Happiness Break: A Meditation to Connect to Your Roots, with Yuria Celidwen

The Science of Happiness

PRX and Greater Good Science Center

Social Sciences, Science

4.5 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When was the last time you thought about your ancestors? This guided meditation by Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen will help you connect to your heritage and reap the potent benefits of remembering your roots.

How To Do This Practice:

Arrive and Center: Find a comfortable position. Close your eyes if you’d like. Place your attention at the center of your chest. Notice how your chest expands as you inhale, pauses, and gently releases as you exhale. Rest in that pause between breaths.
Open the Heart Space: Imagine your chest softening and opening. With each breath, sense a feeling of spaciousness there. Let this space become an anchor to return to.
Invite Your Lineage: In that pause of breath, bring awareness to your ancestors. Elders of the past, present, and those yet to come. Acknowledge the richness and complexity of your lineage.
Remember Origin Stories: Call to mind the stories of your elders and their elders before them. Picture their journeys, the lands they once touched, and the lives they carried forward. Imagine their footsteps across the earth, leading to where you stand today.
Connect Land and Heart: Visualize the lands your ancestors belonged to. The soils, waters, and skies that sustained them. Bring those lands into the center of your chest, merging them with your breath, your heart, and your pause. Feel the connection ripple from them to you, and from you back to them.
Rest in Home and Belonging: Let the word home echo silently in your heart. With each breath, feel this home expand outward—into belonging, togetherness, and care for all living beings and for the Earth itself. Rest in that pulse of vastness and possibility.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

DR. YURIA CELIDWEN is an indigenous scholar of contemplative studies, and author of the book, Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Foundations For Collective Well-Being.

Learn more about Dr. Celidwen: https://www.yuriacelidwen.com/

Related Happiness Break episodes:

Where Did You Come From: https://tinyurl.com/2y9uyjj6

How To Tune Into Water’s Restorative Power: https://tinyurl.com/2k6ybzrs

How To Ground Yourself in Nature: https://tinyurl.com/25ftdxpm

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

Are You Following Your Inner Compass: https://tinyurl.com/y2bh8vvj

How Water Heals: https://tinyurl.com/utuhrnh3

We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Help us share Happiness Break! Leave a 5-star review and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/ycy9xazc

Transcript

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0:00.0	How much awe and wonder do you experience in your life?
0:03.6	From the John Templeton Foundation, our sponsors at the Science of Happiness,
0:07.3	the Templeton Ideas Podcast, explores the most awe-inspiring ideas in our world
0:12.4	with the people who investigate them.
0:15.0	Host Tom Burnett sits down with inspiring thinkers like Alison Gopnik, David Brooks,
0:20.2	Tyler Cowens, and Gretchen Rubin
0:22.4	to discuss how their investigations have transformed their lives and how they may transform yours.
0:29.2	Learn more at templeton.org slash podcast.
0:44.6	We know from countless studies that family connection is so important to our happiness and longevity.
0:50.8	So today, we're going to be led in a practice to connect with our families, but not the ones with us now.
0:52.3	We're going to visit ancestors.
0:57.0	I'm Dacre Keltner. Welcome to Happiness Break, a series by the Science of Happiness that provides research-back practices to give you a boost in your day, all in under 10 minutes.
1:04.0	Just thinking about your ancestors for five minutes can make you feel smarter and more capable.
1:09.0	That's based on research from the University
1:11.4	of Graz in Austria. Leading this meditation is my dear colleague, Dr. Uria Seledwin.
1:18.7	Yuri is an indigenous contemplative study scholar of Nawa and Maya descent from Chiapas, Mexico,
1:24.3	and she also works towards developing a more sustainable planet with the United Nations.
1:29.2	Uria begins by first speaking her indigenous Maya-Teltael language as a way to create an awareness
1:34.3	of the massive cultural extinctions and biocultural loss we're experiencing at a global level. Lekalesh, Lekalesh,
1:45.0	Bamae Yesh,
1:46.0	Bamiyae,
1:47.0	Bintier will I willa Lik. Here, I can't have been here, here, I'm in the way, the Nawa, and I think, to say that's the other than you have to come, you want to tell us. You want to tell us. Hakey, the momental, you own one of the one to beaunt, a cup and you on to tell us.
	...

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