When does being “nice” start hurting your health? We explore the surprising science that links suppressed emotions—especially healthy anger and buried grief—to immune function, inflammation, and long-term disease risk. Drawing on affective neuroscience, we break down the core mammalian systems wired for rage, fear, panic and grief, care, seeking, and play, and explain why these circuits exist to protect boundaries and connection, not to create chaos.

Gabor Maté's website: https://drgabormate.com/

I share how anger operates as a boundary-setting signal that says something vital: this is not okay. When that signal gets muted to keep relationships intact, the immune system can mirror the shutdown. You’ll hear clear, practical language for telling the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, plus simple steps to honor your limits without escalating conflict—naming the feeling, identifying the crossed boundary, and choosing proportionate action. We also unpack how childhood survival strategies, like staying quiet to preserve attachment, can turn into adult patterns of chronic niceness, migraines, flares, and burnout.

We look at striking research: longer survival among people with ALS who expressed anger, and a large study of women showing higher mortality when marital unhappiness stayed unspoken. The takeaway is not to explode; it’s to listen to the body’s early alarms and speak plain truths before stress hardens into illness. If you’ve ever wondered why “the good die young,” this conversation reframes goodness as self-respect, not self-erasure.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with someone who needs better boundaries, and leave a quick review so more listeners can find these tools. Your story matters—what boundary will you protect today?

Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. If you find these episodes valuable, I’d be grateful if you left a 5-star review. As a thank-you, I’ll send you free access to The Complete Mindfulness Toolkit — everything you need to deepen mindfulness and make a greater impact. Just leave the review and let me know, and I’ll send it your way. Thank you for helping us share mindfulness with others.

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

We map a three-stage approach to using mindfulness for PTSD: immediate self-soothing, reconnecting with emotions, and long-term integration. A short guided practice shows how breath, grounding, and softening cues can create ease while we set clear safety guardrails.

• framing mindfulness for PTSD and its stages
• self-soothing practices for the immediate aftermath
• reconnecting with emotions with courage and choice
• integrating trauma healing over the long term
• simple guided breathing and body softening
• safety boundaries, when to pause, and support options
• rebuilding confidence, self-esteem, and relationships

If you experience a psychiatric emergency, please call your doctor and call 911 to get some support

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

Clarity gets practical when you treat attention like a craft. We open the pages of Joseph Goldstein’s The Experience of Insight and translate retreat-honed wisdom into tools you can actually use: breath you don’t control, movement you feel from the inside, and the quiet power of seeing intention before action. No mystique, no shortcuts—just a clean method for meeting each moment without the usual tug of wanting and resisting.

We start with the mental frame that steadies practice: the three refuges as psychological anchors and ethical precepts as the simplest way to clear noise from the mind. From there we build the engine of bare attention—observation without judgment, comparison, or prediction—using two precise breath anchors (abdomen or nostrils), then carry mindfulness into walking and eating. Catching the urge before the move creates a tiny but decisive gap, where choice appears and the story of “me” loosens. Along the way we lean on the Noble Eightfold Path, balancing right effort like a guitar string, and unpack how impermanence reframes identity from a solid self into a flowing process.

We also face the classic obstacles head on. The five hindrances—sense desire, aversion, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, doubt—arrive for everyone. The antidote is immediate mindfulness: notice the visitor, feel its texture, and refrain from feeding it. We explore ultimate realities—material qualities, consciousness, mental factors, and the unconditioned—and examine how concepts like time and ownership can be useful yet blinding. Finally, we talk integration: daily sitting that actually happens, a silent meal to restore sensitivity, returning to the breath in stress, and remembering death as an advisor that sharpens meaning. The monkey trap offers a closing image: the fist that won’t let go keeps us stuck; the open hand walks free.

If this lands, subscribe, share with a friend who loves clear practice, and leave a short review telling us where you first notice intention—breath, step, or spoon?

Support the show

Coupon code and the link are down below, but that will expire shortly
Feel free to text me at 415-939-1126

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

Since 2015, we've trained over 2,000 people to teach mindfulness in healthcare, business, education, yoga, sports teams, and the U.S. Government.

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

Certify At Your Own Pace: Just complete 40 hours of self-paced meditation + online workbook completion with lifetime access to personalized support.

Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence: Whatever your starting place is, we will help you deepen your own embodied, experiential understanding.

Teach With Integrity & Authenticity: We help you find your unique voice to make mindfulness relevant and practical for your own students or clients.

