Happiness Break: How Connecting With Ancestors Deepens Belonging
The Science of Happiness
Outro
Episode ends with production credit from PRX.
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
We want to hear from you! Take our quick 5-minute survey to tell us what you love, what you want more of, and how we can make the show even more inspiring and useful. Everyone who completes the survey can enter a drawing to win a copy of The Science of Happiness Workbook: 10 Practices for a Meaningful Life. Click the survey link in the show notes wherever you’re listening, or go directly to: https://tinyurl.com/happyhappysurvey. Thank you for helping us make the podcast even better!
Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod
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: https://tinyurl.com/mrsnwvrm
The AI-powered Podcast Player
