Mindfulness Meditation with Dawn Mauricio

Dawn Mauricio
  • 5.0 (20)
  • Mental Health

Insight helps us see. Practice helps us change. I’m a Buddhist meditation teacher and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner sharing weekly guided meditations to support clarity, choice, and embodied change. While mindfulness may help us see more clearly, it’s consistent practice that builds the capacity to respond—especially in moments of overwhelm, grief, and uncertainty. Follow for meditations from 5 to 30 minutes, including mindfulness of the body, open awareness, and practices for meeting life as it is. Learn more at dawnmauricio.com. dawnmauricio.substack.com

  1. 3h ago

    The Steady Heart

    In uncertain times, when so much feels fragile and out of our control, the Buddhist quality of equanimity—the steady heart in the middle of the storm, the capacity to stay present with what’s here, without pushing it away or clinging too tightly—can feel like a distant ideal. This quality doesn’t arise by chance; it’s something we can cultivate moment by moment, breath by breath, and it’s deepened when we recognize that everything is changing—thoughts, emotions, sensations, and the world around us. In this meditation, we’ll explore that space. You’ll be guided to notice the changing nature of everything—the breath comes and goes, sensations arise and fade, emotions and thoughts move through like visitors at a window. By tuning into that lifespan of things, you train yourself to ride the wave instead of grasping or pushing away. We’ll notice what’s here and practice meeting it with friendliness and care. ----- Practice Reflection One of the ways I define equanimity, or upekkhā, is the capacity to feel everything fully while not being swept away by it. This becomes possible because everything is already changing—this worry won’t feel the same in ten minutes, the joy will shift, for example. Knowing this begins to loosen the grip of both grasping and aversion of things needing to be a certain way. In daily life, this becomes your steadiness, not because you stop caring, but because you’ve practiced enough to know that nothing stays. In the midst of all that’s unfolding in our world, this practice may feel small or insignificant, but it’s anything but. By cultivating equanimity, you’re strengthening your capacity to stay grounded, see clearly, and act with wisdom and care, for your benefit and the benefit of others. That steady heart that can respond with wisdom, even when things feel fragile and chaotic, is one of the most grounded things you can offer. ----- 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    The Steady Heart

  2. Jul 22

    Impermanence as Tenderness

    In this practice, you're invited to notice something we usually miss: the lifespan of things. Everything that arises—a feeling, a sound, a breath—has a life… and then it fades. We typically notice phenomena when we are in the thick of it, but what if you could notice the fading? There's something that happens when you contemplate that this might be the last time you feel this particular way, hear this particular sound, take this particular breath—tenderness, presence. You stop gripping so tightly because you realize you can't hold it anyway. In this meditation, we are learning that impermanence becomes permission to just be here. Practice reflection: The Buddhist teaching of anicca (impermanence) can sound bleak until you practice with it. Everything changes and everything ends, including moments you love. But there’s something liberating buried under this realization—if everything is impermanent, then this anxiety won’t last forever, and neither will this joy. Neither will this particular ache in your heart. In daily life, we grip what feels good and resist what feels bad, never quite believing that both are temporary. We argue with our partner like it’s permanent. We hold onto a compliment like we can keep it forever. We catastrophize a bad moment as if it defines our whole life. Impermanence is constantly telling us otherwise, but we don’t often hear its message. The contemplation of anicca shows us reminds us to just be present—with your loved one, knowing you won’t have them forever; ith your body, knowing it’s changing; with this breath, knowing it’s the only one you have right now. That awareness doesn’t make you morbid, it makes you tender. 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    Impermanence as Tenderness

