How I have missed you over the last several weeks; I am so excited to share in another year of meditative exploration with you. There are lots of updates and exciting stories to share with you, but, for today, let us linger in the New Year transition.

In this mini episode of The Mindful Minute, I talk about the shift into the new year and the idea of having expectations in January. Let’s explore harvesting your internal fire or energy during winter, allowing it to nourish ideas and projects for the months to come.

**This class will be the last podcast episode of 2023 for The Mindful Minute. I’ll be taking a break over the winter months to rest, to practice, to study, and feel through what 2024 will ask of all of us as meditation practitioners.

I have been teaching Monday Night Meditation for 8 years, and airing it on The Mindful Minute podcast for 7 years. It has been my greatest joy to share my own meditative journey and to witness yours as we have practiced together.

And, I feel called to further my exploration and deepen my teaching on nature-based meditation - as a response to climate crisis, eco-grief and eco-anxiety certainly. But even more so, as a response to the call to be more ourselves, to be more awake, engaged, and purposeful in how we live and move through the world today.

I’ll be back in early 2024 with a new year of meditation classes tied to the natural world and centered on well-being for the Earth, humans, and the more-than-humans that make up this universe. I look forward to practicing with you again soon.

What does witchcraft have to do with meditation? SO much more than you might have originally thought, dear listeners. Which is why I am so excited to share a conversation with Jamie Della today.

Jamie and I talk about the origin story of this book, and we spend a lot of time unpacking the witch archetype in this episode. We also talk about:

• Elemental magic

• Divination and synchronicities

• Ancestors

• Earth-based spirituality

…and so much more.

In today’s episode of The Mindful Minute, we use myth as a pathway to understanding the practice of allowance. Rather than trapping an emotion - giving it a label, a meaning, and box to live in - what if we track the experience?

I am sure, like mine, your heart is broken over the horrors we are witnessing between Israel and Palestine, as well as the hate crimes we are seeing in response to this crisis.

In a moment of pure serendipity, I had an interview that was scheduled months ago with poet James Crews to chat about his new book, The Wonder of Small Things; Poems of Peace & Renewal. I originally planned to air this conversation as a Winter Solstice offering, but his book feels like the perfect balm for the pain of this moment.

When emotion overwhelms our system, it is called 'flooding', and in today’s episode, we are going to learn to build our rafts. We will explore soothing techniques to support our big emotions.

Join me for today’s talk and 20-minute guided meditation practice - an experience of soothing.

What changes when you think of your emotions as a ‘sense’ rather than as a problem to be fixed? In the same way that we use our eyes, ears and fingers to take in information, we use our emotions to do the same.

In this episode of The Mindful Minute, we talk about

• Big emotions and the feeling of trying to contain it rather than let it flow

• Emotions and the element of water

• Softening the edges of the body

• Otter dreams and walking through the gift shop with kids

I have noticed the prevalence of two difficult emotions both in my own life as well as in my conversations with others - grief & anxiety. Difficult emotions to be sure. Over the next four episodes, I want to explore working with difficult emotions in our meditation practice.

Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we talk about:

• What is real and what is untrue

• The forethought of grief

• Why there is always a place for your emotions, no matter how big, in meditation