12 Minute Meditation

• A Meditation to Meet the Body In Pain

  Having chronic pain often feels incredibly lonely. You might not know anybody else who has the same condition. In addition, most people you're close to, even though they might be well-intentioned, might not understand what you're going through.  But the fact is that probably thousands and thousands of people all over the world know exactly what you're feeling. In this meditation, Christiane Wolf offers a guided practice to meet your own body in pain and relieve that sense of isolation by internally connecting with others who understand your experience.  Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician, internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is passionate about translating ancient wisdom teachings into accessible and applicable modern-day language. She is the author of Outsmart Your Pain – Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind and the co-author of the classic training manual for mindfulness teachers, A Clinician's Guide To Teaching Mindfulness. Christiane is the lead-consultant and teacher trainer for the VA's (US Department of Veteran Affairs) National Mindfulness Facilitator Training and a senior teacher at InsightLA. She is the mom of three amazing humans and can usually be found in the Los Angeles area training for ultramarathons and triathlons. The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.  Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter:  mindful.org/signup Show Notes Find more from Christiane Wolf here. Go Deeper Living with chronic conditions is one of the most difficult challenges to face—the effects are never just physical. While mindfulness is never a cure-all for pain or illness, it can offer relief in sometimes-surprising ways. To learn more about how mindful practices can ease suffering in mind and body, check out these articles from the archive: Let Your Pain Be a River: Vidyamala Burch on Living and Teaching With Chronic Pain  The Science of Chronic Stress, Inflammation, and Mindfulness  How to Live Well with Chronic Pain and Illness  How Mindfulness Provides Relief from Chronic Pain  For more practice using meditation to be with your body, even when it's in pain, here is a meditation from pain expert Vidyamala Burch: Filling the Body With Light: 12 Minute Meditation.  And more from Mindful here: More episodes of 12 Minute MeditationLet us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

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• A 12-Minute Meditation to Get Curious About Your Cravings

  We often imagine that our actions are the result of choice and awareness, which means that we can be extra critical of ourselves when we're struggling with habits that aren't serving us. But researchers in the science of habit and craving have found that much of our decision-making process is the result of unconscious neuro-chemical loops that reinforce themselves over time.  In this meditation, author and researcher Judson Brewer introduces a thoughtful way to bring genuine awareness and choice back into the equation when cravings arise.  Judson Brewer, MD, Ph.D. ("Dr. Jud") is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the "science of self-mastery," who blends over 20 years of experience with mindfulness training and a career in scientific research. He is passionate about understanding how our brains work, and how to use that knowledge to help people make deep, permanent change in their lives — with the goal of reducing suffering in the world at large. Dr. Jud is the director of research and innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center, where he also serves as a professor in Behavioral and Social Sciences at the School of Public Health and Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University.  The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.  Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter:  mindful.org/signup About the Teacher Find more from Judson Brewer here. Go Deeper Learning how to witness our mind without over-identifying with everything it comes up with is one of the most challenging parts of mindful practice. But it also yields some of the biggest benefits for our overall well-being. If you want to learn more about this foundational mindful skill, check out these resources from Mindful.org: A Basic Mindfulness Meditation for Labeling Thoughts and Emotions  I'm More Than My Anxious Thoughts—And So Are You  A Mindfulness Practice for Changing Your Relationship to Thoughts  What to Do When Thoughts Arise While Meditating  For more practice on working with thoughts, here's another meditation you can try: Slow Your Breath and Your Thoughts.  And more from Mindful here: More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

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• A 12-Minute Meditation on Our Relationship to Thoughts

