Mindfulness Meditation with Dawn Mauricio

In this meditation, you'll work with a paradox at the heart of practice: mindfulness requires effort and is also part of your natural essence. You'll be guided to gather your attention around an anchor—breath, sound, sensation—and return to it each time the mind wanders. Then comes the shift: when you notice the mind has wandered, you're actually noticing awareness returning. Can you celebrate that instead of judging it?Practice Reflection:The Five Faculties in Buddhism—faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom—aren’t new qualities to “collect” but rather they’re qualities we’re already cultivating wherever we are on our path of practice and a map that leads us to a freedom from suffering.In daily life, they can show up in ordinary moments. Faith is trusting that turning toward difficulty leads somewhere good. Effort is the energy you bring when you ask “What would serve me right now?”… and actually listen. Mindfulness is catching the moment you realize you’ve been on autopilot. Concentration is staying with one thing long enough to actually be present. Wisdom is recognizing the (unhelpful) patterns—doomscrolling leaves you anxious, certain interactions drain you, rest isn’t laziness—and choosing differently.The practice is learning to strengthen them intentionally, so when life gets overwhelming, you have something to come back to.🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

This guided meditation invites a gentle widening of awareness. Instead of getting pulled into any one experience, the invitation is to include more, to notice what is here, and what else might also be here. It’s a meditation rooted in curiosity and permission, where nothing needs to be pushed away or held onto, and experience can unfold in a more open, connected way.-----Practice reflection:In our daily life, it’s easy for the mind to narrow in on one thing—a thought, a reaction, a story—and take it as the whole truth. From there, we can get pulled into seeing things in a fixed or personal way.View shapes so much of how we move through the world. It often starts as patterns, becomes norms and values, and over time can harden into fixed views or opinions.When we cling to them (and when we’re not open to being called in, called out, or receiving feedback), the Buddha pointed to the friction this creates: “Those who grasp at perceptions and views go about butting their heads in the world.” (Bikkhu Thanissaro’s translation of the Magandiya Suta in the Sutta Nipata)One way to recognize you are clinging to certain views or opinions is to notice whenever you feel a tension in your body, particularly when in relationship with others. Then quietly ask yourself “Am I clinging to a view right now? What view am I clinging to?”Practices like what else is here? can gently open things up. Not so you lose your perspective, but so it’s held a little more lightly, making space for other viewpoints, and a more responsive, less reactive way of being with others.N.B.: Just because there is a view being held doesn’t make it “wrong” or “bad.” If you are unsure if a certain view is skillful or not, you might take your reflection further as ask “Does it lead to a freedom from suffering for myself and others, now and in the future? If it causes harm, does it cause the least amount of harm possible?”-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

This meditation invites you to let your practice be a place of refuge—one that doesn’t ask for effort or perfection. You’ll be guided to rest attention where it naturally wants to land, allowing awareness to feel easeful and supportive rather than forced. Alongside this, there’s a gentle noticing of how we relate to our experience—the quiet choices we make moment to moment—and the possibility of meeting it all with more kindness, curiosity, and care.---Practice reflection:As you move through your day, begin to notice the quality of effort you’re bringing to a given experience. At times, there may be striving, pushing, or trying to make something happen. At other times, there may be a natural ease—attention resting where it wants to, without force.Recognize when effort is becoming tight or unnecessary, and gently experiment with softening. Not as a way of checking out, but as a way of aligning with wise effort—where energy is balanced, responsive, and supportive of awareness.Over time, this discernment can deepen: less driven by habit or pressure, and more guided by clarity and care. Even small moments of easing back into what’s already here can become a quiet refuge.---🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 learn more about somatic therapy for qt/bipoc here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this practice, you’ll be guided to explore what quality you’d like to cultivate in these times. The practice isn’t about finding the right answer or fixing anything. It’s about the pause itself—the act of turning toward yourself long enough to listen.In slowing down and pausing, something becomes available, a kind of clarity, a remembering. This meditation is less about achieving a particular state and more about cultivating the muscle of tending to yourself—now and anytime you need it, even if just for a few seconds at a time.-----I'm finding myself in a new cycle of news addiction, and the regular and constant exposure to it is certainly leaving me feeling anxious and overwhelmed. This meditation was originally created in a cycle of overwhelm during the pandemic, and yet, it is serving me yet again. There’s something both humbling and reassuring about that. The same practices return when we need them. The same questions become anchors: What would serve me right now? Can I pause long enough to listen?If you’re feeling it, too—the pull toward regularly refreshing the news page or app, the undertow of anxiety, the sense of being swept away—I hope this brief practice can offer a moment of returning. -----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 learn more about somatic therapy for qt/bipoc here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this practice, you’ll be guided to work with feeling tone, the quality of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral that colors every moment of experience. The guiding question throughout is: what would serve my mindfulness right now? Because often, what serves us is noticing the feeling tone itself—the subtle pull of pleasant toward “more of this,” the resistance of unpleasant toward “less of this,” the drifting quality of neutral. Not as something to answer perfectly, but as an invitation to listen into what your practice needs.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program.Practice reflection:We often move through meditation (and life) without noticing how feeling tone (or vedāna in Pali, the language in which the Buddha’s teachings were written) shapes our experience: how it quietly directs our attention, our choices, our sense of ease or struggle. This meditation invites you to get curious about that often-invisible layer. When you relax, what’s that like? When the mind wanders, what’s the feeling tone present? What about the field of your practice as a whole?The invitation is to notice, without needing to change anything. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral—all of it is welcome.Ways to work with me✨ Book a Somatic Experiencing™ one-on-oneFor BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ folksIn-person near Charlevoix metro on Tuesdays (and Wednesdays for January)Online via Zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and Wednesdays for January)💫 Join my online mindfulness communitySome of the benefits members receive include: monthly meetups with me and other members; monthly practice calendar with meditations and talks; online practice series for freeFrom $30-$12 CAD/month🎧 Subscribe to my weekly guided meditation podcastGet meditations delivered to your inbox every WednesdayAlternatively, you can follow “Mindfulness Meditation with Dawn Mauricio” wherever you get your podcasts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

