12 Guided Meditations
On Mindfulness, Self-Love, and Awakening with Henry Shukman
Benefit from Henry’s decades-long exploration of mindfulness, self-love and awakening. Based on Henry’s deep experience of Zen, Jhana practice, and mindfulness practices, Henry gives us a toolbox for developing mindful, loving awareness, and the ability to rest deeply in and be nurtured by this very moment.
The more we’re able to impartially welcome whatever is going on, quite naturally our capacity to remain present grows. Map out the terrain of our ordinary sense experience in any moment – a proven gateway to finding spacious, peaceful awareness. Explore the experiences of hearing, seeing, touch, images and speech in the mind, and sensations and energies in the body.
- Get more conversant with the actual components of present moment experience
- Exploring the 6 “outer” and “inner” senses (borrowing from Shinzen Young’s Unified Mindfulness)
- Identify the experience of global awareness, and practice being aware of multiple sense channels at the same time
- Learn the practices of “labeling” and “noting” to gain healthy dis-identification from difficult emotions
- Dive deep into the nature and experience of the breath
- Find a posture that aids a comfortable meditation experience
- Learn to notice and relax tension throughout the body
Becoming the neutral witness – over time this neutrality tends to grow into gratitude, tenderness, appreciation and unconditional love for experience. Often there’s a way of opening our hearts gently, allowing our loving nature to show itself. Discover what it’s like to be kind toward ourselves. Once we do that toward ourselves, it becomes much easier to be more kindly disposed toward others.
- Discover that emotions consist of energies, contractions, tightness, tension, weight, heaviness and other felt sensations, most often focused in the trunk of the body
- Practice using mindfulness to create mindful witnessing of our emotions – this helps us become less “led around by the nose” by our emotions
- Practice becoming a peaceful, loving, affectionate observer of our experience – through the technique of unconditionally allowing our experience to be just as it is
- Investigate how allowing and welcoming our experience can be a solvent for the two core “hindrances” of craving and aversion
See what it’s like to feel content with this present moment right now. Feeling contentment, ease and restfulness in mind, body, heart – just for now, we can let this be enough. There’s an aspect of awareness here and now that isn’t seeking anything. It’s absolutely content. Completely free of seeking anything. Perfectly at balance, perfectly at rest, perfectly responsive.
- The fine art of “doing nothing”
- Discovering the awareness that suffuses and holds all of our experience, and learning to settle and rest in that awareness
- Exploring the boundaries of the space around us, and inside us
- Resting in deep and easeful stillness, without exerting any effort
- Being held by awareness
- Letting this moment be enough
Course information
Explore 12 guided meditations
#1: Sound, hearing, listening
#2: Visual experience, seeing
#3: Body sensation and breath awareness
#4: Breath awareness in upper and lower torso; awareness of multiple senses simultaneously
#5: Rhythm and ease of the breath
#6: The 3 zones of inner experience: images, inner speech, and felt energies
#7: Mindfulness as a gateway into self-love and compassion
#8: Developing self-love through investigation of the hindrances
#9: Diving into the subtle experience of the breath
#10: “Do nothing” meditation
#11: Easeful stillness, open space and developing self-love
#12: Let this moment be enough
What you’ll receive
You’ll receive access to 12 guided meditations. Each meditation is about 15 minutes in length. These audio meditations are available to stream as videos on Vimeo.
Many people use Henry’s meditations as their daily 15 minute meditation practice, or as a starting point for a longer daily meditation.
People’s experiences with these 12 Guided Meditations
Love these guided meditations. They help my body relax into presence and I take that to my daily sits.
These meditations are ever so supportive. They help me to relax, to have ease, to not have designs on the sitting.
They were excellent. As mentioned above, the breakdown of experience into senses and feelings was a fresh view of the mediation process for me which has helped me understand it more and I could feel the fizz of awareness of being alive in some sits.
I found the meditations very valuable. I really appreciated getting into the nitty gritties of mindfulness. It helped keep the momentum going of my daily sits.
Wonderful reminders and reprogramming out of my habitual mind.
The meditations were great! They helped me to keep the routine, always waiting for the next meditation! Henry’s voice is very good, it is great to be guided by him.
These are essential boosts to daily meditation. I found myself using them as one would a coffee break. Also lovely before going to sleep. I find I sleep deeper. Lovely really.
Such an amazing help. I really struggle with ‘falling off the wagon’ of meditating for a few weeks at the time, and then jumping back in for a few months. I feel like these meditations helped me with my consistency.
I love the simplicity and the building blocks that these meditations have given to my life. I have more tools. This has been the first time in my life when I have used mindfulness tools from when I wake up in the morning to when I go to sleep. Maybe, in my sleep? I’m not sure. I can not express my gratitude in words for how that has affected my life. Also, hopefully everyone I come into contact with.
I loved getting these bite-sized guided experiences. They reminded me of foundational principles. I used them to encourage my own practice. I usually continued for 15-30 minutes each time after the guidance stopped.
I feel like Henry is one of the best teachers out there. I feel like he has the goods and he delivers the goods. Henry appeals to the heart/mind and mind/intellect. He is comforting, relevant, and interesting.
About Henry
Henry is a teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage and has trained in various other meditation schools and practices. After a spontaneous spiritual awakening at the age of 19, followed by a difficult few years, he embarked on a long journey of healing and deeper awakening, guided by Roshis John Gaynor, Joan Rieck, Ruben Habito, and Yamada Roshi, international abbot of Sanbo Zen, who ultimately appointed him a teacher in 2010. Since then he has been leading a growing number of practitioners on the path of awakening, in Europe and the US. Henry has taught meditation at Google, Harvard Business School, Esalen Institute, Colorado College, United World College and many other venues. He has also been authorized to teach Mindfulness by Shinzen Young, and is a certified dreamwork therapist. His teaching base is Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is the Spiritual Director, working in collaboration with the Guiding Teacher, Valerie Forstman Roshi.
Learn more about Henry and his recent Zen memoir, One Blade of Grass.
Want to explore mindfulness in even greater depth?
We welcome you to take a look at our Mindfulness in Plain English Reading Group program.