  3. Jul 15

    Building Power Through Settling

    In this practice, you’ll be guided to gather your mind around an anchor as an act of power. A gathered mind is a powerful mind, the kind that can see clearly and affect change in a distracted time. As you settle, you might notice unsettledness or frazzledness. Rather than treating it as a problem, simply make space for it, like watching clouds pass, and in that space, clarity can emerge. Practice reflection: We live in an age designed to scatter our attention—alerts, notifications, outrage cycles, doom-scrolling—there’s an endless stream of things pulling our focus away from what actually matters to us. This isn’t accidental. Attention is power, and the more fragmented yours is, the less power you have. Right Concentration (sammā-samādhi) is about gathering your mind as an act of reclamation. When you sit and gather your attention around your breath instead of the news, you’re not escaping the world. Instead, you’re building the kind of clarity and steadiness you need to actually show up for it. Our ancestors before us and our descendants after us need people who can think clearly, see truly, and act with intention. That’s what a gathered mind makes possible. In daily life, this looks like choosing where your attention goes: one conversation with full presence instead of five conversations half-there, one task done with focus instead of ten tabs open and nothing finished. It’s small… and yet it’s not. Every time you reclaim your attention from distraction, you’re building power. 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    Building Power Through Settling

  4. Jul 8

    As Much As Possible

    In this practice, you're invited to meet yourself and whatever struggles or overwhelm you're carrying with the tenderness you'd naturally offer someone you love. That meeting itself is the practice (and not always an easy one, at that!). We are intending to move toward not striving toward a particular feeling or getting loving-kindness "right" but instead noticing what actually happens in your body when you offer yourself these wishes of loving-kindness. And if that feels too far away, there's permission built in: as much as possible. Even a small softening counts. ----- Practice reflection: We’re often terrible at receiving. We can give endlessly—care, time, attention, energy—but when it comes to being held by kindness (especially our own), something tightens. We feel unworthy. We feel we need to earn it. We resist being vulnerable enough to let it land. The practice of mettā (loving-kindness) helps us create the conditions for our hearts to soften, and then we try to notice what actually happens. Maybe nothing. Maybe a subtle shift. Maybe tears. Regardless, all of it is welcome. In daily life, this looks like meeting your own struggles with the same gentleness you’d offer a struggling friend. When you mess up, can you say “of course, my love, you’re human” instead of spiraling into self-judgment? When you’re overwhelmed, can you let yourself be held by support instead of white-knuckling your way through? And when self-compassion feels impossible, there’s always the permission of “as much as possible.” Even 5% of kindness toward yourself is still kindness. ----- 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    As Much As Possible

  5. Jul 1

    The Field of Feeling Tone

    In this practice, you'll notice feeling tone in two dimensions. First, the worldly: your reactions to external sensory experiences like sounds, sensations, thoughts, and the pull toward what feels pleasant, away from what feels unpleasant, the drifting of neutral. Then there’s the unworldly: the feeling tone that arises in response to your internal states—when kindness emerges, when concentration deepens, when wisdom touches you. This meditation encourages you to cultivate the capacity to notice both. ----- Practice reflection: We’re usually aware of worldly feeling tone—how we’re pulled toward pleasant sensations and away from unpleasant ones. But the Buddhist teaching of vedanā or feeling tone includes something subtler: the unworldly. How do you feel when compassion arises? When you touch clarity? When peace settles in? There’s a feeling tone there, too, and we can grasp at it just as tightly as we grasp at anything else. The practice invites you to notice both dimensions, partly to recognize that wholesome states also trigger patterns of grasping and aversion. You can cling to peace, you can push away the moment your meditation feels “bad.” Noticing this in yourself is where real insight begins—seeing how the mind works, whether it’s chasing pleasure or chasing spiritual experiences. ----- 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    The Field of Feeling Tone

  6. Jun 25

    Permission to Ease

    In this practice, you're guided to stop working harder than you need to. What if the anchor you're already noticing is already enough, even if it's not what you think you "should" be practicing with? The invitation is to let practice be a place where you don't have to earn anything through perfect focus, where showing up, even half-present, even while your mind wanders constantly, already counts. A little is better than nothing, not as a consolation prize, but as permission to simply be. ----- Practice Reflection: Most of us move through life believing we have to push harder to be enough—more accomplished, more disciplined, more “on.” Even in meditation, we can fall into that trap, white-knuckling our way toward peace. But what if that’s backwards? The Buddhist concept of Right Effort (sammā vāyāma) is about finding balance: the effort that serves you without the striving that exhausts you. Some days that looks like focused practice, and other days it looks like showing up half-present and calling that enough. In daily life, this matters. You don’t have to overhaul your life to have a good one. You don’t have to be perfect to be worthy. You can bring your whole attention to one conversation instead of your half-attention to ten. You can rest without guilt. You can do less and receive more. The work isn’t always the pushing; sometimes the work is learning when to ease off. ----- 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    Permission to Ease

