Happiness Break: Awe in Impermanence

The Science of Happiness

PRX and Greater Good Science Center

Science, Social Sciences

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Take a few minutes to develop your sense of awe for the circle of life in this meditation with Dacher Keltner.

LINK TO EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: https://tinyurl.com/2tv3whj2

All sentient beings are impermanent, and out of our reflections on this we find appreciation. We find poignancy. A little sadness, but also out of that sadness and poignancy, a sense of deep appreciation for the people we love.

How to Do This Practice:

Find a comfortable place. Focus on taking a few deep breaths, relaxing your body from head to toe.
Think of an older relative who you are close to. Picture them in your mind.
Imagine how they entered the world years ago as a newborn.
Continue to imagine this individual growing up — through adolescence into adulthood, developing the qualities that you admire.
Now imagine them later in life, into seniority.
Reflect on the progression of the individual’s life, from the beginning to the final stages in this natural progression of the life cycle for humans.
Recognize that they'll pass or maybe they have passed, and that's part of this cycle
Take note of how you feel.

Today’s Happiness Break host:

Dacher Keltner is the host of the Greater Good Science Center’s award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness and is a co-instructor of the GGSC’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Check out Dacher’s most recent book, *Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life: *<https://tinyurl.com/4j4hcvyt\](https://tinyurl.com/4j4hcvyt)

More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

What I Learned About Resilience in the Midst of Grief: https://tinyurl.com/2uw7uvxd

How to Face Grief in Yourself and Others: https://tinyurl.com/yckknp9r

Death and Gratitude: https://tinyurl.com/mwcn752j

How to Bring More Meaning to Dying: [https://tinyurl.com/vnbkwf52>\
Learning to Live in a World Without a Loved One: https://tinyurl.com/2v4avfvv

How do you find awe in impermanence? Email us at [email protected] or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/6s39rzus

Help us share Happiness Break! Rate us and copy and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/6s39rzus

We're living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That's where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Dacker Keltner. Welcome to Happiness Break. Today we're going to do a practice called
0:09.5	focusing on the impermanence of those we love. In the West we often shy away from thinking
0:15.7	about the impermanence of people we love. It's hard. It's painful to think about their loss.
0:20.3	Why would we do this? Well, what we know is when we grapple with the impermanence of people we
0:27.9	we actually gain some perspective on this fact of life. We feel a sense of common humanity with
0:34.8	other people that this is just a truth about being a human being is that people we love pass.
0:40.4	It also gives us an opportunity to kind of re-appraise to rethink the passage of time and the fact
0:47.6	that people age and change. So there are a lot of good reasons to focus on the impermanence of
0:53.7	people we love. And when we consult other traditions like the bond tradition of the Himalayas
1:01.8	they have practices that get us to contemplate impermanence to appreciate who is with this and
1:07.2	what they are right now. So we are going to contemplate the impermanence of someone you love.
1:18.8	Get into a restful position, a nice posture, hands in a comfortable place, close your eyes,
1:30.2	just take a couple of nice deep breaths together.
1:40.5	Now in this next inhalation, expanding your chest and your belly, just relax your shoulders
1:55.1	and your back and your face.
2:02.6	And let that relaxation spread through your legs and down into your feet.
2:10.2	And into your hands.
2:23.0	Now I'd like you as you breathe, imagine an older relative who's important to you.
2:34.4	Even somebody who's passed, just get a picture of that individual in your mind.
2:40.4	Breathing in, you might imagine their face and their eyes and their body, their voice.
2:58.4	Now breathing out with the strength of your imagination,
3:02.6	imagine this person being born into the world many years ago.
	...

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