Mindfulness Moments Podcast
The official podcast of the EIU Mindfulness Initiative
Welcome to a space to slow down, take a breath, and make sense of what is happening in our bodies, minds, and relationships in the middle of busy campus, work, and everyday life. Through short conversations, reflections, and guided practices, Mindful Moments explores mindfulness, healing, and nervous system regulation in accessible, real-world ways. Episodes introduce core ideas such as what healing really means, how the nervous system works beyond fight or flight, why mindfulness is more than meditation, and how stress, trauma, grief, burnout, joy, and connection live in the body. Created for faculty, staff, students, and our surrounding community, each episode offers practical tools, shared language, and gentle practices you can use right away to support well-being, resilience, and a more compassionate culture on campus and in the towns we call home.
Mindfulness Moments podcasts are part of the Faculty Development & Innovation Podcast (FDIP) series.Subscribe to the FDIP RSS feed to stay updated.
Season 1
What is Healing, Really?
This episode explores what healing means beyond the idea of fixing what is broken.
Dr. Misty Rhoads, a somatic practitioner and public health professor, is joined by
undergraduate public health student Hazel Norris to examine healing through personal,
ancestral, and collective lenses. Beginning with a brief grounding meditation, listeners
are invited to reconnect with the present moment and notice how awareness of the body
can create a sense of safety and calm.
Through a thoughtful conversation, this episode reframes healing as an ongoing relationship
with our experiences rather than a destination. Drawing on somatic practices and insights
from public health and epigenetics, it highlights how nervous system awareness, intergenerational
patterns, and community environments shape well-being, offering a more compassionate
and sustainable approach to growth, connection, and resilience.
Where am I?
Inspired by the work of Lee Holden and his book Ready, Set, Slow, this episode invites listeners to pause and reconnect with the present moment. Dr.
Misty Rhoads begins with a gentle inquiry meditation that helps us notice where we
are physically, mentally, and emotionally before moving into simple mindfulness practices
that can be woven into everyday life. Through intentional awareness during our mornings,
meals, and daily routines, listeners explore how slowing down can restore energy,
sharpen focus, and create a more sustainable rhythm for living and working. Rather
than pushing harder to be productive, this episode offers a grounded path toward efficiency
that honors the body, calms the nervous system, and reduces burnout.
Reclaiming Joy After Chronic Stress
This episode explores how long-term stress reshapes the nervous system and gently narrows our capacity for pleasure, ease, and connection. Dr. Misty Rhoads offers a compassionate, nervous-system–informed approach to rediscovering joy through small, realistic shifts in awareness and daily life, supporting a sense of aliveness that feels safe, sustainable, and real.
5 Minutes to Ventral: A Regulation Practice for Your Commute
This episode invites you to turn everyday travel time into a moment of grounding and calm. Dr. Misty Rhoads gently guides listeners through simple, nervous-system–informed practices using awareness, breath, and the senses to support regulation while in motion, helping you arrive a little more present, steady, and connected than when you began.
The Faculty Undercurrent: Navigating Burnout
Dr. Misty Rhoads, Professor from the Department of Public Health and Nutrition Dr. Andrew Kerins, Associate Professor & Graduate Coordinator from the Department of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation join Instructional Designer Kim Ervin to discuss faculty burnout – the why, how it can manifest, and what faculty can do to respond to it.
Paws and Practice Mindfulness: Mental Health and Misconceptions (3 of 3)
This episode discusses the mental health misconceptions that create barriers to practicing mindfulness.
Paws and Practice Mindfulness: Time Constraints (2 of 3)
This episode discusses how time constraints prevent time for mindfulness and offers strategies for fitting it in into a busy schedule. A guided breathing exercise is included.
Paws and Practice Mindfulness: Our Nervous System (1 of 3)
This episode begins a three-part series based on research into barriers that prevent mindfulness practice: understanding our nervous system, time constraints, and mental health and misconceptions. Created by EIU undergraduate Hazel Norris and Dr. Misty Rhoads as the result of an URSCA grant project: Paws and Practice: Barriers to Mindfulness for Students (P-A-W-S, like a panther's paw), each episode addresses one barrier with insights and strategies applicable to anyone seeking to incorporate mindfulness into their life. This episode discusses our nervous system and includes a guided meditation.