This meditation begins by grounding attention in a steady anchor, offering a sense of support and arrival. From there, you’ll be guided to gradually widen your awareness, allowing thoughts, emotions, and sensory experiences to come into your experience without needing to fix or follow them. The practice emphasizes curiosity, ease, and trust in the changing nature of experience, with space to soften identification and rest more fully in open awareness by the end.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program.Ways to work with me✨ Book a Somatic Experiencing™ one-on-oneFor BIPOC, 2SLGBTQIA+ folksIn-person near Charlevoix metro on Tuesdays (and Wednesdays for January)Online via Zoom on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and Wednesdays for January)💫 Join my online mindfulness communitySome of the benefits members receive include: monthly meetups with me and other members; monthly practice calendar with meditations and talks; online practice series for freeFrom $30-$12 CAD/month🎧 Subscribe to my weekly guided meditation podcastGet meditations delivered to your inbox every WednesdayAlternatively, you can follow “Mindfulness Meditation with Dawn Mauricio” wherever you get your podcasts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

This is a practice of softening into what’s present, getting curious about how it moves, and offering yourself nurturing along the way. You’ll be guided to meet whatever is here, whether it be moods, contractions, confusions, or something else, with a quality of allowing and curiosity. Can you let it be here without fighting it? What are all the ways you feel what you’re feeling? As experiences move and shift, you might be able to touch into the recognition that it’s not you, not yours. And then tenderness: It’s okay. This, too.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this practice, you’ll be guided to be with whatever is present—contraction, expansion, confusion, calm—by asking yourself: can I allow it to be here? Allowing doesn’t mean liking it; it means setting the intention not to fight, change, or fix what’s here, at least for now. From there, observing its movement, the arising and passing away, eventually touching into the fact that it’s not you, not yours.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this practice, the guiding question becomes: what would serve your mindfulness right now? Perhaps practicing with pointed focus, or in an open, spacious way, or tuning into feeling tone is what you need. Whatever your experience, this meditation encourages an autonomy and responsiveness, as a way to support our natural quality of awareness that is kind and curious, not forced or effortful.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this week’s practice, we’ll explore feeling tone—that quality of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral that colors every experience. Like so much in mindfulness, this might be simple, but it’s not always easy. Yet, it’s a skill worth cultivating, one that can lead to freedom from suffering. You might actively note the feeling tone, or relax your effort and listen for it to make itself known. This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

In this 10-minute practice, you’re invited to work in the spirit of ease—using whatever you’re already noticing as your anchor, rather than hardening or forcing yourself to be aware of something else. You’re encouraged to let go of how practice “should” be and instead meet what’s arising with curiosity and friendliness.This meditation was guided during the Spirit Rock Living Dharma Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

From choosing an anchor to relaxing your effort, this loose exploration of the four foundations of mindfulness sets the stage for your practice to become organic and remixed, moving between breath, sensation, sound, emotions, and thoughts. Over the course of the 30-minute practice, there may be enough settling for mindfulness itself become the anchor. Try it and see what’s possible for you.This meditation was guided during my 4-month Mindfulness Facilitation Certification Program. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

Many meditators become attached to the idea that meditating must be done with the eyes closed, but how can we use sight - much like we've used sound in the past - as an anchor and a window into a budding self-awareness? Observing your body's responses and reactions to visual stimulus is a beautiful way to practice. Try it with me! • Guided by Dawn Mauricio• Enjoyed this meditation? Rate it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and review it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or share it with a friend or two wherever you get your podcasts• Support my work by joining my membership community or subscribing to my newsletter and get additional resources regularly• Follow this podcast and be the first to know when new meditations become available (most Wednesdays)• Here's another version of a loving-kindness meditation: Love Your Many Sides.• Want to get in touch? Email hi@dawnmauricio.org This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com