Sometimes the simplest practices are the most helpful. When lost, overwhelmed, sad or scared, I often find myself simply walking outside, lying down, and staring up at the sky. There's nothing specific to do, nothing specific to feel. It's simply a moment to watch the movement of the clouds or stars, and to remember that the earth is nothing more than a pale blue dot rotating in a vast galaxy of stars, planets, moons, and more. This practice connects us to something larger than ourselves and this one moment in time. What we experience through the cosmos surrounding us tells us about ourselves.A little perspective is always a good thing. Join me for today’s 10-minute meditation; it is perfect for a reset, a brain break, or a moment of calm on a hectic day.Sign up for my newsletter at to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcastThank you to Brianna Nielsen for production and editing support. Find her at https://www.instagram.com/brianna_podcastpro/#meditatewithmeryl

The Mindful Minute has a NEW NAME and NEW LOOK! After 8 years, I have updated the name to more accurately reflect the content offered here. Welcome to Our Mindful Nature!“Back when humans lived in communal caves and tribal encampments, we told stories about the stars. When we started sailing, we used these same pinpricks of light to estimate our own location. When we began planting, we relied on the constellations and the Sun to plant and sustain crops. Yet today, most modern humans have lost this deep connection to the cosmos that was once central to our daily lives.” ~Sarah ScolesToday’s episode is a replay of a 2022 interview that is still one of my favorites and is a perfect fit for our astronomical focus this month. Enjoy it!I have devoted more episodes to the night sky and the cosmos surrounding us than any other singular topic, and today’s interview with science journalist and author Sarah Scoles perhaps best sums up why the skies above serve as such a powerful connection to our meditation practice and our deepest selves. Sarah, along with astronomy professor Chris De Pree, wrote a unique guidebook (and a perpetual guest on my nightstand) titled Astronomical Mindfulness.In today’s episode of Our Mindful Nature, Sarah and I talk about the power of the sun, moon, stars, and planets to offer engaging exercises that deepen your knowledge of the solar system, help you take necessary pauses every day, and foster a renewed sense of presence in the universe. The focus is on short, simple practices that immediately create a sense of connection and provide context for the hectic moments of our day-to-day lives.Whether you look up at the night sky or not, the skies above us are perhaps the most central, ubiquitous element of human storytelling and identity. Humanity has looked up for as long as we have ever found a record of. The earliest cave drawings and the earliest indentations carved into the earth were made in reference to the sky above. What we experience through the cosmos surrounding us tells us about ourselves.Join me for this exploration of the cosmos, mindfulness, and some new practices you can try tonight. At the end, I offer a 10-minute guided meditation inspired by this conversation.Sarah Scoles is a freelance journalist and contributing editor at WIRED. She is the author of Making Contact: Jill Tarter and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence and They Are Already Here: UFO Culture and Why We See Saucers. Learn more about Sarah at: https://www.sarahscoles.com/ Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcastThank you to Brianna Nielsen for production and editing support. Find her at https://www.instagram.com/brianna_podcastpro/#meditatewithmeryl

​​The Mindful Minute has a NEW NAME and NEW LOOK! After 8 years, I have updated the name to more accurately reflect the content offered here. Welcome to Our Mindful Nature!Today, we are kicking off a month of astronomical-inspired meditations and interviews in honor of next week’s total solar eclipse. A solar eclipse happens when, at just the right moment, the moon passes between the sun and Earth blocking the sun’s light. On April 8, 2024, 13 states will experience a total solar eclipse, for many others we will witness a partial solar eclipse.In honor of this, I am sharing a meditation I recorded a few years ago titled ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ (hehehe). While this meditation references a total lunar eclipse, the energy behind this meditation remains the same whether it is the sun or the moon having its light blocked.Do you feel this in your life sometimes? That something comes up creating a block in your energy, your attention or your ability to move forward? I think these might be the moments I am MOST grateful for my meditation practice. When we meditate, we develop an awareness of our habitual reactions to life and create the space for movement. We learn to pause just long enough to acknowledge what is blocking us, to let it move out of the way, and to once again feel illuminated. In this meditation, we listen to Rialto Beach at midnight. There are full, dynamic waves, and with each wave we feel the drifting pull of the ocean. The invitation to pause and then allow movement is clear here between the quiet of a wave landing on the beach and the crescendo of the wave retraction.Big thank you to sound artist and acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton for the use of today’s soundscape. I highly recommend headphones, if you have them available.The Quileute were some of the first people to hear the sounds of land shared in today’s meditation.Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcastThank you to Brianna Nielsen for production and editing support. Find her at https://www.instagram.com/brianna_podcastpro/Thank you to Gordon Hempton for the use of today’s soundscape. Learn more about Gordon here: https://soundtracker.com/#meditatewithmeryl

