Happiness Break: Embodying Resilience, With Prentis Hemphill

The Science of Happiness

PRX and Greater Good Science Center

Science, Social Sciences

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if you could tap into your inherent resilience at any time? Prentis Hemphill guides a meditation to turn good memories into a state of resilience.

How To Do This Practice:

Get Comfortable in Your Body: Find a position, seated, standing, or lying down, that feels right. Move, shake, or sound out anything that helps you arrive in your body.
Conjure a Resilient Memory: Call to mind a moment, place, or experience that makes you feel strong, creative, or connected, something that reminds you of your resilience.
Let It Fill You Up: Notice where that memory lives in your body, and let it expand into your arms, legs, face, and breath until it energizes your whole being.
Turn It Up: Amplify the sensation by 20%, letting it spill through your muscles and cells. Notice shifts in breath, posture, and energy.
Turn It Down: Gently reduce the sensation, bit by bit, and observe what changes. What stories re-emerge, how your body responds, and how you make that shift.
Carry It With You: Return to the present moment with the option to bring that resilience with you at the volume and intensity you need, knowing it’s always available.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

PRENTIS HEMPHILL is the founder of the Embodiment Institute, and a writer and therapist who prioritizes the body in their approach to healing.

Learn More About the Embodiment Institute: https://www.theembodimentinstitute.org/about

Check out Prentis’ website: https://prentishemphill.com

Follow Prentis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/prentishemphill

Follow Prentis on Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/4d99f4xs

Related Happiness Break episodes:

Make Uncertainty Part of the Process: https://tinyurl.com/234u5ds7

Pause to Look at the Sky: https://tinyurl.com/4jttkbw3

A Self-Compassion Meditation For Burnout: https://tinyurl.com/485y3b4y

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress: https://tinyurl.com/2hvhkwe6

Breathe Away Anxiety: https://tinyurl.com/3u7vsrr5

Are You Remembering the Good Times: https://tinyurl.com/483bkk2h

Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod

We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at [email protected] 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/46383mhx

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Dacher Keltner and this is Happiness Break.
0:05.0	Today we're trying a practice where we cultivate a sense of resilience by tapping into an empowering memory.
0:12.0	When we reminisce on the good, we feel more resilient. Namely, stressful situations don't drag our moods down as much,
0:19.0	and our cortisol levels don't spike as much either.
0:22.6	Resilience is also connected with longevity,
0:25.6	lower depression rates, and more satisfaction with life.
0:29.6	This week's happiness break on resilience is hosted by Prentice Hemphill,
0:33.6	a writer, the founder of the Embodiment Institute,
0:36.6	and a therapist who prioritizes the body in their approach to healing.
0:45.3	Hi everyone, this is Prentice Hemphill, and I'm offering a resilience practice today.
0:56.0	Resilience is really our birthright.
0:59.0	It's what we come into the world with.
1:02.0	It's where our creativity comes from.
1:05.0	It's where our relationality comes from.
1:08.0	And so this practice is about
1:10.0	resourcing ourselves, accessing resilience, and the experience
1:13.6	of resilience whenever we might need it.
1:20.6	So I want to ask you to get into a position that's comfortable for your body.
1:30.3	And that can be standing, it can be seated, it can be lying down.
1:36.3	If you need to move around, if you need to shake, if you need to let out a sound,
1:41.3	if you need to dance a little bit so that your body arrives here, go ahead and do that.
1:47.0	You don't need to be calm and still to engage in this practice. We are finding our way into our bodies,
	...

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