  7. Jun 17

    Kindness as Companion

    In this practice, kindness is your anchor as you notice what’s actually here—the texture of how you’re arriving, the subtle pushes and pulls of feeling tone. Rather than being caught in the story of good or bad, you’re observing the landscape itself, allowing you to relax with what’s present instead of subtly resisting it. Practice reflection: We spend so much energy trying to be in the “right” state—calm when we’re anxious, energized when we’re flat, peaceful when we’re overwhelmed. We treat our actual experience as a problem to solve rather than something to observe. But what if the shift came not from changing what’s here, but from how we relate to it? The Buddhist concept of upekkhā (equanimity) is a kind of warm, clear seeing that isn’t reactive. When you label an experience as “good” or “bad,” you’ve already stepped into a position of judgment and grasping. But when you notice the feeling tone itself—the pull toward pleasantness or away from unpleasantness—you create space, you’re no longer caught. You can observe what’s happening without automatically being moved by it. In daily life, this might look like noticing you’re anxious without immediately trying to fix it, noticing you’re frustrated with someone without automatically acting on that frustration (so! hard!), noticing joy without clutching it so tightly it slips away. Kindness is what makes this possible—not kindness as niceness, but as gentleness with yourself in the act of noticing. You’re not bad for being caught; you’re just human, and in the noticing itself, you’re already free. 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    Kindness as Companion

  8. Jun 11

    Allow, Investigate, Release

    In this practice, you'll work with whatever arises—moods, emotions, sensations—through the lens of allowing, investigating, and recognizing it's not yours. When something feels compelling or challenging, can you let it be here without fighting it? Get curious about how it moves, shifts, evolves. The heart of the practice is touching into non-identification—all that moves through you is simply nature being expressed because of causes and conditions coming together in this moment. ----- Practice Reflection: We tend to identify so strongly with what arises—anger means we’re an angry person, anxiety means something is wrong with us, a harsh thought means we’re unkind. But what if these experiences are more like weather moving through you than something intrinsic to who you are? The Buddhist teaching of causes and conditions (pratītyasamutpāda) suggests that nothing exists independently and everything arises from a complex web of factors—lack of sleep, the news you read, a conversation that triggered you, the coffee you had. As a result, your reaction is nature expressing itself through the particular conditions present right now. But! Even though what is arising is not our fault, it is still our responsibility. Yes, you didn’t cause the conditions, but you are responsible for what you do with what arises. You can investigate it with curiosity, choose how you respond, and repair when you’ve acted unskillfully. That’s the balance—it’s not your fault, but it is your responsibility. In daily life, this means catching yourself in a spiral and remembering: this, too, is nature. The irritation with your partner isn’t who you are, it’s what’s arising given the tiredness and stress and hunger of this moment.—and you can still choose to pause before you snap, still apologize, still show up differently, if not just now, then in the future. The practice isn’t about becoming someone different or bypassing accountability, it’s about recognizing you were never the problem to begin with, while also knowing you have the capacity to respond with intention. ----- 🗓️ explore ways to deepen your practice and study here 🌱 learn more about somatic experiencing for qt/bipoc here 💌 receive a monthly letter in your inbox here This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dawnmauricio.substack.com

    Allow, Investigate, Release
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About

Insight helps us see. Practice helps us change. I’m a Buddhist meditation teacher and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner sharing weekly guided meditations to support clarity, choice, and embodied change. While mindfulness may help us see more clearly, it’s consistent practice that builds the capacity to respond—especially in moments of overwhelm, grief, and uncertainty. Follow for meditations from 5 to 30 minutes, including mindfulness of the body, open awareness, and practices for meeting life as it is. Learn more at dawnmauricio.com. dawnmauricio.substack.com

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