The communities we create are one of the most awe-inspiring parts of our lives. Host Dacher Keltner guides us in a meditation on awe and togetherness in this week’s Happiness Break.

How to Do This Practice:

1. Find a comfortable, safe, place where you can close your eyes and relax. Notice your breathing and begin to take deep, intentional breaths.

2. Think about a community you are a part of – work, recreation, spiritual, any group you’re a part of. Cultivate a sense in your mind of being with that community.

3. Reflect for a few minutes on the faces of the people in this community; bring them into your mind’s eye and notice the details of their eyes, smiles, perhaps even their tones of voice or the sounds of their laughter.

4. Think about this remarkable quality of communities: That all of these separate individuals create one hole.

5. Think about how each person contributes to this community to create that whole.

6. Contemplate how everyone in this community is connected, and how they’re mutually influencing each other.

7. Think about what value unites all these people share, what they have in common.

8. Imagine yourself within this network of connected individuals. Cultivate a sense of what connects you with them, think of them as threads of mutual influence. It doesn’t all have to be good; tension is a part of being a community, too.

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.

His new book is Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

Why Do We Feel Awe? https://tinyurl.com/3xms3dm2

How Awe Brings People Together: https://tinyurl.com/2p8m2tyk

Eight Reasons Why Awe Makes Your Life Better: https://tinyurl.com/2p8ccav2

Six Ways to Incorporate Awe Into Your Daily Life: https://tinyurl.com/3emucdez

How Music Bonds Us Together: https://tinyurl.com/329scmf6

Can a Sense of Awe Improve Our Arguments? https://tinyurl.com/pb2eh8c6

We love hearing from you! Tell us about your experience contemplating your communities. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

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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.