Wellness Minutes

Time can be transformed from an enemy into an ally through the Pomodoro technique, a powerful productivity method that structures work into focused 25-minute intervals followed by intentional breaks. Named after the Italian word for tomato because it takes about 25 minutes to make Pomodoro pasta sauce, this technique helps overcome overwhelm by breaking large tasks into manageable chunks.

• Commit to one task for 25 minutes at a time with complete focus
• Take mandatory 5-minute breaks between each Pomodoro session
• After four cycles (25min work/5min rest), take a longer 30-minute break
• Treat distractions as you would du...

Wellness Minutes explores the practice of meditating on feelings, teaching listeners to observe the space between events and actions where thoughts and emotions influence behavior. This episode introduces the powerful practice of emotional awareness for more mindful living.

• Between external events and our actions lie thoughts and feelings that influence our behavior
• Taking a "riverbank position" means stepping back to observe your emotions rather than being swept along by them
• Universal feelings across cultures include happiness, sadness, fear, and disgust
• We often confuse thoughts for feelings—when you say "I feel like," you're usually expressing...

Emotions are like background programs running on your mental computer—when acknowledged, they free up resources, but when ignored, they demand more attention and drain your capacity to focus.

• Understanding the five universal emotions identified by psychologist Paul Ekman: joy, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust
• Each emotion serves an evolutionary purpose: fear protects from harm, joy indicates safety, sadness shows something matters, anger responds to threats, disgust warns of potential poison
• Naming your feelings without judgment helps process emotional data and organize it effectively
• Emotions are a mix of bodily sensations and thoughts that can calm d...

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

We explore how investing in your health through proactive self-care builds resilience similar to saving money for future needs. Our brain's stress pathways are well-developed while pleasure pathways need intentional strengthening to help us genuinely recover from stress rather than just numbing out.

• Numbing stress with TV and comfort food is like taking painkillers for a fracture—temporary relief while the problem persists
• Quality sleep, nutritious meals, and 30 minutes of daily exercise form the foundation of effective self-care
• Each self-care action strengthens neural pathways for stress recovery, like deposits into a wellness savings account
• Start buil...

Ever notice how we're often our own harshest critics? The RAIN meditation offers a refreshing alternative—a simple yet profound practice that transforms how we relate to difficult emotions.

This brief guided meditation introduces you to the RAIN technique: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture. Unlike complicated approaches requiring extensive practice, this accessible method works with even small discomforts, making it perfect for beginners and experienced meditators alike. 

The practice begins by inviting you to select a mildly uncomfortable experience—something that causes slight tension or fear—and guides you through recognizing these feelings without judgment. Rather...

Anger burns. It rises in our bodies—sometimes in our racing hearts, sometimes in our flushed cheeks, sometimes in our churning stomachs. But what happens when we try to hold that burning sensation with compassion? Can we speak loudly and firmly while still maintaining kindness?

The relationship between anger and compassion isn't as oppositional as we might think. Neuroscience reveals that compassion activates brain regions closely connected to action, much like anger does. Both emotions can motivate us to make change—they just fuel us differently. While anger provides an immediate surge of energy, it often leaves us d...

What goes unseen often matters most. Today's meditation centers around six powerful words—loving, kindness, compassion, heart, hands, and head—inviting you to weave them into your own meaningful mantra. 

The heart of this episode features selected passages from Alison Lutterman's moving poem "Invisible Work," which perfectly captures the countless unacknowledged acts that sustain our world. From the young mother running "rings around herself" to keep her child safe with no one to validate her efforts, to the worms tunneling ceaselessly so the earth can breathe, to the bees that "ransack this world into being"—this meditation honors...

Ever noticed how your most depleted moments often follow periods of caring for everyone but yourself? That's no coincidence.

Drawing inspiration from the flight safety instruction to secure your own oxygen mask before helping others, this episode explores the essential practice of self-care as the foundation for sustainable compassion. After experiencing how depression and anxiety often follow prolonged periods of neglecting personal needs, I share insights from a mindful walk where I deliberately chose not to multitask or plan - just to be present with my thoughts and surroundings.

We've all done it - systematically...

Finding yourself caught in a loop of worries or overwhelm? Pause and take a breath. Our bodies have an incredible built-in system for returning to calm, and this episode reveals how to activate it through simple grounding techniques.

We begin by briefly reviewing how your nervous system works—the interplay between your sympathetic "fight or flight" response and the parasympathetic "rest and digest" state. Building on our previous episode about deep breathing, we explore grounding as another powerful tool for nervous system regulation. The beauty of grounding lies in its fundamental premise: only the present moment is re...

Take a deep breath. Now another. What did you just activate? Your parasympathetic nervous system—the forgotten half of your body's stress-response equation.

Most of us have mastered the art of stress. Our sympathetic nervous system—responsible for fight-or-flight responses—operates like a well-oiled machine. Meanwhile, our parasympathetic system—the crucial mechanism for rest and recovery—sits gathering dust on the shelf. This imbalance leaves us perpetually stressed, constantly doing, and rarely truly resting until we're completely exhausted.

The Wellness Minutes podcast offers a refreshingly simple antidote: just one minute of intentional breathing. Through a guided fou...

Bringing mindfulness to the ecosystem at your workplace and how it makes you question your worth and your abilities.Read more here in this beautiful blog piece: https://sagewellnessctr.org/2021/06/imposter-syndrome-what-it-is-what-you-can-do-about-it/

I invite you to pause and take a deep breath...

