[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: Welcome to this special meditation from Verywell Mind, one of the largest and most trusted mental health and wellness sites online. If you’d like to set an intention for your practice or something you hope to achieve during the session, feel free to do so now. Let’s begin.

INSTRUCTOR: Get comfortable with your back straight, your heart open, your body relaxed, and rest for just a minute or two feeling the movement of breath just breathing in and breathing out. Now, when you breathe in, silently say in. And when you breathe out, silently say out. In. Out. In. Out. Over and over again. Just keep that up on your own for a beat or two. That’s the first of the tools I want to teach you that you can use when your mind gets very, very busy, and it feels hard to settle down. Here’s a second one. And if you have room, it would be great if you could walk. When you’re walking, I want you to silently say with every step something that you’re grateful for. So for instance, you might silently say I’m really grateful that I’ve got some time to practice today with the first step. The second step might be silently saying I’m really grateful that my friend is picking up carpool today. The third could be I’m really grateful that I’m having macaroni and cheese for lunch today because I love macaroni and cheese. The next could be I’m really grateful for my partner right now because they’ve been so incredibly supportive. And continue like that on your own silently using phrases of your own of people, places, and things that you are genuinely grateful for right now in this moment. Now, let’s switch it up a bit. But this time, with every step, I want you to silently say a friendly wish to someone that you know or maybe somebody that you don’t know. For example, on the first step, you might want to silently send your mom a wish. Maybe your mom has been having trouble sleeping at night. So the wish might be I wish sweet dreams for you tonight. On the second step, you might want to send a friendly wish to your daughter who’s been having some trouble being flexible with her friends. And you know she’s got a play date this afternoon. So the second step might be may she be flexible. On the third step, you might want to send a friendly wish to a coworker who you know has a big deadline coming up. May he or she be well. On the fourth step, you might want to send a friendly wish to your partner who’s been having a hard time lately. May he or she be happy. Continue on your own like that, silently sending a friendly wish with every step you take. These practices where we focus more on a word like in or the out with the breath or on the wishes or on our gratitude with each step, these practices are a way to help us reframe. They’re not meant to push our bad feelings aside. They’re not intended to sweep difficult feelings under the rug. We don’t want to ignore our feelings. We want to acknowledge what’s going on. If there’s problems, we want to acknowledge the problem and the feelings that go along with it. What these practices do, though, is that they focus our mind on something else just for a bit, something neutral like the words in and out or something that’s good going on in our life like our positive wishes for our friends and family or what we’re grateful for. That allows the strong, difficult feelings to settle a bit. And when those strong feelings settle, then we can take a look at them. Then, we can begin again stronger, more confident, and better able to be open to whatever arises. Here’s the takeaway. Try one of the two walking practices we did today if you have a hard time sitting still. Either send a friendly wish with every step or silently say something that you’re grateful for.