Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.
In this guided meditation with poet and teacher Henry Shukman, learn how allowing discomfort, rather than resisting it, can open the door to greater calm and self-compassion.
How To Do This Practice:
- Find a Comfortable Position: Sit comfortably, either upright with your head balanced or reclining, and relax your jaw, shoulders, and hands.
- Invite Warmth and Softness into the Body: Gently bring awareness to different parts of your body—chest, belly, seat, legs, and feet. Imagine a gentle sweep of rest and quiet spreading through you, like a soft, warm wave.
- Notice Any Unease Without Trying to Change It: See if you can detect any subtle unease or restlessness. Instead of pushing it away, simply acknowledge it.
- Soften and Warm the Whole Torso: Move your awareness to the shoulders, sides, back, chest, and belly. Imagine each area softening like warm wax. Let this warmth frame your torso, surrounding even areas of tension or discomfort.
- Hold What You Find in Loving Awareness: Rather than trying to “fix” or remove unease, allow it to be held by your warmth and softness.
- Return Gently: When you feel ready, slowly bring small movements back into your body. Open your eyes and notice your surroundings, carrying a sense of warmth and acceptance with you.
Today’s Happiness Break Guide:
Henry Shukman, is a poet, mindfulness teacher, and author of Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening.
Learn more about Shukman’s work:
Order his book, Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening:
Related Happiness Break episodes:
Loving Kindness Meditation:
Embodying Resilience:
A Meditation on Original Love:
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
Make Uncertainty Part of the Process:
How To Show Up For Yourself:
How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress:
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:
Help us share Happiness Break! Leave a 5-star review and share this link:
Transcription:
SHUKA KALANTARI: Hi everyone, I’m Shuka Kalantari, and this is Happiness Break, where we share short, science-backed practices to help you find more peace and ease.
We all know what it’s like to feel restless in our bodies and minds. With so much to do and so much going on in the world, it can be hard to find a sense of calm.
But research shows that trying to push restlessness away can actually backfire—making it even stronger. The stress piles up, and before long, it starts taking a toll on your body and mind.
So today we bring you author, poet and teacher Henry Shukman to guide you in a practice of allowing restlessness.
Here’s Henry.
HENRY SHUKMAN: I’ve come to a place in practice where I’m a real believer in the effectiveness of allowing, and that allowing seems to switch on a more inclusive awareness.
A really sweet, inclusive place of awareness where it’s okay for us to be troubled and anxious and restless.
It’s okay to tend to ourselves with a kind of loving awareness. So I’m going to invite you now to come into a comfortable seated position. It’s fine to be reclining if that’s what you feel you need. So if you are upright just check that the crown of your head is floating over your seat.
Let your, let your jaw relax. Feel your jaw sinking a little bit. Sinking and settling. And you might notice that a certain kind of softness comes into your throat.
Let your shoulders also sink a little bit. It’s gonna be like eighth of an inch or, or sixteenth of an inch. Just let them go a little bit, and let your arms go slack, and let your fingers become limp. Okay, great, so we’re starting to find some calm, letting the chest area be warm, and letting the belly be warm.
Likewise, a warmth in your seat, and in your legs, and in your feet. So, a kind of sweep of rest, and peace, and quiet, stillness. Sort of being cast like a little spell over the body and the mind.
Okay, now in this place of greater ease we’re just gonna lightly do a little detection in the chest area perhaps also the diaphragm area just beneath the chest. Just seeing, is there any trace of some kind of unease or disquiet in that area?
And we may well find something. It’s very common so we’re not going to get rid of it. Instead we’re gonna switch our focus now to the shoulders and see if you can let the shoulders become soft like warm wax, warm wax that has been kneaded and become soft.
And see if you can also find a sense of warmth and softness in your flanks, in the sides of your body. The side ribs and side waist, a softness, a warmth. And now let’s see if we can find the same kind of warmth in the upper back, shoulder blades, the mid back, the lower back.
And let’s do the same thing in the front of the body. Let the chest become warm wax. The ventral part of the body, the very front of the middle of the body, the midriff as it’s sometimes called. Let it be warm, and let the belly be warm.
So it’s as if the whole torso is kind of framed in warm wax. And rest a moment with this and notice that when we’re with that warmth, it’s actually okay, if it encloses, embraces a little area of unease.
It’s not really a problem to get rid of. It’s something to just gently tend and care for. And hold in a loving awareness.
Yeah, and notice how when we do that, even if we can only touch it just a little bit, we’re not restless. We’re here. We’re in a kind of caring state. That doesn’t need to be anywhere else.
When you’re ready, I invite you to bring a little movement back into the body. Raise your eyes. Return to the space you’re in.
Thank you very much for joining me in this meditation. I’m Henry Shukman.
