I'm Bakker Keltner, welcome to Happiness Break, a series where we take a short break in your day to try a practice that brings greater calm and resilience and kindness.

Today we're going to do a practice called the awe of community that has, of course, many benefits not only from cultivating awe, which can benefit your immune system, your reasoning, your sense of social relationships,

but also it really brings in a focus or sense of being supported and connected, which of course adds ten years to your life expectancy, shifts your nervous system and brings about all manner of happiness benefits.

It calms the threat regions of the brain, it actually can make us a little bit more altruistic and more civil in our daily interactions.

Let's now do the practice, the awe of community. Find a nice comfortable safe place where you can sit or stand in a relaxed position with a nice posture, close your eyes, rest your hands somewhere at ease, maybe on your knees.

Let's take a nice deep breath in. I'm breathing out following the air through your nose and your throat.

Another nice deep breath in, expanding your ribcage and your chest. I'm breathing out.

On this next breath in, just feel relaxation, settle in in your face and your shoulders in your hands.

And that relaxation is you breathe out, move to your legs, your feet.

On this breath in, I would like you to think about a community you are part of, a small work community, a recreational community, a spiritual community, a yoga group, whatever it is, some group of people you are part of.

Get a sense in your mind of being with that community at work, out at play in a class.

Now I would like you to reflect for a minute or two just about the faces of the different people in this community.

Their eyes, their smiles, maybe you'll hear their tone of voice, their laughs.

We're bringing into awareness just the images of these people who are part of your community.

Now I want you to just think about this remarkable quality of communities that these separate individuals, so different in many ways, are really a whole.

We're bringing in, imagine how in their own way each person is contributing to the sense of whole, the sense of community.

Some may contribute quietly, others more, vocally, everybody contributes to this community.

Now as you're enriching this image of your community, think about how everybody is connected.

We know this scientifically, we literally are connected in our physiology and our minds, our thoughts, our feelings, contagiously spreading through community.

Develop a sense of how members of this community are connected and mutually influencing each other.

Now focus your attention as we breathe in on the fact that as part of a community, the individuals share something in common with others.

There's something about their values or purpose or desires that brings them together.

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