How To Handle Exhaustion, Disconnection, and Physical Pain | Meditation with Bart van Melik
🤖 AI Summary
Overview
This episode features a guided meditation led by Bart van Melik, focusing on cultivating kindness and awareness toward the body. The practice emphasizes finding a small area of the body that feels okay
and exploring how kindness can transform our relationship with physical sensations.
Notable Quotes
- What would kindness do right now? If kindness were breathing this breath, how would it breathe?
- Bart van Melik, on embodying kindness during meditation.
- Feel what it's like to let something be good enough.
- Bart van Melik, encouraging acceptance and simplicity in mindfulness.
🧘♀️ Cultivating Kind Awareness in the Body
- Bart van Melik guides listeners to notice the body as it is, without judgment or the need to fix anything.
- The meditation begins with grounding through the breath and feeling the body's contact points with the chair, floor, or bed.
- Participants are encouraged to find one small area of the body that feels okay
—not perfect or blissful, just okay—and rest their awareness there.
- This practice invites a shift from striving to simply being, allowing for a sense of ease and acceptance.
🌞 Expanding the Feeling of Okayness
- Bart suggests imagining the okay
sensation spreading gently, like sunlight on the skin or a soft hand resting on the lap.
- This visualization helps cultivate a sense of calm and connection within the body.
- The exercise emphasizes the power of small, manageable steps in mindfulness, rather than aiming for dramatic transformations.
💛 The Role of Kindness in Meditation
- A central question posed during the meditation is, What would kindness do right now?
- Bart encourages listeners to explore how kindness would breathe, sit, or speak to the body, fostering a compassionate inner dialogue.
- This approach helps counteract harsh self-talk and promotes a nurturing relationship with oneself.
🌿 Gratitude for the Body
- The meditation concludes with an invitation to appreciate the body—not for how it looks or performs, but for simply allowing us to exist and experience life.
- Bart describes the body as a messy, tender, miraculous
field, encouraging gratitude for its inherent aliveness.
- This reflection reinforces the theme of unconditional kindness and acceptance.
AI-generated content may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon as a sole source of truth.
📋 Episode Description
A short, gentle body scan meditation from Bart van Melik, our Teacher of the Month for January.
This isn't about fixing anything or achieving some special state. It's about finding one small place in your body that feels okay—not great, just okay—and seeing what happens when you meet that experience with a little bit of kindness.
Bart is a meditation teacher and psychotherapist who has trained in Insight Meditation and Buddhist psychology. He's worked extensively in clinical settings with people dealing with stress, anxiety, and harsh self-talk. He's the guiding teacher for the Community Meditation Center in New York City.
Check out more meditations from Bart throughout January in the 10% with Dan Harris app.
Related episodes:
Buddhist Strategies for Protecting Yourself from Everyday Chaos | Bart van Melik
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