The Mindful Minute has a NEW NAME and NEW LOOK! After 8 years, I have updated the name to more accurately reflect the content offered here. Welcome to Our Mindful Nature!How many episodes can I devote to birds, you ask? Well, I haven’t found a limit yet…!Today on Our Mindful Nature, we are talking about two of my favorite things - Oracle cards and Birds! Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez is joining us to introduce a new somatic oracle deck titled Birdsong. Dr. Chanti is a Cuban-American artist-author, ritualist, and non-clinical depth psychologist. She believes that images speak a profound language; her life’s work is a translator of the unseen and an advocate for the imaginal. She holds two master's degrees in Engaged Humanities and Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. In 2023 she completed her doctoral dissertation Navegando Liminal: Rituals to Translate the Image of the Wound. Her work and teaching follows and welcomes imagination, creativity, dreaming, and deep rest.Within our conversation today, we explore:‣ Divination⁠‣ Somatic wisdom⁠‣ What happens when we tune into the body rather than the guide books⁠‣ Trusting the wisdom of our bodies⁠‣ Translating the wisdom of the natural world⁠‣ Dreams & the creative process⁠‣ Migration, landlessness, and the meaning of home⁠⁠At the end of today’s interview, Dr. Chanti guides a beautiful bird-meditation. So take a seat outside, make sure you have a bit of room to move, grab your journal, and join us!You can learn more about Birdsong & Dr. Chanti here: https://www.yantrawisdom.com/birdsong-2024And, you can listen to the first interview I did with Dr. Chanti on Dreams here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/26Jtx6aGnHoCmWYkLOE87T?si=7ORpTHYiRFeNhihI6oXM3ASign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcastThank you to Brianna Nielsen for production and editing support. #meditatewithmeryl

The Mindful Minute has a NEW NAME and NEW LOOK! After 8 years, I have updated the name to more accurately reflect the content offered here. Welcome to Our Mindful Nature!This is a special bonus episode of Our Mindful Nature. Last week, we kicked off the spring season with an exploration of migration, and the episode along with the guided meditation were filled with the sounds and images of migration as recorded by nature field recordist Nick McMahan. Today, I’m joined by Nick to give you a bit of our behind-the-scenes planning and brainstorming about the sounds of spring. Nick shares more about where each sound was recorded, why he selected these particular sounds, and what we hope you experience in this journey.At the end, we share an unguided listening experience devoted to the sounds of spring.Enjoy!Nick is a nature field recordist from Washington State. He has worked closely with acclaimed acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, Offspring Film, Audible Sleep Sound, and numerous independent collaborations. The Director of Quiet Trails for Quiet Parks International (QPI), Nick’s recording experience ranges internationally from extreme cold, tropical rainforests, mountains to deserts. Specializing in soundscape, ambiance, and unusual sound, leads Nick to become a better listener and observer of the world.Learn more about Nick here:https://www.nickcmcmahan.comhttps://www.instagram.com/nickcmcmahanhttps://www.youtube.com/@nickmcmahanSign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl

