Meditation and Mindfulness for Mental Health and Recovery

This month’s #MeditationMonday focuses on gratitude. We hope these videos encourage you to take a few minutes out of your day for your mental health. Thank you to Holly O’Dea, one of our Online Support Community facilitators who has donated her time for these videos. Holly is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach. You can learn more about her at odeawellness.com.  

This month’s #MeditationMonday focuses on relaxing your body through a breathing-based body scan. We hope these videos encourage you to take a few minutes out of your day for your mental health. Thank you to Holly O’Dea, one of our Online Support Community facilitators who has donated her time for these videos. Holly is a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach.

In this meditation, Holly O’Dea, a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach, will walk us through a guided meditation on surrendering and softening, inviting you to find a comfortable position, take a big full breath in, allowing your breath to return to its natural rhythm, bringing awareness to the entire body, and letting your body soften and relax.

In this meditation, Holly O’Dea, a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach, will walk us through a guided meditation on centering and grounding, inviting you to notice the natural rhythm of your breathing, imagine drawing in positive energy and light with each breath, imagine a soft radiant white light filling your entire being, radiating calm and positivity, and connecting you to the world around you.

In this meditation, Holly O’Dea, a Mayo Clinic Certified Wellness Coach, will walk us through a self-love meditation focusing on love, kindness, and cultivating warmth and friendliness to ourselves. We all have within us this natural capacity for love and kindness, the natural opening of a compassionate heart to ourselves and others, and the wish that everyone be happy and free from suffering.

In this meditation, Holly will walk us through a brief meditation on gratitude. We will first focus on our internal landscape, and then begin to cultivate a sense of gratitude for all beings in our lives, for our breath and our senses, our own unique talents, skills and abilities; for the sun that warms our planet, the air we breathe, and for the opportunity to cultivate a positive mindset.

For Mental Health Awareness Month, we’re leveling up with a 12-minute video showcasing tapping therapy – or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a mind-body therapy based on acupuncture, which works by tapping acupressure points on the body with your fingertips. Research suggests EFT can relieve stress, PTSD, and worry.

This 5-minute meditation invites you to visualize five things around you, shift your attention to the sensations in your body, and acknowledge and focus upon distinct sensations, feelings, and sounds around you, letting them come and go without attachment. Appreciate just being here now, and return from this meditation to the present moment with a heightened sense of awareness.

For this guided meditation we will first close our eyes and visualize a beautiful sandy beach, focus on the sound of the waves, feel the warmth of the sun on our skin, settle down in a comfortable position and, at the end, open our eyes feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.