Our Mindful Nature: Meditations Inspired by Nature to Soothe the Overwhelmed Mind and Ease Anxiety

Y’all know I am a voracious reader, right? So much so that I considered calling my donation page a “buy me a book” page. Books inspire me, provoke questions, and uplift me. I am releasing a series of interviews with authors of some new books that I have just read and love deeply! You know the other thing that I love and do daily {aside from meditate}? I journal. Journaling is such an important practice for me that I even included it as an important part of meditation teacher training! And, today’s guest wrote an entire book inspired by the profound impact of journaling.Marc Champagne unpacks the mental fitness practices and reflective questions shaping the lives of some of the most successful and brilliant thinkers in the world. He is the host of the top 50 ranked podcast, Behind The Human, and co-founded the journaling app (KYO) which ended up reaching over 86 million people without any paid advertising, all within the first two years of launch. He has studied mental fitness practices for over a decade and has consulted for top-rated digital journals and wellness companies.Marc's first book, Personal Socrates, explores the pointed questions that stimulate our mental fitness and teach us how to direct our internal narrative to work for us, instead of against us. "We all ask questions, but are they the right ones, the best ones, and are we asking enough of them?"–Marc ChampagneLearn more about Marc and his new book here: https://www.behindthehuman.com/If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in.Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteYou can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.You can also grab my FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com. It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/#meditatewithmeryl

What an important conversation I am sharing with you guys today. I recently had the tremendous honor of having a conversation with Dr. Traci Baxley, the author of Social Justice Parenting: How to raise compassionate, anti-racist, justice-minded kids in an unjust world. Dr. Baxley’s work introduces clear, do-able and specific steps for families to take to engage in the social justice activism that today’s society needs most. She specifically addresses why “raising good kids” and “protecting my little kids from the problems of the world” are false narratives that white parents {myself included} must continue to push back against.And, best of all, Dr. Baxley presents this important conversation in an open-hearted, shame-free way. When I read her book, I felt clear and empowered to introduce important narratives to my children and to engage them in ways our family can take supportive actions.I told her before we started recording that I felt like we were already friends just from reading her book, and that is even more true after our conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Please, please, please go buy her book, read it, and start having these conversations with your own families, if you aren’t already. Lastly, if you are curious why a conversation about social justice is happening on a meditation podcast, please take a moment to listen to today’s episode. Our meditation practice allows us to create connection, clarity and compassion for ourselves, but it doesn't stop there. Our practice ultimately expands outward until we know our connection to all beings everywhere as a true, immutable fact. And, that knowledge asks us to step into action to support our beliefs. That doesn’t mean you have to be at every protest; it doesn't mean that we each do what we can to eliminate the suffering of all beings, everywhere. In small, manageable ways. With heart. I love you all; keep practicing and enjoy today’s episode. 

In a recent meditation, the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr wrote: “Being human means acknowledging that we're made from the earth and will return to the earth. We are earth that has come to consciousness.In all the ancient teachings, we read that the body is a microcosm of the universe. There is both poetry and science in these statements. When we acknowledge the truth of this connection between earth and body, it is as if we are entering a deep forest. We must have both the courage to enter the forest as well as the willingness to feed the intuitive senses that will carry us safely through.Join me for a short guided meditation that reflects on this connection to earth herself. These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episodes are released every Thursday for a longer, deeper practice.You can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in.Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteYou can also grab my FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com. It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/#meditatewithmeryl

Recently, I listened to an interview with Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.She talks so beautifully about how forests are wired for wisdom and how trees that we previously thought were drowning out young saplings are actually helping them to thrive, much like a grandmother-mother-child relationship.Within this interview, a comment was made that Humus, Human and Humor all share the same root word, and I can’t stop thinking about the truths hidden in this simple fact. The root ‘Hum’ in Latin means ‘ground’. ‘Humus’ means earth or ground.In a recent meditation, the Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr wrote: “Being human means acknowledging that we're made from the earth and will return to the earth. We are earth that has come to consciousness.In all the ancient teachings, we read that the body is a microcosm of the universe. There is both poetry and science in these statements. When we acknowledge the truth of this connection between earth and body, it is as if we are entering a deep forest.We must have both the courage to enter the forest as well as the willingness to feed the intuitive senses that will carry us safely through.“We are earth come to consciousness.”This month’s meditation series is an exploration of lying on the forest floor, and the connection between humus, human, and humor. We begin with a meditation on earth itself. Join me. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in.Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteYou can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.You can also grab my FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com. It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/#meditatewithmeryl

