Mark Bertin: A Guided Walking Meditation to Meet Uncertainty with Compassion
12 Minute Meditation
Our guest this week is also September’s Teacher of the Month, Dr. Mark Bertin. He offers a unique practice that uses sensory awareness and gentle movement to help meet moments of uncertainty. This meditation is designed to help you: Practice meeting yourself with patience and attentive care Connect with your body as both a way to calm yourself and as a way to get clarifying information about the situation you’re facing Engage skillfully with the discomfort of uncertainty, rather than defaulting to reactivity, anger, or fear Mark Bertin, MD., is a pediatrician,...
info_outline
Janice Martellucci: Meditation for Transitions
12 Minute Meditation
Our guest this week is Janice Martellucci, Executive Director of Peace in Schools. As millions of students get ready to head back to school in the Northern Hemisphere, she brings us a meditation to meet transitions and new places with courage and curiosity. Regardless of the type of transition you might be facing, this meditation is designed to help you: Notice the emotions that arise as you approach this change Stay present to what you’re experiencing with care, especially if you’re feeling fear or resistance Offer support to yourself and others Janice...
info_outline
Jeneé Johnson: Build Resilience by Staying in the Moment
12 Minute Meditation
Our guest this week is Jeneé Johnson. She brings us a meditation based on what she calls “staying on the spot.” This meditation is designed to help you: Notice when your thoughts wander Come back to the moment without judgment or anxiety Practice training your attention in meditation so you can carry that skill over into daily life Jenée Johnson is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach, Racial Healing, Emotional Intelligence Educator, and HeartMath facilitator. Jenée initiated and led the unique effort to bring mindfulness into San Francisco’s public health programs...
info_outline
Jon Kabat-Zinn: A Breathscape Practice for Cultivating Mindfulness
12 Minute Meditation
It is natural as finite human beings to want to feel certain. To our brains, certainty equals safety. It’s normal to wish we could control the future, because uncertainty can be unsettling and scary. But as today’s teacher observes, as difficult as it is, the only real leverage we have to positively influence the future is to learn to inhabit the present moment fully, without trying to fix it or manage it. This is the most challenging aspect of mindfulness, and its core principle. This 20-minute guided meditation with Jon Kabat-Zinn is practice for simply being awake and aware...
info_outline
Kelly Boys: A 12-Minute Body Scan Meditation for Letting Go of Stress and Falling Asleep
12 Minute Meditation
Stress and tension can easily build up in our bodies during busy days or weeks, and often we don’t even realize how much that is affecting our ability to let go and fall asleep at night. In this guided practice, teacher Kelly Boys offers a simple body scan meditation that uses sensory awareness and intentional breathing to invite a sense of lovely heaviness and relaxation. Kelly Boys is a mindfulness trainer, coach, author, and speaker, specializing in teaching the NSDR (non sleep deep rest) practice of yoga nidra. She is the author of The Blind Spot Effect and as a trainer has created...
info_outline
Rich Fernandez: A Meditation to Help Build Your Capacity to Navigate Difficulty
12 Minute Meditation
When we’re facing disappointment or challenge, it’s easy to default to negative narratives about who we are inherently: I’m a failure. What’s wrong with me? I never do anything right. This week, teacher Rich Fernandez invites a different perspective: When we shift from naming an existential trait (like, I must be a loser) to naming a temporary experiential state (like, I’m experiencing a setback that’s discouraging), then we can actually return awareness and agency to ourselves and navigate a way through the challenge. Rich Fernandez has dedicated his career to building...
info_outline
Stacee Reicherzer: A Meditation to Befriend Vulnerability
12 Minute Meditation
By definition, to feel vulnerable is to feel exposed and undefended. It’s natural, in moments of emotional risk or tenderness, to feel the urge to pull back from vulnerability, to deny it or dismiss it as weak or needy. But decades of research have also revealed that we can’t really form strong bonds with others if we’re unwilling to take the risk of being our true selves. This week, Dr. Stacee Reicherzer guides us through a practice that can help us soften to this oh-so-human experience so that we can truly know healing, connection, and vitality. Dr. Stacee L. Reicherzer,...
info_outline
Ed Halliwell: A Meditation for Resting in the Flow of Experience
12 Minute Meditation
This week, Ed Halliwell guides us through a practice to be with the inevitable moment-to-moment uncertainty of life. We can’t control what’s happening around us, but we can practice letting go of the stories we create about uncertainty that add unnecessary stress and pain. Ed Halliwell is a mindfulness teacher and writer, based in Sussex and London, UK. He is author of three books: , and (as co-author) and teaches courses and retreats to public groups, in organizations and to individuals, face-to-face and online via Skype. He is also an advisor to , which is supporting the...
info_outline
Mark Coleman: A Grounding Practice to Focus Your Busy Mind
12 Minute Meditation
There are times when we’re so busy thinking, planning, worrying, stressing that it’s really hard to focus on the breath or the body, or whatever particular meditation object we’re using. This practice with Mark Coleman offers an alternative that’s helpful when we feel like we’re going a million miles an hour. It uses soft, focused attention: relaxed eyes, soft gaze, and just being aware of the visual stimuli—like color, light, form, shape—to settle our focus. Mark Coleman is a Dharma teacher at Spirit Rock and has taught Insight Meditation retreats since 1997 worldwide....
info_outline
Elaine Smookler Laughter Yoga: A Gentle Movement Practice to Get the Giggles Going
12 Minute Meditation
Beyond just feeling good, laughter releases , and also works on our heart, our lungs, our muscles, our thoughts, our behaviors. In short: laughter actually is good medicine. And here’s a funny thing: whether we laugh in response to something, or we create a situation that gets laughter going, the body will still release the same endorphins. Try this quick, goofy yoga exercise to discover a foolproof way to induce laughter. It is based on the Hawaiian word “Aloha,” a nice vowel-y word that opens the mouth and throat just by saying it. Elaine Smookler has been a mindful practitioner for...
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.
Stay curious, stay inspired. Join our community by signing up for our free newsletter: mindful.org/signup
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:
-
Wise Engagement with the World: What to Do When You Wish Things Were Different
-
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:
More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation
Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing yourwords@mindful.org.