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Try a practice in accepting difficult feelings like anger or irritation to help keep your cool, feel better overall, and find calm with contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman.
- Settle with your breath: Take a few slow, deep breaths, lengthening your spine as you inhale and relaxing your face and body as you exhale.
- Notice your body: Scan your body with curiosity and observe any sensations without trying to change them.
- Recall a mild frustration: Bring to mind a recent situation that made you feel slightly irritated or frustrated.
- Release the story: Let go of the memory and focus only on where you feel the emotion in your body.
- Give the emotion space: Allow the sensations to exist without judging or resisting them, noticing how they naturally shift over time.
- Close with kindness: Take one final breath and remind yourself to meet future moments of anger with curiosity, acceptance, and compassion.
Today’s Happiness Break Guide:
EVE EKMAN is a contemplative social scientist and <a href="https://christiancorner.us/2026/07/08/meditations-be-your-own-meditation-teacher/” title=”Meditations: Be Your Own Meditation Teacher”>meditation teacher from San Francisco, California
Learn more about Eve’s work: https://tinyurl.com/2vhuarh8
More Happiness Breaks like this one:
A Self-Compassion Meditation For Burnout: https://tinyurl.com/ye24rz4k
The Healing Power of Your Own Touch: https://tinyurl.com/rrtpje2x
A Breathing Technique To Help You Relax: https://tinyurl.com/59y4sf5y
Related Science of Happiness episodes:
Why Compassion Requires Vulnerability: https://tinyurl.com/mrxsad33
How To Feel Better About Yourself: https://tinyurl.com/3jave7h2
What To Do When Stress Takes Over: https://tinyurl.com/yxf3jawn
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:
HER KELTNER: I’m Dacher Keltner, welcome to Happiness Break, where we take a few moments to try a practice to support our minds and hearts, and helps us feel happier throughout the rest of our day
A lot of our happiness comes from gaining perspective on the hard things in life, so today we’re zeroing in on anger.
We can’t will ourselves to never feel angry, nor would we want to. But we can learn how to process this emotion in a healthy way – by accepting it mindfully. When we do this, studies show we don’t flare up as much in the moment. We handle conflict better, our moods are more elevated and overall, we’re less stressed out in our daily lives
Today’s practice is led by contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman
It starts with some guided deep breaths and then we’ll call to mind something that’s just a little bit frustrating – because it’s often good to start small – and then we’ll just observe what that feels like in the body, what it’s like to cultivate acceptance and then hopefully, leave you feeling more relaxed
Here’s Eve
EVE EKMAN: Let’s begin by settling our body and mind,connecting with the breath and the body.
To help us do so, let’s pay attention to the breath. Inhale, noticing the sensations of breath and inviting a sense of vividness.
Exhale, relaxing, allowing yourself to feel ease.
Inhale, drawing in with that sense of vividness. Exhale, relaxation and ease.
And as we inhale, we might have a sense almost of elongating the spine, being more upright with that vividness. And as we exhale, we could imagine softening and relaxing through the face and the chest and the belly
Then allow your attention and awareness to be throughout the body, noticing the sensations in the face and the chest and the belly once again. Maybe there’s areas around the eyes that feel tight, or around the shoulders, or around Maybe we notice something like warmth or tingling
Be curious and bring this sense of exploration to noticing sensations throughout the body.
And then as we shift, to move towards shaking hands with our emotion. We bring forth our mind, memory, and imagination, and recall a time in which we felt maybe a little frustrated, irritated.
Maybe we were stuck in traffic. Maybe we feel like someone we care about wasn’t listening or didn’t hear us. See if you can bring to mind just one memory, and really vividly bring forth the details. Who was involved and what was happening? What were you thinking and feeling?
Often, when we remember an emotion, we start to feel the emotion. And in this practice we use that feeling of emotion as a way to practice being with the sensations of emotion. So give ourselves just a couple more moments here to really enhance and bring forth this frustration, this irritation.
So now release the memory, release the story, and bring your full attention and awareness to the body. Noticing the sensations that might be associated with this frustration or irritation. What do you notice around the eyes? The jaw? Do you notice sensations in the hands or the chest? The belly?
And when we shake hands with our emotion, we just allow these sensations to naturally shift and move.
Even strong sensations will start to settle down if we give them the space they need. So feel or imagine that they’re there. These sensations have all the space they need.
Most of our emotions only last about 30 to 90 seconds, but it’s rethinking about them that makes them feel stronger, longer. So without an agenda or expectation of anything shifting or moving, just keep noticing and observing with curiosity and kindness these sensations throughout the body associated with this memory of frustration.
Let the emotion be by just focusing on the sensations, giving it space to shift and change and unravel.
Whether the sensations of emotion have felt strong or light, whether they’ve completely dissipated or are still around. We can just focus on these lingering sensations in the body, and also a sense of real care and kindness towards these emotions that we feel so naturally throughout our life.
As we bring this brief practice to a close, consider shaking hands with the sensations of your strong emotion the next time it arises, whether in a meditation or in the world.
