12 Minute Meditation

When we are going through a difficult season personally, or we are bearing witness to the pain of others, our relationship to genuine joy or happiness can get complicated and confusing. Happiness can feel out of reach, or it can feel like a betrayal, like it's something we don't "deserve" in hard times. 
But strengthening our ability to notice and soak in moments of beauty, tenderness, connection, and gratitude can actually have a fortifying effect on us. It can help us build resilience and fill our empty emotional tanks—which can foster our own healing and make it possible for us to show up in healing ways for others. 
This week, teacher Wendy O'Leary shares a guided practice to tune our attention to the reality that shimmers right alongside our genuine seasons of struggle. 
Wendy O'Leary, M.Ed., author and health educator, has three children's books and an adult book on self-compassion in families. She is a certified mindfulness teacher, parent educator, and self-compassion advocate with expertise in teaching emotional resilience to children and adults. Her next publication is a card deck for children titled "Let's Grow Happiness," created in collaboration with her colleague Helen Maffini. It is scheduled for release on April 21, 2026 and can be preordered at www.wendyoleary.com.
 
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week. 
Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app. 
Show Notes
Find more from Wendy O'Leary here.
If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build these essential skills of resilience, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths. 
Go Deeper
To explore more about how happiness is not just something we get when things are going well, but an essential human experience, check out these resources from Mindful.org: 
What We Know (Or Think We Know) About Happiness 

Three Emerging Pathways to Happiness 

Find Happiness by Embracing All of Your Emotions 

Searching for Happiness and Finding Yard Work 

Why Happiness Isn't Always Comfortable

To get more practice noticing and connecting with happiness, try 3 Guided Meditations to Open Up to Happiness.
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There are so many reasons why we might be struggling to get to sleep and stay asleep. Work or relationship stress, health concerns, hormonal changes, the state of the world—there's plenty to keep us awake at night. 
This week, Mark Bertin offers a soothing sleep practice to help settle our restlessness, using the breath as a calming anchor to gently coax our busy minds and tense bodies into rest. 
Because this is a sleep meditation, there won't be the usual recorded outro, so you can just drift off in silence. 
Mark Bertin, MD, is a pediatrician, author, professor, and mindfulness teacher specializing in neurodevelopmental behavioral pediatrics. He's a regular contributor to Mindful.org and Psychology Today. He is the author of How Children Thrive: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids (Sounds True, 2018). Dr. Bertin resides in Pleasantville, New York. For more, visit developmentaldoctor.com.
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week. 
Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app. 
Show Notes
Find more from Dr. Mark Bertin here.
Go Deeper
For help understanding how mindfulness can make sleep better and more restorative, check out these resources from Mindful.org: 
The Ultimate Guide to Mindfulness for Sleep 

Why We Wake Up At Night and How Mindfulness Helps Us Sleep Again 

The Science of Deep Sleep 

8 Tips for Better Sleep at Night 

Mindful has a wonderful collection of sleep meditations. If you want to try another version of a body scan, A 12-Minute Body Scan Meditation for Letting Go of Stress and Falling Asleep is a great place to start.  
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Daily life is full of irritations: moments of inconvenience, situations where we don't get what we were hoping for, delays, disappointments, prickly interactions that can leave us confused and exasperated. 
If we're honest, we can probably admit that sometimes our reactions in those moments tend to be reflexive rather than intentional. We feel our anger or annoyance rise, and we react almost as though we're reading a script.
Can we explore these habitual reactions in a way that gives us enough space to respond differently? In today's practice, teacher Patricia Rockman guides us through a meditation to help us meet whatever is arising, so that we have more agency when the next moment arises. 
Patricia Rockman, MD, CCFP, FCFP is a family physician with a focused practice in mental health. She is the senior director of Education and Clinical Services at the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, Toronto. Rockman is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Family Medicine, cross appointed to Psychiatry. She has extensive experience practicing individual psychotherapy, leading therapy groups, and training healthcare providers in mindfulness-based interventions, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and change management for stress reduction. She is a freelance writer, yoga teacher, and meditation practitioner.
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week. 
Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app. 
Show Notes
Find more from Patricia Rockman here.
Go Deeper
For more resources to explore reactivity and choice, check out these resources from Mindful.org: 
The "About To" Moment: Teaching and Modeling Response vs. Reaction 

 Emotional Rescue: Using Mindfulness to Reset Your Reactions 

You Can Investigate Your Emotions Without Suppressing Them 

Tame Reactive Emotions by Naming Them 

For more practice with compassionately looking at and interrupting unconscious reactivity, try The S.T.O.P. Practice: Creating Space Around Automatic Reactions.  
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It's not always an instinctual go-to for us, but self-compassion is one of the most powerful forms of healing and restoration for our mental and physical well-being. 
In this meditation, mindfulness teacher Shamash Alidina offers three ways to show compassion for yourself when you're stressed and need a reset. 
Shamash Alidina has been practising mindfulness since 1998 and runs his own successful training organisation. He is the author of Mindfulness For Dummies and most recently, The Mindful Way Through Stress. He frequently pops up in newspapers, magazines and on radio shows. Based in London, he runs online trainings and speaks at conferences all over the world. He's been teaching mindfulness full-time since 2010.
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week. 
Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app. 
Show Notes
Find more from Shamash Alidina here.
Go Deeper
For more resources to help meet stress, balance your nervous system, and tap into resilience, check out these resources from Mindful.org: 
Deep Resilience: The Wisdom of Making Friends with Your Mind 

Swimming, Walking, Running—Why Mindful Movement Can Boost Resilience  

Why Your Outbreath is Connected to Your Well-Being 

You Don't Have to Shut Down or Burn Out When You Care This Much. Do This Instead. 

 
For more practice tending to your nervous system with self-compassion, try A 12-Minute Body Scan Meditation for Self-Compassion and Presence. 
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There's a paradox inside mindfulness practice: When we want to heal something, we move toward what hurts, not away from it. It's not easy to keep our hearts soft or open, and a mindful practice doesn't change the inherent risks in being a human in a world of other humans. 
This week, as part of his mini-course Opening Ourselves Up to Compassion, Vinny Ferraro shares a practice to meet our pain and uncertainty, to recognize our inherent connection, and to summon the courage to lower our defenses. 
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. 
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week. 
Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app. 
Show Notes
Find more from Vinny Ferraro here.
Go Deeper
For more resources on wise boundaries and how to stay open when you want to shut down, check out these resources from Mindful.org: 
How Writing Three Lines of Poetry Can Open Your Heart 

Why We're Hardwired to Armor Our Hearts 

Fearless Open-Hearted Awareness with Frank Ostaseski (a mini-course)

How to Show Up With Your Whole Heart 

Compassionate Boundaries: How to Say No with Heart 

To try another meditation to help lower defenses and break down armor, try A 12-Minute Meditation to Cultivate an Open Heart. 
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].