Happiness Break: How Connecting With Ancestors Deepens Belonging
The Science of Happiness
Observing thoughts like clouds
King invites noticing thoughts nonjudgmentally and likening them to moving clouds.
Through a gentle ancestral meditation, discover how grounding in your roots can open the door to healing, meaning, and a deeper sense of belonging.
How To Do This Practice:
- Settle Into Your Body: Notice whether you’re sitting, standing, or walking, and gently bring your attention to the natural rhythm of your breath.
- Ground Yourself Through the Earth: Feel the weight of your body supported by the ground beneath you, and let any thoughts drift by like passing clouds.
- Sense the Ancestors in Nature: Expand your awareness to the sky, the earth, trees, and mountains, imagining them as ancestors who have been here long before you.
- Connect With Your Heartbeat: Place a hand on your heart if it feels comfortable, noticing the steady drumbeat within you—a rhythm shared across generations.
- Cultivate Compassion for Your Lineage: Envision compassion as a color or texture in your chest and let it gently radiate outward, offering it to your ancestors and to yourself.
- Offer a Wish for Healing: Bring to mind a simple wish for the easing of suffering—your own or others’—and breathe it through your body from sky to earth before slowly opening your eyes.
Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
Today’s Happiness Break Guide:
SARÁ KING is a neuroscientist, medical anthropologist and educator at UC San Diego.
Learn more about Sará King here: https://www.eomega.org/people/sara-king
Related Happiness Break episodes:
Where Did You Come From: https://tinyurl.com/2y9uyjj6
How To Tune Into Water’s Restorative Power: https://tinyurl.com/2k6ybzrs
A Meditation to Connect With Your Roots: https://tinyurl.com/ycy9xazc
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
Are You Following Your Inner Compass: https://tinyurl.com/y2bh8vvj
How Water Heals: https://tinyurl.com/utuhrnh3
Who’s Always There for You: https://tinyurl.com/yt3ejj6w
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Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/mrsnwvrm
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