The Mindful Minute has a NEW NAME and NEW LOOK! After 8 years, I have updated the name to more accurately reflect the content offered here. Welcome to Our Mindful Nature!One of the markers of spring is the migratory movement of so many species towards their breeding grounds - salmon, Monarch butterflies, and so many different species of birds. In this special Spring Equinox episode, I want to delve into 3 specific migrations as reflection points for our own contemplative journey this spring.Within these 3 examples of migration, we will explore: TimeIn daily, seasonal and generational movementSpaceFrom surface to depth, from under water to the high reaches of skyAwarenessFrom inner to outer awareness, from individual to collective, from present moment understanding to ancestral knowingAnd what else? What are YOU experiencing in this migratory season? As spring awakens, as seeds are planted in the earth and in the heart, what journey or journeys are you aware of? What is stirring in your blood and calling you forward?Join me for today’s episode of Our Mindful Nature. You can expect a brief talk followed by a 10 minute guided meditation.Thank you to Nick McMahan for the incredible soundscapes and sound design in this episode, as well as the photography used in the YouTube version of this podcast. Learn more about Nick and his work at https://www.nickcmcmahan.com.Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl

Friends, you might have noticed something BIG today as you clicked ‘play’ on this episode…The Mindful Minute has a NEW name!!!After 8 years of sharing recordings of Monday night meditation class on this podcast; I felt it was time to shift, to level up, to adjust in response to the times we find ourselves in…As a meditation teacher, when I share what I do, I very often hear 1 of 2 comments:I want to meditate but I just don’t have enough timeI tried meditation once but I think too muchAnd so, this podcast was originally built on the premise of responding to those two statements. My goal was (and is) to offer accessible, enjoyable meditation practices with the reminder that you can meditate in 5 or 10 minutes just as effectively as you can in 20 - 30 minutes. But then, I started noticing a steady uptick in another response when I mention that I am a meditation teacher… This response goes something like - I DO meditate. I do my 10 minutes, and I am still struggling. I’m still anxious. Overwhelmed. Scared. Despairing. And, the truth is, my friends, me too. We are in times of massive change and upheaval, and that is going to require more than a 10-minute nervous system reset. It asks us to wake up. To be less afraid of the dark. To be more tender with ourselves and all beings in this universe. The work I hope to explore with you on this podcast moving forward is HOW? How do we do this? What makes us feel steady & well? What makes me feel resourced? I know without a shadow of doubt, from my own meditative experiences as well as through the teachings of many ancient wisdom holders, that embodying our connection to the natural world is perhaps the most important thing we can do for the wellbeing of humans, the planet and the more-than human that live here with us. Hence the new name of this podcast - Our Mindful Nature. It is a bit of a double entendre. Our Mindful Nature as in our inner nature, our own mindfulness, but also it references the wisdom of the natural world that surrounds and supports us. And so, most of our meditation practices moving forward will be nature-based. And, we will be curious about other mindful practices that support this sense of well-being.In the words of Shefa Gold - Can I open to trust the wilderness,the unknown, the Mystery that risesin response to my loving, curious longing?Join me for today’s talk and 10-minute guided meditation practice.Special thank you to Dr. Chanti Tacoronte-Perez for the wisdom and insight regarding the vast spectrum of practices that make up our well-being. You can learn more about Dr. Chanti and her work here:https://www.yantrawisdom.com/https://drchanti.substack.com/Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl

Why is a meditation podcast chatting with a cookbook author, you ask? It’s a great question. I have been paying a lot of attention to the practices in my day that support my well-being the most because I continue to hear from listeners (and experience myself) that we are doing our meditation practices and yet, we are still struggling. We still feel stress, anxiety or fear. And so, while this podcast will always honor meditation first and foremost, I want to also honor the other pieces that support our well-being. I was reminded recently that every culture:EatsSingsDancesCreates artTells stories about the starsIt is reconnecting with these inherent, innate pieces of us that create a sense of connection, belonging and well-being. So, we will start in the kitchen.Deborah Johnson is a home cook and author of the new cookbook, On Rising: Recipes and Rituals for Joyful Mornings. This gorgeous cookbook is an ode to mindful, joyful moments in the kitchen. It is an invitation to turn our daily meals into an opportunity to celebrate the beauty of the everyday and to reconnect with the sacred. In this conversation, we talk about:05:02 The Role of Cooking in Mindfulness and Wellbeing08:19 The Art of Presence in the Kitchen08:38 Deborah's Journey to Cookbook Authorship10:42 The Power of Presence and Connection in Cooking16:06 Reimagining the Kitchen as a Place of Joy29:51 The Healing Power of Storytelling Through Cooking54:25 A Mindful Eating MeditationAnd at the end, Deborah guides a mindful eating practice - so grab a snack, a cup of tea and join us at the table for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute. You can learn more about Deborah and check out her cookbook here:Website: www.deborahesjohnson.comInstagram: @deborahesjohnsonYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgHXyshzEKdTroNShdTwDKwAnd, for my Georgia listeners, I promised to share a link to the CSA I reference in today’s episode. You can find it here: https://freshharvest.com/ Thank you to Ashleigh Amoroso for the use of her gorgeous photos from Deborah’s cookbook.Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl

In today’s meditation practice, we listen to the sounds of melting snow. Now, I don’t know about you, but it never really occurred to me that melting snow makes a sound. It does. It produces a smooth, slow gurgle. No drips, just a near constant murmur that reminds us that change is happening in every moment. The daffodils are pushing up, the hyacinth will bloom soon. The literal and metaphorical arrival of spring is imminent. It is time to think about what will plant during this ripe time.Huge thank you to Gordon Hempton, sound artist and acoustic ecologist, for the use of this soundscapes. You can learn more about Gordon and his work at ​​https://soundtracker.com/. This meditation was originally written and recorded for Roots meditation app. While not currently available, we are working to make this app available again in the near future.Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl

This month, we have explored the season of winter as a way into our meditation practice. We have looked at winter in our external landscapes, as well as our internal landscapes. We've listened to the sounds of winter, we've talked about wolves and our animal nature, and today, we're going to dive a little bit more into the creativity of winter.I was deeply inspired by a recent essay written and illustrated by Candace Rardon titled, ‘Like A Garden in Winter’. Candace is an author, illustrator, visual storyteller, and creator of Dandelion Seeds (one of my favorite publications on Substack). She is also the creator of many of the sleep stories you might have listened to on Calm.Together, Candace and I chat about what it means to bloom in winter, the season of hibernation. We talk about finding inspiration and meditative moments in the world around us; the art of visual storytelling, what makes a good sleep story and so much more. This conversation was such a joy to record; I hope you find as much inspiration in it as I have.At the end of today’s interview, Candace offers us a mindful reflection and journaling prompt born of the beauty of Snowdrops. So grab your notebook, a cozy seat, and join us!In this episode:01:10 Exploring the Creativity of Winter03:12 The Art of Visual Storytelling03:49 The Journey of Moving Continents05:28 The Power of Collaboration in Creativity14:44 The Evolution of 'Like a Garden in Winter'23:42 Finding Strength in Winter: A Metaphor for Life24:35 Journey into Mindfulness through Travel and Art27:09 The Role of Creativity in Mindfulness30:35 The Magic of Sleep Stories41:05 Lessons from Winter Blooms44:26 The Joy of Spring: A New ChapterLearn more about Candace Rardon and her work here: https://www.candaceroserardon.com/https://dandelionseeds.substack.com/Sign up for my newsletter at https://merylarnett.substack.com/ to receive free mini meditations each week, creative musings, and more.Make a donation or learn more about my free offerings and live classes by visiting merylarnett.cominstagram.com/merylarnettyoutube.com/@themindfulminutepodcast#meditatewithmeryl