As our Living in a Divided World meditation series comes to end, I wanted to wrap up the month with a discussion with one of the amazing creative souls that has provided me with a sense of connection and hope during the pandemic - my cousin!Uli Beutter Cohen is a New York City–based documentarian, artist, and the creator of Subway Book Review. She explores belonging to a time and place through writing and photography. Uli is a sought-after speaker and panelist. Her work has been featured on TV, in print and online by New York magazine, Esquire, Vogue, Forbes, Oprah Magazine, Glamour, the BBC, and The Guardian, among others.For nearly a decade, Uli has ridden the subway through New York City to observe, interview, and photograph some of its most imaginative people: the readers of books. Between The Lines: Stories from the Underground, Uli’s first book, is the remarkable result—a collection of conversations that beautifully illuminate who we are and where we are going. Between the Lines is an enthusiastic celebration of the ways stories invite us into each other’s lives, and a call to action for imagining a bold, empathetic future together. So, get on board, stand clear of the closing doors and enjoy this special ride.*Between the Lines releases everywhere on October 26, 2021. You can pre-order Between the Lines at your favorite indie bookshop.Pre-ordering books is a huge help to authors. https://bookshop.org/a/3206/9781982145675 Find Uli at https://www.subwaybookreview.co/@subwaybookreview@theUBCMindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in.Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteYou can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.You can also grab my FREE Meditation Starter Kit on my website merylarnett.com. It is full of my favorite tips, stories and ideas for starting and maintaining a daily meditation practice. Grab your copy today! --> http://bit.ly/meditationstarterkit ***Connect with me on Instagram {@merylarnett} to get bonus meditation tips, mini-meditations, and the occasional baby spam: https://www.instagram.com/merylarnett/#meditatewithmeryl

In this mini meditation, we dig into the four qualities that all beings possess in immeasurable quantities. Lovingkindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy & Equanimity. This guided meditation will walk us through all four qualities, allowing us to foster and grow what we need most for the days that lie ahead.These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episodes are released every Thursday for a longer, deeper practice.In celebration of my 5-year podcast anniversary {!!!}, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in. Plus you’ll get goodies in the mail from me!Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteSpecial thanks to today’s sponsors:Baronfig - Baronfig’s line of “Tools for Thinkers” includes guided journals, notebooks, writing instruments, bags, accessories, and so much more. As an avid journal, I use and love their guided meditation journal and their basic Confidant notebooks! By using our code MINDFULMINUTE21, you'll receive 20% off your first purchase. https://bit.ly/BaronfigMindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. You can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.

This meditation series, Living in a Divided World, is a series about truly acknowledging the level of divisiveness in our society and in ourselves at this particular moment in time. It is a series exploring how we might find a sense of balance or even peace within the fractures.Part 1 invited us to courageously stop and notice that we stand at a crossroad. A crossroad between aversion {all that we disagree with} and attachment {all that we believe to be true and just}. A crossroad where all opposites meet. Part 2 offered the chance to lean in softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. It was a reminder that much of our practice hinges on the ability to listen. And now, in part 3, we dig into the four qualities that all beings possess in immeasurable quantities. Compassion is one of them, to be sure, but compassion alone isn’t enough to get us through this moment. Join me for today’s dharma talk and guided meditation practice; it is designed to help us draw out these 4 immeasurable qualities when we need them the most. Right now.In celebration of my 5-year podcast anniversary {!!!}, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in. Plus you’ll get goodies in the mail from me!Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteSpecial thanks to today’s sponsors:Baronfig - Baronfig’s line of “Tools for Thinkers” includes guided journals, notebooks, writing instruments, bags, accessories, and so much more. As an avid journal, I use and love their guided meditation journal and their basic Confidant notebooks! By using our code MINDFULMINUTE21, you'll receive 20% off your first purchase. https://bit.ly/BaronfigMindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. You can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.