Meetings can be such an important opportunity to practice our compassionate social skills. Take up space and share space!

I invite you to pause and take a deep breath...

To contrast with my busy, "can do - will do - yes absolutely" attitude, I decided to dedicate one day of the week to slowing down and giving myself permission to do nothing. It has been interesting! Hear a little bit about it! 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Reflecting on the hard work that goes into kindness and compassion

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Remembering a line by Chief Seattle, I reflect on the importance of taking care of ourselves. I also reflect on the wisdom of Adrienne Maree Brown ("Pleasure Activism") who reminds us how the world can only gain from our happiness.

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

When you take care of yourself- your health and wellness can have a positive impact on others. If you don't refill your own cup but keep offering your cup to others- everyone loses from your ultimately empty cup.

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Continuing my reflections on depression and anxiety 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

The most common experiences of profound psychological distress - Depression and Anxiety - are not personal failures, they are the mind and body's response to unrelenting stress. This episode names these two experiences and invites you to reflect on them with compassion. 

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Reflecting on how to help yourself decide whether to seek professional help, how to recognize you have gone from stress to STRESSED OUT and how a therapist could help. 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Sunday Blues - like any other feeling - are feedback to us. In this episode, we reflect on Sunday blues and what we can learn about our feelings from the poem Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Sometimes disconnecting from the phone seems like the best way to reconnect with reality. The concrete reality, not just the manifestation of reality (aka deluge of information) our internet-connected devices throw at us. 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Anger and spirituality can co-exist. Anger and compassion can co-exist. But could compassion help us also achieve what anger tries to? 

I invite you to pause and take a deep breath...

This is what happens when I have a super busy day and then end up in a Spiritual study group meeting and then wonder - do other people think about this too? 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Immigration, regardless of the motivation behind immigration, comes with such a string of losses. This episode is a reflection on what that grief can look like 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Recognizing the invisible work we do in our professions and in our homes and communities. 

Read the poem I referenced:  https://pollycastor.com/2019/05/11/invisible-work-poem-by-alison-luterman/

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

The inner critic forgets we are doing our best and the best way to improve ourselves is through reinforcement in the form of kindness and compassion. In this episode I reference the work of Carl Rogers, one of the founders of the Humanistic movement in Psychology and discuss a few ways I have changed my self talk to defuse the inner critic. 

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much metta,

Dr G

Curiosity about our feelings is one form of compassion . today I bring curiosity to health anxiety.

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Plants can teach us so much and give us so much. Hope you get a chance to reflect on how to plant these seeds of hope in your life. Here is a video from one of my favorite plant parents on YouTube, Garden Up: https://youtu.be/G-w2gpbyGaM

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much metta,

Dr G

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The difficult and sometimes highly unbearable feeling called Fear remains my achilles heel. It incapacitates me and makes it very hard for me to focus, don't know about you! In today's episode I speak a bit about fear and what I have learned from my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam who sought asylum in France after being exiled from Vietnam. His teachings about sitting with our fear (accessed through the Plum Village Youtube channel) correlate well with what the neuroscience has to say about the power of breath and focussing on the present moment as...

Human civilization has "evolved" to prioritize the brain over the body, much to the detriment of our own holistic health as well as the health of our planet. Today's episode is a reflection on how compassion towards our body is a helpful and concrete tool to practice self compassion. 

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

How do you talk about this big topic in just 5 minutes? Come listen and find out. 

And for further information, check out this book (available on Kindle) called Anxiety: Overcome it and live without fear by friend and colleague in India, Psychologist Sonali Gupta. 

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Practice the skill of mindfulness by reminding you to pause and bring yourself into the present moment. Tune into today's episode to learn one way to bring your mind and body to the same moment.  

Essentially, learn how to pause the auto-pilot and nourish the "human pilot"! 

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Our Rage, frustration, anger, irritation rise frequently during periods of crisis and these feelings (and us, when we feel them) deserve as much attention and compassion as any other time. As an activist, I have firsthand experience with the profound benefits of both loving-kindness-compassion as well as rage-anger-frustration. In this episode, I invite us to notice how all feelings are feedback and our meditation practice can help us develop an attitude of observing those feelings so we can choose actions based on our wisdom instead of unprocessed anger/ shallow joy. 

We'd l...

Focusing on positive and helpful emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion can seem like a denial of stressful realities. Today's episode is a bit about why those emotions aren't about denial but about responding to crisis in a way that are helpful rather than stressful. 

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Much gratitude to Kaira Jewel Lingo, a meditation teacher I have heard many times including this morning at the Wisdom and Emotions Summit (Keynote address by His Holiness Dalai Lama!!). Her list is based on scientific evidence and is fairly easy to practice on a daily basis: Hope this episode gives you something to think about and also practice! 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.co...

Can you imagine being truthful in response to the question, "am I doing enough?". Self-compassion helps you acknowledge all your demands and your human limitations alongside helping you recognize that every tiny kind and compassionate gesture makes a difference. Extend compassion to yourself and others to help yourself keep walking. 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

An invitation to take time and space to digest your feelings when pandemic fatigue has already overfilled your plate of feelings! 

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

When the going gets tough, don't pressurized yourself to feel better. Hold yourself and help yourself put one foot in front of the other.

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much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/

Allowing the 4 Elements to comfort us and hold us. Allow yourselves to be cared-for by the Universe in us and around us.

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Thank you for listening,

much metta,

Dr G

https://www.pranhwellness.com/