Returning Inward

Every day, our attention is pulled in countless directions—by headlines, algorithms, advertisements, and even our own thoughts. As a result, attention doesn’t focus simply because we want it to, but that doesn’t mean it’s beyond our control. Like any skill, focus can be trained.This meditation offers one such method: mental noting. It’s a deceptively simple practice—using a quiet, internal label to describe what we’re experiencing in the moment. By giving the mind a task, we’re inviting it to stay connected to what’s actually happening instead of it getting swept up in distraction.Although it can feel unnatural at first, over time, this gentle repetition creates space. It can sharpen our awareness, break the loop of overthinking, and offer clarity in moments that might otherwise feel noisy or overwhelming, helping us to choose more wisely.This meditation was created for the good folks at Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.---🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 join somatic experiencing™ for qt/bipoc waitlist here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

Loving-kindness—sometimes called friendliness or compassion—isn’t just a feeling that spontaneously arises, it’s a practice we can return to again and again.In these times, when many feel pushed to the edges, practicing loving-kindness becomes not just healing, but radical. It reminds us that every being, including ourselves, deserves to feel seen, valued, and cherished. And it invites us to remember our shared humanity, and that we all want to be happy, even across lines of difference.This practice isn’t about pretending everything is okay. It’s about cultivating the capacity to face difficulty and suffering head-on without succumbing to nihilism; training ourselves to see reality clearly.Sometimes, what arises first in this practice isn’t love, but resistance, irritation, even numbness, and that’s okay. Like so many qualities in this practice, loving-kindness can still be cultivated.This meditation was created for the good folks at Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 join somatic experiencing™ for qt/bipoc waitlist here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In a time when so much pulls us outward—toward the next headline, the next notification, the next crisis—it’s easy to lose touch with our own center. Just as the food we eat affects our bodies, what we take in through our eyes and ears also impacts our nervous system, our sense of balance, and our inner stability.In this short meditation, you’re invited to shift awareness to the back of the body as a way to find balance and re-center. In a culture that moves fast and looks ahead, tuning in to the back of the body helps us reclaim a sense of support, presence, and wholeness.Together, we’ll slow down and remember: the center we’re seeking isn’t out there. It lives within us, steady and accessible.This meditation was created for the good folks at Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris.-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 join somatic experiencing™ for qt/bipoc waitlist here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In this short practice, you’re invited to check in with what your body, heart, and mind actually need in order to settle, which could be a change from “just doing what you usually do.” This is not meant to be a practice of guilty indulgence but a training in discerning what would create less suffering. Even though, in practice, choosing less suffering is centered on you in the short term, this can be ripe training for seeing, discerning, and choosing less suffering for yourself and others, now and in the future.This meditation was guided in the Everyday Dhamma Community monthly meetup.-----Practice ReflectionThe Buddhist teaching of Right Action (sammā-kammanta) is a teaching that invites us into understanding cause and effect clearly enough to choose what can reduce suffering. In meditation, this looks like noticing what actually helps you settle versus what you think should help. In daily life, it’s the same—the conversation you’d rather avoid but that actually resolves something, the rest you take instead of pushing through exhaustion, the boundary you set that has been long overdue.Learning to discern what supports you teaches you to recognize what supports others, too. You can’t offer what you don’t know how to receive. By training yourself to notice what creates ease and less suffering in your own system, you slowly develop the sensitivity to see it in others.-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 join somatic experiencing™ for qt/bipoc waitlist here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In this meditation, you’re invited to notice what’s here through the felt sense—the somatic doorway. How does whatever you feel feel in the body? Where does it land? How does it shift? Rather than naming the experience and moving on, you’re getting curious about its texture, its movement, and how it shifts and evolves.This meditation was guided in the Everyday Dhamma Community monthly meetup.-----Practice ReflectionWe can easily move through an experience quickly and call it mindfulness—feeling something arise and immediately naming it: anxiety, joy, frustration. I certainly did this for years when I started meditating, thinking I was doing a “good job” at being mindful and “being with” my experience. In hindsight, quickly naming something and moving on was more akin to whack-a- mole than anything else.As my practice has taught me to slow down over the years, I’ve realize that the naming lets us off the hook. We think we understand what’s happening but naming is just the mind’s shorthand. I wasn’t giving myself time to truly be with and understand whatever I was experiencing. The practice of getting curious about the felt sense marks the difference between truly understanding your experience vs. conceptually knowing it.From there, deep insights can arise. When you stay with that tingling in your chest instead of just calling it nervousness, you learn in a deep way that it’s not solid; it moves and shifts, showing you anicca or impermanence. With time and repetition, you can also begin to see how, when the storylines and characters fall away, the specificity of the nuance and complexity you’re experiencing is a doorway into the universal, connecting you with all sentient beings.-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here🌱 join somatic experiencing™ for qt/bipoc waitlist here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