As we explore living in a divided world, as we struggle with the myriad of problems that face us in this moment, it can be hard to understand the teaching of The Middle Way. The invitation to rest in the middle of tension, paradox or discord without needing to resolve it, can feel uncomfortable to say the least. As I work through this teaching in my own practice, I often find myself reflecting on the words of Rilke - “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.”Join me for today’s mini meditation as we learn to love the questions themselves. These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episodes are released every Thursday for a longer, deeper practice.In celebration of my 5-year podcast anniversary {!!!}, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in. Plus you’ll get goodies in the mail from me!Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteSpecial thanks to today’s sponsors:Baronfig - Baronfig’s line of “Tools for Thinkers” includes guided journals, notebooks, writing instruments, bags, accessories, and so much more. As an avid journal, I use and love their guided meditation journal and their basic Confidant notebooks! By using our code MINDFULMINUTE21, you'll receive 20% off your first purchase. https://bit.ly/BaronfigMindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. You can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.

“Of course we can always imagine more perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone else should behave. But it’s not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is, and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.” ~Ajahn SumedoAs we talk about facing the divisiveness that plagues our every moment, the never-ending list of crises that need solving, we are exploring a path within meditation known as “The Middle Way”.The Middle Way lies between aversion and attachment; it lies within the meeting point of opposites. This teaching feels like something like a koan to me. A koan in an unanswerable question, riddle or poem that invites us to a state of awakening. We can’t explain it but somehow, when we hear it, we understand the truth that lies within it. There is a part of us that feels called to stand up for what we believe is right, to stand up for the health of the world {in all of the ways, and addressing all of the pandemics, and in this same moment, we are invited to sit in the middle of the tension, paradox and discord, and quietly relax right in the middle of it all. It is ok if you respond to this teaching with more questions than answers, with a whole list of comments that start with, “but…” I have questions too. And, I am reminded of Rilke as he writes, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.”These teachings don’t say “don’t feel”, and they don’t say “don’t act”. These teachings allow for all of it to be here. In the middle. In celebration of my 5-year podcast anniversary {!!!}, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in. Plus you’ll get goodies in the mail from me!Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minuteSpecial thanks to today’s sponsors:Baronfig - Baronfig’s line of “Tools for Thinkers” includes guided journals, notebooks, writing instruments, bags, accessories, and so much more. As an avid journal, I use and love their guided meditation journal and their basic Confidant notebooks! By using our code MINDFULMINUTE21, you'll receive 20% off your first purchase. https://bit.ly/BaronfigMindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. You can learn more about my:*Shoreline: my new meditation app*Awakened Heart Meditation Teacher Training*Live, virtual meditation classes with me*Upcoming eventsAll by visiting merylarnett.com.

As we explore the paradox of the deep divides of our world today and the teachings of connectedness that have existed throughout time, we use practices like this meditation to help us land right here in the present moment. Meditation is always inviting us into the reality of the present, where all opposites exist at once. "The still point of the turning world" as T.S. Eliot calls it. We can choose to battle out right/left politics, and all the other ways of division, but the truth is we are the same. We, all beings, Are. The. Same. We share 99.9% of our genetic material with every other human on this earth. We are all scared of dying and of being alone. We all biologically need to belong and feel ‘correct’ in some way. And yet, the more we entrench ourselves in our own correctness, the more we ensure our fears become true. We feel more alone. We feel more threatened and unsafe. Climb out of the trench. Sit on your cushion. Land right here, right now. Let’s practice. These mini meditations are meant to support a daily home practice. Tune in every Monday to find your practice for the week! Full episodes are released every Thursday for a longer, deeper practice. In celebration of my 5-year podcast anniversary {!!!}, please consider making a one-time or monthly donation to support the growth of this labor of love. Your monthly donation will aid in keeping this show sponsor-free, employing additional small businesses AND funding the ongoing creative growth I invest in. Plus you’ll get goodies in the mail from me! Donate here: https://www.merylarnett.com/support-the-mindful-minute Special thanks to today’s sponsors: Baronfig - Baronfig’s line of “Tools for Thinkers” includes guided journals, notebooks, writing instruments, bags, accessories, and so much more. As an avid journal, I use and love their guided meditation journal and their basic Confidant notebooks! By using our code MINDFULMINUTE21, you'll receive 20% off your first purchase. https://bit.ly/Baronfig Mindful and Modern - Mindful and Modern makes the most beautiful meditation cushions, chairs, candles, and more. Be sure to visit https://www.mindfulandmodern.com/ and use code MindfulMinute10 to save 10% on your entire order. You can learn more about my: *Shoreline: my new meditation app *Live, virtual meditation classes with me *Upcoming events   All by visiting merylarnett.com.