. In the moments where we might have a sliver of mindfulness whilst feeling anxious, we can try the countdown in this 5-minute meditation (with ending bell). It can help you get out of your head and into the moment, a sound antidote to the limiting effects of anxiety.

Pro tip: If you’re prone to anxiety, try this meditation in non-anxious moments so it’s easily accessible when you are feeling anxious.

Grief can be really hard, and yet, it's just trying to help us process loss, regardless of how unpleasant it may feel. This 10-minute meditation (with ending bell) will help you meet the waves of grief with tenderness so that it can move through you and create space for appreciation and, eventually, joy.