Shifting Awareness Guided Meditation

Balanced Mind with Julie Potiker

In this guided meditation led by Julie Potiker, you will shift your awareness to your senses; what you see, hear, feel, and taste while in meditation. She completes the meditation with a poem by Brad Aaron Modlin.

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade, by Brad Aaron Modlin.

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen

to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took

questions on how not to feel lost in the dark.

After lunch she distributed worksheets

that covered ways to remember your grandfather's

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep

without feeling you had forgotten to do something else -

something important -and how to believe

the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing

how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts

are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am

is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation

look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

are feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking

for whatever it was you lost, and one person.

add up to something.

-What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade, by Brad Aaron Modlin, from "Poetry of Presence II; More Mindfulness Poems", edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai & Ruby R. Wilson.

Find out more about using mindfulness in everyday life through Julie's books, "SNAP: From Calm to Chaos", and "Life Falls Apart, But You Don't have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm in the Midst of Chaos". Both are available on Amazon.com.

Follow Julie on YouTube and Facebook at Mindful Methods for Life.com

This podcast is available on iTunes, iHeart, Blubrry and everywhere you listen to podcasts.