Just a soft smile and a few minutes of breath can shift your mood, lower stress, and deepen your sense of connection.

How To Do This Practice:

1. Settle In: Find a comfortable seat, rest your hands gently, and soften your gaze or close your eyes.
2. Breathe and Soften: Take a few slow, deep breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth, relaxing your face, jaw, and neck.
3. Form a Gentle Smile: Let a soft, effortless smile form at the corners of your mouth. Think of something or someone that makes you smile.
4. Turn the Smile Inward: Imagine that smile radiating inside your body, through your face, throat, and chest.
5. Send the Smile Through Your Body: With each breath, guide the smile to your heart, lungs, digestive system, and spine, acknowledging and appreciating each part.
6. Close Gently: Let the smile spread throughout your whole body, take one final deep breath, and slowly open your eyes, carrying the smile into the rest of your day.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

DACHER KELTNER is the host of The Science of Happiness podcast and is a co-instructor of the Greater Good Science Center’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Related Happiness Break episodes:

Take a Break With Our Loving-Kindness Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/2kr4fjz5

A Meditation on Original Love: https://tinyurl.com/5u298cv4

Embodying Resilience: https://tinyurl.com/46383mhx

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

Are You Remembering the Good Times: https://tinyurl.com/483bkk2h

Make Uncertainty Part of the Process: https://tinyurl.com/234u5ds7

Why We Should Seek Beauty: https://tinyurl.com/yn7ry59j

Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod

We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Help us share Happiness Break! Leave a 5-star review and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/s4wk4x4y

From childhood adventures to post-trauma recovery, explore how our parks support our well-being— and why access to them matters.

Summary: Nature has long been a source of wonder, healing, and connection. But access to those green spaces—from neighborhood parks to national treasures—are increasingly at risk. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we hear how awe-inspiring outdoor experiences can help us feel more alive and less alone, and what we can do to protect those spaces.

How To Do This Practice:

1. Step outside with intention, even if it’s just to your backyard, a nearby park, or a patch of grass.
2. Pause and take a few deep breaths to ground yourself and shift your attention from doing to simply being.
3. Notice the details around you. The movement of leaves, the pattern of clouds, the sound of birds or distant traffic.
4. Look for something that surprises or moves you, no matter how small, like a weed blooming through concrete or shifting light on a tree.
5. Let yourself feel whatever arises, whether it’s wonder, calm, grief, or joy—there’s no right way to experience awe.
6. Before you return indoors, take a moment to reflect on what you saw or felt, and how it might shift your day or perspective.

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Today’s Guests:

STACY BARE is a climber, mountaineer, and skier. Climbing helped Stacy recover from PTSD from a year in Baghdad as a Civil Affairs Team Leader in the Army. He is the recipient of the Bronze Star for merit and a combat action badge and named one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year for 2014.​

Follow Stacy on Instagram: @stacyabare

Add Stacy on Linkedin: https://tinyurl.com/49zazw8f

Related The Science of Happiness episodes:

The Healing Effects of Experiencing Wildlife: https://tinyurl.com/bde5av4z

How to Do Good for the Environment (And Yourself): https://tinyurl.com/5b26zwkx

Experience Nature Wherever You Are, with Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/mrutudeh

Related Happiness Breaks:

How To Ground Yourself in Nature: https://tinyurl.com/25ftdxpm

Pause to Look at the Sky: https://tinyurl.com/4jttkbw3

A Walking Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/mwbsen7a

Tell us about your experience with this practice. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.

Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/3fv7695k

What if you could tap into your inherent resilience at any time? Prentis Hemphill guides a meditation to turn good memories into a state of resilience.

How To Do This Practice:

1. Get Comfortable in Your Body: Find a position, seated, standing, or lying down, that feels right. Move, shake, or sound out anything that helps you arrive in your body.
2. Conjure a Resilient Memory: Call to mind a moment, place, or experience that makes you feel strong, creative, or connected, something that reminds you of your resilience.
3. Let It Fill You Up: Notice where that memory lives in your body, and let it expand into your arms, legs, face, and breath until it energizes your whole being.
4. Turn It Up: Amplify the sensation by 20%, letting it spill through your muscles and cells. Notice shifts in breath, posture, and energy.
5. Turn It Down: Gently reduce the sensation, bit by bit, and observe what changes. What stories re-emerge, how your body responds, and how you make that shift.
6. Carry It With You: Return to the present moment with the option to bring that resilience with you at the volume and intensity you need, knowing it’s always available.

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Today’s Happiness Break Guide:

PRENTIS HEMPHILL is the founder of the Embodiment Institute, and a writer and therapist who prioritizes the body in their approach to healing.

Learn More About the Embodiment Institute: https://www.theembodimentinstitute.org/about

Check out Prentis’ website: https://prentishemphill.com

Follow Prentis on Twitter: https://twitter.com/prentishemphill

Follow Prentis on Instagram: https://tinyurl.com/4d99f4xs

Related Happiness Break episodes:

Make Uncertainty Part of the Process: https://tinyurl.com/234u5ds7

Pause to Look at the Sky: https://tinyurl.com/4jttkbw3

A Self-Compassion Meditation For Burnout: https://tinyurl.com/485y3b4y

Related Science of Happiness episodes:

How Holding Yourself Can Reduce Stress: https://tinyurl.com/2hvhkwe6

Breathe Away Anxiety: https://tinyurl.com/3u7vsrr5

Are You Remembering the Good Times: https://tinyurl.com/483bkk2h

Follow us on Instagram: @ScienceOfHappinessPod

We’d love to hear about your experience with this practice! Share your thoughts at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Help us share Happiness Break! Leave a 5-star review and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Transcription: https://tinyurl.com/46383mhx