Embodied Mindfulness Meditation for Somatic and Emotional healing.
Podcast Intro – Heart Attending
Welcome.
This is a space to slow down, to arrive, and to listen — not only with the mind, but with the heart and the body.
I’m Dina A. Kushnir. My work offers a feminine, embodied approach to somatic meditation and spiritual awakening — one that begins not with effort or striving, but with tenderness, presence, and loving attention.
At the center of my guidance is a practice I call Heart Attending: an invitation to awaken the heart to awareness, to meet yourself with kindness, and to allow loving attention to become the ground of healing and awakening.
In a world that often pulls us out of ourselves — into speed, fragmentation, and self-judgment — this practice invites a return. A return to the body as an ally. A return to the breath as a home. A return to the quiet wisdom already living within you.
Through Heart Attending, the body, breath, sensations, emotions, feelings, and perceptions become doorways — not obstacles — to presence and peace. As we cultivate gentle awareness and compassion toward ourselves, somatic and emotional healing unfold naturally, forming the foundation for all spiritual growth.
The roots of my work are in Buddhist Vipassana meditation, with a deep emphasis on embodied awareness and the direct experience of body sensations. For over three decades, I have guided meditation groups, retreats, and classes, integrating this lineage with somatic, body–mind, and emotional healing modalities from both Eastern and Western traditions.
In this podcast, you are invited to rest, to feel, and to remember what it is like to be at home in yourself.
There is nothing you need to fix, achieve, or become.
Just bring your presence.
And let the heart attend.
Embodied Mindfulness Meditation for Somatic and Emotional healing.
Module 11: Episode 5 - The Wise Observer
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The Wise Observer
Learning to watch the waves of thought—without drowning in the story
What if meditation isn’t about emptying the mind—but about discovering the one who can watch it? Today we practice becoming the Wise Observer: sensing the body, noticing thoughts as waves, and learning the freedom of not being ruled by our narrative.
THE FOUNDATION:
We don't develop a mind with nothing in it—we develop a mind that can observe mind. Discerning what is useful or not useful in thoughts.
THE PRACTICE:
- Start with body sensations, breath, awareness
- Allow natural impulse of thoughts (don't force or choose)
- Observe the wave of thought coming from depth of being to surface
- Ask: Is it useful? Is it kind? Does it promote peace?
- Notice: thought has chemical/energetic reaction in body
- Come back to body sensations—begin again
- Don't stay up there waiting for thought
THE UNDERSTANDING:
- Observer mind is not reactive—no automatic reaction
- Observer influences the observation
- Each thought creates sensations in body
- Brain constantly managing survival/safety—we can observe this
- We're born human beings (with awareness, memory, imagination), not human creatures (only instinct)
- Faculty that can be aware of itself = gift that makes us Being instead of creature
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Visit Dina's website, oliveoasis.com, to learn more about her work and her sanctuary in upstate New York.
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