Receive International Accreditation: Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, international healthcare centers, coaching schools, and the U.S. Government.

Boost Your Career: Use our templates to quickly form your own paid mindfulness courses, workshops, keynotes or coaching packages.

20% BLACK FRIDAY COUPON CODE: PODCAST

A stressful morning, a deep tissue reset, and a simple lesson that changes how we teach: relevance beats routine. Sean shares how tuning into the body can open the door to smarter, kinder mindfulness instruction, especially when life is messy and attention is thin. We walk through a practical approach to choosing what to teach by asking short, respectful questions, listening for needs, and then adapting practices so they fit real people and real constraints.

You’ll hear why a trauma‑informed stance matters, how to phrase cues that feel human rather than clinical, and where short, concrete practices outperform long, abstract scripts. We unpack ways to tailor mindfulness for healthcare workers, corporate teams, caregivers, and teens, adjusting length, tone, and focus so the work actually helps. Along the way, Sean introduces a plug‑and‑teach curriculum: 900 minutes of modular lessons with hundreds of slides, teacher deep dives for nuance, guidebooks to scaffold delivery, and student handbooks to support learning beyond the session. It’s flexible by design, so you can brand it, adapt it, and bring it to groups without starting from scratch.

If you’re a new or seasoned teacher who’s ever wondered, “What should I teach this group, right now?” this conversation offers a clear path: assess, adapt, and keep it practical. Expect tangible prompts, language tweaks, and ideas you can use today to create safer, more relevant experiences. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a quick review so more teachers can find these tools—and tell us: which audience are you tailoring for next?

Support the show

Coupon code and the link are down below, but that will expire shortly
Feel free to text me at 415-939-1126

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

Since 2015, we've trained over 2,000 people to teach mindfulness in healthcare, business, education, yoga, sports teams, and the U.S. Government.

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

Certify At Your Own Pace: Just complete 40 hours of self-paced meditation + online workbook completion with lifetime access to personalized support.

Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence: Whatever your starting place is, we will help you deepen your own embodied, experiential understanding.

Teach With Integrity & Authenticity: We help you find your unique voice to make mindfulness relevant and practical for your own students or clients.

Receive International Accreditation: Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, international healthcare centers, coaching schools, and the U.S. Government.

Boost Your Career: Use our templates to quickly form your own paid mindfulness courses, workshops, keynotes or coaching packages.

20% BLACK FRIDAY COUPON CODE: PODCAST

Sean Fargo guides a grounded mindfulness meditation and explores how gentle awareness helps us return from rumination, meet difficult emotions, and carry presence into daily life.

If your mind keeps sprinting ahead or replaying the past, this conversation offers a practical way home. We open with a gentle guided practice to help you feel the room, find your seat, and meet your breath without force, then expand into a clear map of how mindfulness works—and how it differs from concentration and visualization. The aim isn’t to chase calm; it’s to contact what’s true right now with honesty, softness, and a touch of courage.

We break down the core moves that make mindfulness usable in daily life: noticing when you’ve slipped into rumination, shifting attention to physical anchors like feet, hands, and breath, and using simple self-soothing gestures to remind the nervous system that it’s safe to settle. You’ll hear why numbing with food, alcohol, or screens feels tempting and how it quietly shrinks awareness. Instead, we practice naming unpleasantness without judgment and letting acceptance open the door to movement, choice, and care. Along the way, we talk posture, micro-movements, and the subtle cues that reveal where you’re bracing and where you can soften.

Join us, practice with us, and if this resonated, subscribe, share it with a friend who could use a mindful reset, and leave a quick review so more people can find the show. What small anchor will you use to return to the present today?

• intention to support presence, healing, and growth
• brief guided body and breath practice
• sensing the room, contact, and posture
• differentiating mindfulness, concentration, visualization
• returning from rumination to sensory anchors
• self-soothing through touch and breath
• meeting depression, fear, and sadness with acceptance
• avoiding numbing and overconsumption
• carrying mindfulness into daily activities
• resilience and acceptance as forms of love

Support the show

Coupon code and the link are down below, but that will expire shortly
Feel free to text me at 415-939-1126

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

Since 2015, we've trained over 2,000 people to teach mindfulness in healthcare, business, education, yoga, sports teams, and the U.S. Government.

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

Certify At Your Own Pace: Just complete 40 hours of self-paced meditation + online workbook completion with lifetime access to personalized support.

Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence: Whatever your starting place is, we will help you deepen your own embodied, experiential understanding.

Teach With Integrity & Authenticity: We help you find your unique voice to make mindfulness relevant and practical for your own students or clients.

Receive International Accreditation: Trusted by Fortune 500 companies, international healthcare centers, coaching schools, and the U.S. Government.

Boost Your Career: Use our templates to quickly form your own paid mindfulness courses, workshops, keynotes or coaching packages.

20% BLACK FRIDAY COUPON CODE: PODCAST

We break happiness into three sturdy pillars—connection, contribution, and meaning—and explore how each one shows up in daily life. Along the way, we unpack mental “time travel,” awe, and the small acts that make joy more likely.

Austin Hill Shaw's website: https://austinhillshaw.com/

• defining happiness through human needs
• the many forms of connection including self, people, and nature
• distraction, memory, and future thinking as barriers to presence
• contribution as usefulness matched to talent and values
• meaning as both a guiding framework and ineffable experience
• awe, grief, and beauty as forces that reshape our maps
• a simple weekly check to spot gaps across the three needs

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

Ever feel like life is a full catastrophe—email pings, family needs, calendar jams—and your attention never gets to land? We slow everything down with a clear, zero-fluff mindfulness practice you can use anywhere: arrive in your body, breathe, and know it. No special gear, no perfect posture; just a reliable way to reset the nervous system and sharpen presence when it matters most.

George Mumford's website: GeorgeMumford.com

We start with the simple ethos of teaching and practicing whether one person shows up or a hundred, then move into a guided arrival that anchors awareness in contact, posture, and breath. You’ll hear how we apply the Satipatthana lens—be aware of the body to the extent that there is a body—to dissolve the pressure to achieve a mystical state and instead build continuity of mindfulness in real time. When distractions and images pull focus, we use gentle labels and a steady return to sensation, turning wandering into a training loop rather than a failure.

From there, we explore resting as alert relaxation: not limp, not rigid, but a stable, kind attention that lets sounds and thoughts arise and fade. You’ll learn practical cues for daily life—opening the sternum for easeful breathing, feeling contact points, and shifting posture mindfully—so practice fits into meetings, commutes, and caregiving gaps. The result is more choice before reaction and a calmer baseline without adding pressure to your day.

If this landed for you, subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs a reset, and leave a short review telling us what sensation anchored you best. Your feedback helps more people find a simple way to arrive.

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

A single breath can reset your whole day. We explore how to build steady attention by feeling one complete cycle of breathing—inhale, pause, exhale, pause—while softening the shoulders, easing the jaw, and letting judgment fall away. The practice is short, portable, and honest: no special gear, no perfect posture, just a relaxed yet alert stance and a willingness to notice what’s already happening in your body.

We start by setting up a supportive posture and tuning into contact points—feet on the floor, seat on the chair, hand on the belly—to make awareness tactile rather than abstract. From there, we shift into mindful breathing, tracking the visceral sensations that mark each phase of the breath. Instead of forcing a pace, we invite natural rhythm and curiosity, treating distractions and judgments as passing events. This small act of returning to the breath strengthens focus, regulates the nervous system, and builds emotional clarity without turning mindfulness into another performance.

Practicality takes center stage. You can bring this one-cycle practice into real life: on a commute, while cooking dinner, waiting in line, or winding down for sleep. As you repeat it, continuity of attention grows, stress spikes resolve more quickly, and everyday decisions feel simpler because you’re grounded in the present moment. We close by pointing to future tools that will layer onto this foundation—ways to broaden attention through the senses and make mindful awareness even more resilient throughout the week.

Want more practices like this? Follow the show, share this episode with a friend who could use a reset, and leave a quick review so others can find these simple, effective tools. Your breath is always with you—let it bring you back.

Support the show

Please follow and leave a 5‑star review — this really helps others find us.

For free mindfulness exercises, guided meditation scripts, and step-by-step mindfulness teacher trainings, visit:

MindfulnessExercises.com

Certify To Teach Mindfulness & Meditation

⁠⁠⁠⁠MindfulnessExercises.com/certify⁠⁠⁠⁠

• Certify At Your Own Pace
• Deepen Your Own Mindful Presence
• Help Others With Integrity & Authenticity
• Receive International Accreditation
• Boost Your Career

Work with Sean Fargo

https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanfargo/

Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com