Hey everyone, my name is Rosie and I'm one of the new hosts of Radio Headspace.

I'm an author and a yoga meditation teacher and my new episodes are debuting February of next year.

I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, I'd like to let you know about a new show from Headspace Studios called Dear Headspace.

It's a call and advice show where Headspace teachers answer questions each week about anything and everything.

We talk about family, relationships, mindfulness and so much more.

You can find your Headspace on the Headspace app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Hi, it's Andy here and welcome to Radio Headspace.

So it's Monday morning and this week is starting in a slightly different time, depending where you are in the world.

You may well have experienced a very tense and fraught weekend.

So certainly around the nation here in the US, very much here in LA, there's been a lot of people out on the streets.

A lot of people feeling incredibly angry and rightfully so about a sense of injustice that has gone on for far too long.

And many people have asked how can meditation play its part in dealing with not only the feelings of anger and indignation, but also the sense of fear and anxiety that so many of these protests are taking on, whether it's fear of being caught up in something worse or fear of the peaceful protest, turning into something violent.

Understandably, a lot of people are very concerned. So I thought it was worth just looking at a couple of different aspects of meditation.

I always said that Radio Headspace wasn't going to be about meditation. But given the situation, given the environment, I think it's really helpful to look at, as I say, these two aspects.

There are two very particular views of meditation. One is the more passive one. I think this is how most of us think about meditation.

It's the ability to calm the mind, to relax the body, to get a greater sense of clarity in our mind, perhaps clear away some of the confusion.

And in that sense, right now that's a really important tool in itself. But equally, you know, it can be tempting to look at meditation and say, well, that's fine to shut ourselves away, but aren't we just ignoring the problems that are going on around the world?

And my understanding of meditation and the way it was always taught to me was that we don't sit with our eyes closed to become good at sitting still with our eyes closed.

Yes, there are some benefits from it. Yes, it's important that we train in that way. But the true benefit is the quality of mind that we attain or cultivate through that process, which we have then able to bring back into everyday life.

And then we get into this other kind of aspect of meditation, the active part of it. How does it actually show up in our life? Well, if we've meditated enough, then we start to get a sense that we're not separate.

We are all interconnected. We are all into dependent every single one of us equal in that way. And when we feel that, that is expressed in our lives.

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