Smiling Mind 16-22 years program

This introductory session of your Smiling Mind program will explain what Mindfulness, and your next ten Smiling Mind sessions, is all about. It also guides you through your first experience in cultivating Mindfulness with a five-minute breathing meditation. We suggest you choose a quiet room where you can sit undisturbed for ten minutes while you enjoy the first session of your Smiling Mind program.Download Standard Podcasts

We often think of meditation as something that is practiced in complete silence in cross-legged position on a mountain top. The truth is that you can meditate anywhere. In fact, you can use the sounds, smells, tastes and sights in your environment as objects of your meditation. This can be great fun and it takes a lot of practice. In this 8 minute Smiling Mind session we will show you how to bring mindful awareness to the sounds around you as a part of your meditation.Download Standard Podcasts

For today’s meditation you will need a piece of fruit or chocolate. In the previous Smiling Mind session you saw how sounds can become a part of your meditation practice. In this six-minute session we will show you how being mindful of tastes can turn eating into a meditation practice. You might be surprised how many things you didn’t know about your piece of fruit or chocolate!Download Standard Podcast

You may have noticed that when you sit still and meditate for a few minutes you feel all kinds of sensations in your body: pain or itching, pressure or discomfort, heat or cold. Today your meditation will bring your attention to all these different sensations in your body, and encourage you to accept every sensation that arises with kindness and curiosity—even when the sensation is one that you dislike, such as pain or strain. The next ten minutes will allow you to scan your body non-judgementally, from the tips of your toes to the top of the head.Download Standard Podcast

Now that you have been meditating for a few weeks you might be ready to bring mindful awareness into your life without having to sit somewhere with your eyes closed. There are many ways that you can bring mindfulness into everyday activities, one of which is meditating while you walk. We’ll show you how to do this in a seven-minute exercise. Once you’ve practised this technique you can start meditating while walking down the hall at school, at home or even outside. Just remember to be mindful of what is going on around you if you try this while walking outside!Download Standard Podcast

This is a ten-minute session is designed to help you deal with emotions mindfully. We all experience emotions and sometimes they can take hold of us, affecting how we behave and react to situations. When we let emotions like anger or sadness take over, our reactions might hurt others and/or ourselves. Paying attention to our emotions in meditation can make it easier to stop ourselves reacting to them in hurtful ways. Download Standard Podcasts

Have you noticed how hard it can be to pay attention to your breath or the sensations in your body without your mind wandering off? This happens to all of us because our minds are “thought machines”—it’s what they do, just like eyes see and noses smell. Sometimes our minds are so busy in thought that we can’t get to sleep at night or concentrate when we need to. Even worse, our physical and mental wellbeing suffers when we get caught up in thoughts that worry, hurt or frustrate us. But we can bring mindful awareness to our thoughts by observing and accepting them as if they were clouds in the sky passing by. In the next seven minutes we will show you how to do this.Download Standard Podcast

We hope that all your meditation efforts are bringing mindful awareness into your daily life and are making your mind smile. Another wonderful way of putting a smile on your mind is by making friendly wishes for yourself. We hope you enjoy the next six minutes of this loving kindness meditation.Download Standard Podcasts

Now that you’ve practised sending wishes to yourself it’s time to send some friendly wishes to others. We can share some love and happiness with the people we care for by sending them friendly wishes in our meditations. In this eight-minute session you will start by bringing mindful awareness to your breath, then begin sending happy wishes to yourself and someone you care about.Download Standard Podcast

You’ve made it to the last level of your Smiling Mind program—well done! Over the last nine sessions you’ve gathered lots of tools to help you practise Mindfulness Meditation and put a smile on your mind. To put all these wonderful lessons to good use we suggest setting yourself a Smiling Mind Challenge. In these last 12 minutes of the program we will help you set a challenge for yourself and guide you through one last breath and body meditation.Download Standard Podcast

Download Standard Podcasts

Download Standard Podcasts

Download Standard Podcasts