Breathing Meditation For Finding Joy

In this 5.5-minute guided meditation, we'll recall the joy and start to build a collection of joyful thoughts to call on when other lingering thoughts are plaguing us and we feel stuck. The more we practice joy, the easier it is to call it up and feel it in our body when we need it. As we get better at this, we can teach our kids this practice as well.

Featured music: Heavy Clouds Drawing Back by Be Still the Earth, Ballerina by Yehezkel Raz, and Exhale by Salt of the Sound. Image by Luca Upper.

Transcript

Hello,

And welcome.

My name is Julie,

And I'm glad you've joined us for a parent break.

If your eyes are open,

I invite you to close them,

And let's take a few breaths together as we move from the outside inward.

Let's inhale,

Float,

And exhale.

Inhale,

Float,

And exhale.

I invite you to keep breathing normally,

And today we are going to spend some time with joy.

Now maybe you are super familiar with joy,

But maybe it's been a while since you spent any time in that feeling.

So I'll invite you to get curious with this next question.

Where in your body do you feel joy?

Does it sink down deeply to your toes,

Or does it float up like bubbles in a glass of soda?

Maybe it has a color,

Or a sound.

Maybe there's a visual that comes along with the feeling of joy.

Maybe you aren't really able to remember what joy feels like right now.

That's okay too.

Every day I take a moment to find joy.

I do this because it keeps it in my wheelhouse.

It helps me to recognize it when it pops up during my day,

And it helps me to call it forward when I really need to find it.

I've heard that feelings actually last about 20 seconds.

After that,

It is our thoughts that keep us feeling whatever we are thinking and feeling.

So when it comes to feeling sad,

Angry,

Frustrated,

Overwhelmed,

And many other feelings,

We may choose to dig in and really feel them and let them go.

Or we may get stuck in recurring thoughts that are associated with those feelings that begin to weigh us down.

If we can remember where we feel joy in our body,

And what it feels like,

We can choose to find that feeling and then to think joyful thoughts and keep those thoughts around for a while.

In order to do that we need a mental jar filled with some joyful thoughts.

So I'm going to stay quiet during this next song and let you start to fill your mental thought jar with some joyful visualizations.

There is no right way to do this.

I'll be back at the end of the song.

Hello again.

Let's take two breaths together,

Then we'll head forward into the rest of our day.

We'll inhale,

Float,

Release,

And drift.

Inhale,

Float,

Release,

And drift.

And if you're joining us live at Parent Break,

We are going to begin eight minutes of journaling.

If you're joining us in a replay on Insight Timer,

I invite you to do the same.

Thanks for joining us for this Parent Break.