A Meditation to Help You Let Go and Accept Change
12 Minute Meditation
Everything is impermanent. It’s always changing, coming together and falling apart. This, of course, includes small daily things and massive, disruptive, and life-shattering things. It’s frustrating to not be able to control these movements and outcomes. But paradoxically, when we can accept that everything is not up to us, and we stop trying to control what we can’t change or trying to predict what we can’t predict, then we can feel a lot more at ease and more open to the moment-to-moment unfolding of our lives. This week, Kimberly Brown shares a practice to loosen our...
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A Meditation to Return to Ourselves When Practicing Feels Impossible
12 Minute Meditation
Many of us are bearing witness daily to suffering all over the planet. We care about others, and we want desperately to be of use—and seeing the horrors in images and videos and stories every day can be deeply dysregulating to our nervous systems. When we get overwhelmed by this vicarious trauma, we tend to shut down. We disconnect from ourselves and each other. We’re so spun out in our anxiety, anger, or overwhelm that it can feel impossible to engage in any kind of mindfulness or meditation practice. This week, Shalini Bahl offers tender and practical guidance for how to...
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A Meditation to Tap Into Your Agency When Things Are Chaotic & Uncertain
12 Minute Meditation
We often treat experiences like restlessness, uncertainty, or the overwhelm of difficult emotions as a problem to be solved. And of course, it’s normal to want relief. Today, teacher Cherl Vigder Brause leads a guided practice that’s centered around meeting ourselves exactly where we are. In that pause, where we encounter ourselves without trying to fix anything, even if just for a moment, we actually create a space where we can get clarity on how to respond to ourselves, others, and the world. Cheryl Vigder Brause is a nationally recognized mindfulness and meditation teacher,...
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A Meditation to Connect With Loving-Kindness (Even When It's Hard)
12 Minute Meditation
Loving-kindness seems like a practice that would feel good—but in times of tension, uncertainty, pain, or anger, it can be one of the most challenging mindfulness tools to apply. How do we love when it is most difficult to love? This week, renowned teacher Sharon Salzberg offers a guided practice to connect us to the deep heart and transformative courage of metta or loving-kindness meditation. Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher and New York Times best-selling author. She is the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and has played a...
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A Meditation to Skillfully Connect With Your Anger
12 Minute Meditation
As today’s teacher Jessica Morey says, “Anger’s fundamental role is to protect us and protect what we care about in the world. It lets us know when a limit of ours, or a boundary, has been crossed.” But because of its power and volatility, anger can be a troubling emotion to be with and a difficult one to work with. Today’s practice is aimed at gaining insight into our anger so that we can respond skillfully in any given situation. Jessica Morey is a meditation teacher and coach. She has been practicing meditation for almost three decades. She is also the co-founder and former...
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A Meditation For When Suffering In the World Feels Heavy
12 Minute Meditation
Many of us are carrying the weight of the world’s suffering right now. How can we acknowledge the immense suffering around us, and our own—and still tend to our hearts, minds, and bodies in a way that keeps us grounded and able to take compassionate action? This week, mindfulness teacher and author Wendy O’Leary shares a guided practice that offers refuge and reminds us of our real and loving connection to one another. Wendy O’Leary, M.Ed., author and health educator, has three children’s books and an adult book on self-compassion in families. She is a...
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A Meditation for Compassionately Noticing Food Cravings and Triggers
12 Minute Meditation
Our brains learn through a process that has three components: trigger, behavior, reward. Together these behaviors form what is known as a habit loop. In today’s meditation, Dr. Brewer walks us through a practice to notice triggers—when they’re happening and how they make us feel. When we pay attention to these triggers, we can respond to ourselves with more compassion and make choices with a lot more clarity. Jud Brewer, MD, Ph.D. (“Dr. Jud”) is a New York Times best-selling author and thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery,” who blends...
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A Meditation on Endings with Frank Ostaseski
12 Minute Meditation
Even if they aren't particularly into making resolutions, for many people the New Year still feels like a fresh start: a time for taking stock, for reviewing what's passed, for turning the page on one chapter and starting another. In today’s meditation, teacher Frank Ostaseski asks: How do you meet endings? We can learn a lot about how we face the new by looking at how we let go of the old, and here Ostaseski offers a practice to surrender with curiosity and gratitude. Frank Ostaseski is a meditation teacher who cofounded the Zen Hospice Project. In 2004, he went on to create the...
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A Meditation to Set an Intention for Your Future with Rich Fernandez
12 Minute Meditation
If you’ve grown weary of traditional resolutions, but you still carry a glimmer of hope that positive change is possible for us imperfect humans—then you’ll love mindful intention-setting. In this practice from his , mindful leadership trainer Rich Fernandez shows us how to vividly envision the “imagine if” possibilities. When we tap into meaning, passion, and a felt sense of welcoming what we long for, it’s easier to get clear on the purpose behind our pursuits. Rich Fernandez is the former CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI). He was previously...
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A Meditation to Release & Ease Holiday Stress with Christiane Wolf
12 Minute Meditation
The holiday season can be a time full of commitments, planning, and (pleasant or unpleasant) anticipation. This extended guided practice with Dr. Christiane Wolf offers a quiet respite that can help you identify what you need, move to care for yourself, and navigate stress that may arise. Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician, internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) meditation teacher. She is passionate about translating ancient wisdom teachings into accessible and applicable modern-day language. She is the author of Outsmart Your Pain –...
info_outlineIn this week’s meditation, Dr. Mark Bertin walks us through a practice that is both concrete and compassionate. It guides us to take note of our tendency to either deny or try and “fix” what’s going on in our lives, and then find a third way—one where we aim to see things as clearly as possible, so that our decisions are filled with awareness, skill, and care for everyone involved.
Mark Bertin, MD, is a pediatrician, author, professor, and mindfulness teacher specializing in neurodevelopmental behavioral pediatrics. He’s a regular contributor to Mindful.org and Psychology Today. He is the author of How Children Thrive: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids (Sounds True, 2018). Dr. Bertin resides in Pleasantville, New York. For more, visit developmentaldoctor.com.
Together with ADHD Life Coach and Certified ADHD Educator Dana Crews, Dr. Bertin is leading a retreat October 10-12, 2025, to support adults navigating life with ADHD. Hosted at the Menla Retreat Center in the serene Catskill Mountains, Held and Whole is a restorative and educational three-day ADHD retreat that will offer practical, mindfulness-based tools to strengthen emotional regulation, deepen self-awareness, and foster authenticity.
You can get more information and reserve your spot here. Plus, listeners to this podcast can claim a 15% early bird discount when they enter code “Mindful” at checkout, good through August 15th.
The transcription of this guided meditation will be online at Mindful.org next week.
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More About Our Contributor
Find more from Dr. Mark Bertin and his work here.
Go Deeper
Being with reality exactly as it is, without judgment or denial, is one of the core principles of mindful practice. It is also one of the most challenging. If you want to learn more about what this principle looks like in practice, including fostering mindful awareness with neurodivergence, check out these additional articles:
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Wise Engagement with the World: What to Do When You Wish Things Were Different
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Three Ways Acceptance Helps You Work with Difficult Emotions
And for more practice building calm awareness in meditation, here are other meditations to try:
More from Mindful here:
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