Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness.

My name is Cory Muscara, and I'll be

guiding you through this seven day series.

Each day, I'll share a short

video on meditation with a new

theme, designed to help you reduce

stress and live a happier life.

These daily themes will build on each

other, and I'm particularly excited

to share the lesson on day six.

All of this will take less than

15 minutes a day, but if you stick

with it, you'll gradually start to

see your quality of life improving.

You know, I'm imagining you're here

because you're going through something

difficult — strained at work, a

tough relationship or breakup, or

just the general struggles of life.

So I just want to say, I appreciate

you being here and taking this

time to take a proactive role in

your own health and wellbeing.

There are a lot of people that

continue on living with their

stress and not knowing that there's

anything they can do about it.

And the fact that you're here is

saying something about you and your

willingness to, um, to do some work.

And one of the promises of

mindfulness meditation is a life

with less stress and more peace.

So I'm excited to start

this journey with you.

In today's session, we're going to

discuss, creating more space for

our stress — what I like to call

building your stress container.

So if you think about it, often for

me, one of the first things that

comes up when there's stress is my

mind likes to compound the stress.

And so the thoughts arise,

oh, here we go again.

It's going to be a bad day.

I hate feeling this way.

It's bad for my health,

bad for my wellbeing.

Nobody else seems to be this stressed.

Does that resonate,

maybe just a little bit?

We end up doubling tripling,

quadrupling the amount of stress

we feel because we get really tight

around it, constricted around it.

I sometimes like to think of the

metaphor of a cow and a cow path.

So if you put a cow in a small confined

place, they're going to feel stressed

and overwhelmed and very tense.

But if you take that same cow and

you give it a wide open cow pasture,

immediately, there's a sense of ease.

And so in this series, we're

going to be talking about a lot

of different strategies and ways

to direct your attention away from

the stress, how to be more calm,

more settled, ways to work with it.

But for this first session,

the first foundational step

is just to give it some space.

So we can do that right now, as you

sit here, as you watch and listen.

What's it like to attune to

your internal experience?

What's it like to notice the

thoughts moving on through your mind?

Or maybe even a sense

of stress and your body

Instead of immediately trying

to get rid of it, change it,

fix it, or think positively.

We're just going to give it some space.

And this is like taking ourselves out

of that small confined place and giving

the mind a wide open cow pasture.

Hmm.

Maybe you can start to feel some of the

ease that gets cultivated with that.

And if not, that's okay as well.

Some of this stuff takes time practice,

which is why we have the daily meditation

and the full seven days together.

So in a short while we will do the

meditation together and we'll go

a little deeper into this concept.

But I just want to say thank you

again for your practice and for

taking this time for yourself.

It's a privilege to be

on this journey with you.

And I'm excited to go into the meditation.

Talk soon, take care.