Whether you’re looking for insightful conversations with teachers, skillful advice for working through a challenge, or simply inspiration for how to approach life with a little more compassion, we hope you enjoy the following mindfulness and meditation podcasts that stood out this year.
The Top 10 Mindfulness and Meditation Podcasts of 2022
1) Meditative Story
Episode: “How I Found Kindness as My Compass with Sharon Salzberg” For those who love to learn by listening to personal stories, Meditative Story offers both first-person narratives and guided meditations. This episode features Sharon Salzberg telling how she came to meditation as a 17-year old who’d suffered a lot, in a family that never talked about suffering. Salzberg tells her story with humility and humor, and host Rohan Gunatillake periodically invites listeners to reflect along with Salzberg, and at the end, leads a meditation in the style of S.N. Goenka, Salzberg’s first formal meditation teacher. Salzberg speaks movingly of the challenges and rewards of self-kindness, which, she says, is still her hardest mountain to climb. – Stephanie Domet
2) Workwell by Deloitte
Episode: “The Science of Happiness” Jen Fisher, Chief Well-Being Officer for Deloitte, hosts this buoying conversation with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, a prolific author, professor, and expert on leadership and happiness. They discuss topics as varied as the usefulness of measuring GNH (Gross National Happiness), the hard work of healing perfectionism, and the very practical question of how we “create rituals” that feed our well-being, “whether it’s appreciation, regular exercise, kindness, generosity,” or giving “our undivided attention when we are with other people,” says Ben-Shahar. Prioritizing happiness, he says, can be as simple—and, to be sure, as difficult—as consistently making these choices for ourselves. – Amber Tucker
3) Turning Points: Navigating Mental Health
Episode: “Turning Toward Mindfulness” “I can fall apart, I can feel everything fully, and I will be okay.” That’s how Deborah Johnson describes the deeply personal lesson she learned from her mindfulness practice. Host Frantzces Lys speaks to Johnson about healing from trauma and explores how mindfulness teachers can safely use trauma-informed practices with their students. Lys enlists the help of neuroscientist Jud Brewer and meditation teacher Tara Healey in this intimate conversation about mindfulness and mental health. Mindfulness “helps us relate to and engage with all of our lives,” Healey says. “It really gives us a way to work with our resistance to what is happening.” – Kylee Ross
4) On Being With Krista Tippett
Episode: adrienne maree brown, “We are in a time of new suns.” This friendly conversation between host Krista Tippett and influential author and steward of compassionate change adrienne maree brown is abundant with wisdom for our times. brown is a deep believer in the power of imagination to change the world, but also a realist about the challenges before humanity right now. The way she navigates the duality of hope and anxiety with grace in this conversation offers a strong reminder that we can hold space for both at once. She says, “We have no idea what we could be, but everything that we have been is falling apart. So it’s time to change. And we can be mindful about that. That’s exciting.” – Ava Whitney-Coulter
5) I’m Curious with Ashley Asti
Episode: “A Practice for the Tired & Weary with Rashid Hughes” In this grounding conversation, meditation teacher and creator of the R.E.S.T. practice Rashid Hughes and host Ashley Asti dig deep into the four pillars of the practice: Relax your attention. Release. Exhale all striving. Empty. Sense the silence. Surrender. Tune in to awareness. Trust. It’s a practice that invites us to be with ourselves—something Hughes notes isn’t honored in society. “There’s an inherent worthiness in who we are that doesn’t have to be worked for or earned,” Hughes says. With practice, “we’re reprogramming our systems, our bodies, to begin to trust that it’s safe to stop.” – Kylee Ross
6) Wild With Sarah Wilson
Episode: “Johann Hari: THIS is why you’re finding the world too much” If you haven’t yet delved into Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus, let yourself be convinced by this highly engaging episode. Host Sarah Wilson probes some of the book’s salient topics, including why it matters that we read differently on a page versus on a screen; the real productivity cost of believing our brains can multitask; and the combo of personal and systemic shifts needed in order to truly attend to what Hari describes as the “unprecedented tripwires and trapdoors” we now face as a species. From climate chaos to political upheavals, he says, “If we lose our greatest superpower, our attention, at the moment of our greatest crisis, that’s going to be a real problem.” – Amber Tucker
7) Speaking of Psychology
Episode: “Ambiguous Loss and ‘the myth of closure’” Pauline Boss, PhD, author of The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change, joins host Kim Mills to talk about why closure may be an appropriate term for the end of a business deal, but not for thinking about life after loss. Boss coined the term “ambiguous loss”—a loved one who’s missing, or ill with dementia, say—in the 1970s. Here, she extends it to our pandemic losses—loved ones, lost opportunities, jobs, ceremonies, celebrations. Boss makes generous space for the continued attachment we naturally feel for who and what we love. “‘Getting over it’ is an artificial idea put upon the people who are grieving in a culture that has no patience for suffering,” she tells Mills. “We might be that culture.” – Stephanie Domet
8) Burnout
Episode 1: “We Can’t Live Like This Anymore” “Close your eyes and think of the word ‘burnout,’” says Connor Franta, host of Burnout. You may picture an office worker exhausted after a full week, a grocery clerk on the second leg of a double shift, or you when you’re feeling burnt out. This debut episode, produced in collaboration with (you guessed it!) Mindful, explores the physiology and history of burnout—and why it creeps into our lives. We hear from experts who break down research, personal experience, and ways to be OK. And when the topic gets heavy, (our very own founding editor) Barry Boyce offers a few moments of practice to check in with yourself. – Kylee Ross
9) Finding Our Way
Episode: “Feeling Whole with Sonya Renee Taylor” Returning guest Sonya Renee Taylor joins host Prentis Hemphill to discuss what, to Hemphill, feels like the edge of something. The edge of a paradigm shift. While the pair toss what that means back and forth, the idea of practice becomes central to the conversation. “Systems don’t afford you the space to practice without drastic consequences,” Taylor says. For Black children that often means not being able to practice being an adult, Taylor notes; they aren’t given leeway to get it wrong and be forgiven. The solution, both agree, is complex. It requires breaking down systems, yes, but also infusing our actions, decisions, and reactions with grace. – Kylee Ross
10) Rethinking With Adam Grant
Episode: “Satya Nadella is building the future” To see high-powered mindful leadership in action, look no further than Microsoft’s third CEO, Satya Nadella. Over time he’s shifted the company’s culture from one of intense competition toward cooperation. “I borrowed from Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset,” he says. “It helped us go from ‘know-it- alls’ to ‘learn-it-alls,’ which gave us more permission to look inwards.” This tech-oriented yet broadly insightful conversation, hosted by organizational psychologist Adam Grant, explores our relationship to remote work, well-being as key to productivity, the question of “refraining from weekend emails” as a leader, what makes people want to come back to work, and how managers can show deep care for employees. –Amber Tucker
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Mindful Staff December 22, 2022
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