We are complex beings made up of different parts—a wise and intuitive part, a fragile and wounded part, an impatient one. And depending on changing conditions like whether we've slept or eaten well, or feel activated, any one of these could be driving the show. And they all belong. In this meditation, you’re invited to notice which part feels most prominent in this moment and to meet it with tenderness. This meditation was guided in the Everyday Dhamma Community monthly meetup. Practice ReflectionWhen I started meditating over 20 years ago, I unintentionally brought the part of myself that was a perfectionist and my own worst critic to my practice, so much so that my practice became another place to measure my self worth.It took me more than a decade and a lot of loving-kindness (mettā) and tenderness practice (and therapy) to shift that tendency that once felt oh! so! permanent! I didn’t end up converting the harsh critic to a loving part, though. The harsh critic ended up getting folded into the unconditional love of mettā where she didn’t need to love me back to belong.All this to say, your fragile and wounded part isn't broken and your impatient part isn't bad. They show up from time to time because of causes and conditions, and they all belong.In daily life, practicing with this can look like both offering yourself patience for your own resistance and contradictions, and seeing others in their actions through the same lens.🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here🫶🏽 deepen our connection and become a member here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In uncertain times, when so much feels fragile and out of our control, the Buddhist quality of equanimity—the steady heart in the middle of the storm, the capacity to stay present with what’s here, without pushing it away or clinging too tightly—can feel like a distant ideal. This quality doesn’t arise by chance; it’s something we can cultivate moment by moment, breath by breath, and it’s deepened when we recognize that everything is changing—thoughts, emotions, sensations, and the world around us. In this meditation, we’ll explore that space.You’ll be guided to notice the changing nature of everything—the breath comes and goes, sensations arise and fade, emotions and thoughts move through like visitors at a window. By tuning into that lifespan of things, you train yourself to ride the wave instead of grasping or pushing away. We’ll notice what’s here and practice meeting it with friendliness and care.-----Practice ReflectionOne of the ways I define equanimity, or upekkhā, is the capacity to feel everything fully while not being swept away by it. This becomes possible because everything is already changing—this worry won’t feel the same in ten minutes, the joy will shift, for example. Knowing this begins to loosen the grip of both grasping and aversion of things needing to be a certain way.In daily life, this becomes your steadiness, not because you stop caring, but because you’ve practiced enough to know that nothing stays. In the midst of all that’s unfolding in our world, this practice may feel small or insignificant, but it’s anything but. By cultivating equanimity, you’re strengthening your capacity to stay grounded, see clearly, and act with wisdom and care, for your benefit and the benefit of others.That steady heart that can respond with wisdom, even when things feel fragile and chaotic, is one of the most grounded things you can offer.-----🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In this practice, you're invited to notice something we usually miss: the lifespan of things. Everything that arises—a feeling, a sound, a breath—has a life… and then it fades. We typically notice phenomena when we are in the thick of it, but what if you could notice the fading? There's something that happens when you contemplate that this might be the last time you feel this particular way, hear this particular sound, take this particular breath—tenderness, presence. You stop gripping so tightly because you realize you can't hold it anyway. In this meditation, we are learning that impermanence becomes permission to just be here.Practice reflection:The Buddhist teaching of anicca (impermanence) can sound bleak until you practice with it. Everything changes and everything ends, including moments you love. But there’s something liberating buried under this realization—if everything is impermanent, then this anxiety won’t last forever, and neither will this joy. Neither will this particular ache in your heart.In daily life, we grip what feels good and resist what feels bad, never quite believing that both are temporary. We argue with our partner like it’s permanent. We hold onto a compliment like we can keep it forever. We catastrophize a bad moment as if it defines our whole life. Impermanence is constantly telling us otherwise, but we don’t often hear its message.The contemplation of anicca shows us reminds us to just be present—with your loved one, knowing you won’t have them forever; ith your body, knowing it’s changing; with this breath, knowing it’s the only one you have right now. That awareness doesn’t make you morbid, it makes you tender.🗓️ 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'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In this practice, you’ll be guided to gather your mind around an anchor as an act of power. A gathered mind is a powerful mind, the kind that can see clearly and affect change in a distracted time. As you settle, you might notice unsettledness or frazzledness. Rather than treating it as a problem, simply make space for it, like watching clouds pass, and in that space, clarity can emerge.Practice reflection:We live in an age designed to scatter our attention—alerts, notifications, outrage cycles, doom-scrolling—there’s an endless stream of things pulling our focus away from what actually matters to us. This isn’t accidental. Attention is power, and the more fragmented yours is, the less power you have.Right Concentration (sammā-samādhi) is about gathering your mind as an act of reclamation. When you sit and gather your attention around your breath instead of the news, you’re not escaping the world. Instead, you’re building the kind of clarity and steadiness you need to actually show up for it. Our ancestors before us and our descendants after us need people who can think clearly, see truly, and act with intention. That’s what a gathered mind makes possible.In daily life, this looks like choosing where your attention goes: one conversation with full presence instead of five conversations half-there, one task done with focus instead of ten tabs open and nothing finished. It’s small… and yet it’s not. Every time you reclaim your attention from distraction, you’re building power.🗓️ 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'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe

In this practice, you're invited to meet yourself and whatever struggles or overwhelm you're carrying with the tenderness you'd naturally offer someone you love. That meeting itself is the practice (and not always an easy one, at that!). We are intending to move toward not striving toward a particular feeling or getting loving-kindness "right" but instead noticing what actually happens in your body when you offer yourself these wishes of loving-kindness. And if that feels too far away, there's permission built in: as much as possible. Even a small softening counts.-----Practice reflection:We’re often terrible at receiving. We can give endlessly—care, time, attention, energy—but when it comes to being held by kindness (especially our own), something tightens. We feel unworthy. We feel we need to earn it. We resist being vulnerable enough to let it land.The practice of mettā (loving-kindness) helps us create the conditions for our hearts to soften, and then we try to notice what actually happens. Maybe nothing. Maybe a subtle shift. Maybe tears. Regardless, all of it is welcome.In daily life, this looks like meeting your own struggles with the same gentleness you’d offer a struggling friend. When you mess up, can you say “of course, my love, you’re human” instead of spiraling into self-judgment? When you’re overwhelmed, can you let yourself be held by support instead of white-knuckling your way through? And when self-compassion feels impossible, there’s always the permission of “as much as possible.” Even 5% of kindness toward yourself is still kindness.-----🗓️ 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'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com/subscribe