  The nature of the mind is to make thoughts. All day long, mostly without our even noticing, the mind is generating thousands of thoughts. People often misunderstand mindfulness and meditation as ways to control or even stop our mind's churning—but that isn't even really possible.  With mindful attention, we can learn to notice and be aware of what our minds are up to, and that awareness is what gives us agency and opens new doorways to interior peace. In this meditation, teacher Vinny Ferraro guides us through a practice to see thoughts clearly as they arise, gently note them, and then return to the breath and body. Vinny Ferraro has been a practitioner of insight meditation (vipassanā) since the early 1990s. He is a co-Founder of the Dharma Punx and co-Guiding Teacher of Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. He is also a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk adolescents and is currently Senior Trainer for Mindful Schools. In 1987, he began leading groups in drug rehabilitation centers, juvenile halls, and halfway houses. In 2001, he began teaching for Challenge Day, a nationally recognized, social & emotional learning program, eventually becoming their Director of Training and leading workshops for over 110,000 youth on four continents. The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.  Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter:  mindful.org/signup Show Notes Find more from Vinny Ferraro here. Go Deeper Learning how to witness our mind without over-identifying with everything it comes up with is one of the most challenging parts of mindful practice. But it also yields some of the biggest benefits for our overall well-being. If you want to learn more about this foundational mindful skill, check out these resources from Mindful.org: A Basic Mindfulness Meditation for Labeling Thoughts and Emotions  I'm More Than My Anxious Thoughts—And So Are You  A Mindfulness Practice for Changing Your Relationship to Thoughts  What to Do When Thoughts Arise While Meditating  For more practice on working with thoughts, here's another meditation you can try: Slow Your Breath and Your Thoughts.  And more from Mindful here: More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

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• A 12-Minute Meditation to Rewire Your Brain for Optimism

  What do you do when you've made a plan, you've done everything you can to make it work…and things still don't turn out the way you hoped? In frustration and disappointment, it's easy to focus on what's wrong.  This exercise—adapted from Start Here: Master the Lifelong Habit of Wellbeing by Eric Langshur and Nate Klemp, and led by mindfulness coach Priti Patel—offers a quick way to realign toward what is working, which can help us settle and give us clarity.   Nate Klemp, PhD, is coauthor of Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. He is a former philosophy professor and a founding partner at Mindful. He is also coauthor of The 80/80 Marriage: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Relationship and Start Here, a New York Times bestselling guide to mindfulness in the real world. Nate received his BA and MA from Stanford University, and his PhD from Princeton University.   The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.  Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter:  mindful.org/signup Show Notes Find more from Nate Klemp here. Go Deeper Gratitude is a game-changer. It's so much more than just trying to scare up happy feelings—it's actually a practice that can rewire our brains, shift our neurochemistry, and improve our relationships over time. For more info on this small-but-mighty skill, check out these resources from Mindful.org: How to Practice Gratitude  Gratitude for the Lousy Ingrate  The Power of Gratitude (with a Healthy Dose of Cynicism)  The Science of Gratitude  For more practice, here's A 12-Minute Meditation for Cultivating Daily Gratitude you can try.  And more from Mindful here: More episodes of 12 Minute MeditationLet us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

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• Peace Begins With Me: A 12-Minute Meditation

  When painful emotions are circling all around, our instinct is often to reach for external reassurance.  In this practice, law professor and author Rhona Magee offers a gentle reminder that the key to calm starts with a simple pause—and we get to choose that.   Rhonda V. Magee is a professor of law at the University of San Francisco. Also trained in sociology and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), she is a highly practiced facilitator of trauma-sensitive, restorative MBSR interventions for lawyers and law students, and for minimizing the effects of social-identity-based bias. Magee has been a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Law and Society and a visiting professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.  Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter:  mindful.org/signup Show Notes Find more from Rhonda Magee here. Go Deeper Working with challenging, painful emotions is at the heart of mindfulness practices. It's counter-intuitive, but the key to alleviating the suffering that often accompanies feelings like fear, rage, grief, or jealousy is not to fix or overcome them, but to move toward them with compassion and curiosity. To learn more about building this mindful skill, check out these articles: A Mindful Guide to Navigating Difficult Emotions  Befriend Painful Emotions with the Handshake Practice  Three Ways Acceptance Helps You Work with Difficult Emotions  You Can Investigate Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them  For another meditation, here's A 15-Minute Practice to Soften, Soothe, and Allow Difficult Emotions you can try.  And more from Mindful here: More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

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