A 12-Minute Meditation to Set the Tone for Your Leadership

Being a leader comes with responsibility. In this guided meditation, mindfulness teacher and leadership expert Tovi Scruggs-Hussein helps us explore integrity, inspiration, and purpose with compassion.

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Tovi Scruggs-Hussein leads us in a practice to set the tone for our leadership in our homes, communities, and workplaces. This practice helps us explore integrity, inspiration, and purpose with compassion. Scruggs-Hussein is an author, educator, and leadership coach. Her 17 years as a high school principal showed her that overworked and under-supported teachers were burning out, while students suffered as a result. Now she teaches teachers to reach their full professional potential—which in turn helps students reach their full academic potential. You can read more about Scruggs-Hussein in the August issue of Mindful magazine featured as one of the powerful women of the mindfulness movement.

A 12-Minute Meditation to Set the Tone for Your Leadership

A Guided Meditation to Set the Tone for Your Leadership

  • 14:12
  1. Let’s begin by taking a moment to sit comfortably. Let your body settle into a comfortable position, lengthening your spine, softening your shoulders, softening your jaw. You may choose to close your eyes or gaze down. 
  2. Breathe at a rhythm that feels good to you at your own pace. Take a moment to notice where you’re breathing from. Are you breathing from your throat, are you breathing from your chest, are you breathing from your stomach? If you’re not breathing from your stomach, I invite you to bring your breathing into that place and find a rhythm of breathing from that place that feels comfortable for you. This is your time.
  3. Let’s use this time together as an opportunity to set the tone for our leadership for today. Considering that this is a new day for your leadership. And perhaps even saying, “This is a new day for my leadership. I see myself being the very best of my unique leadership. I am a walking, breathing manifestation of the vision, mission, and purpose for those that I serve. I hold this responsibility with reverence and integrity.” And just breathe into that. I get to choose how those I serve experience me. I get to choose the qualities that arise in me to support how I am experienced as a leader. 
  4. In this moment, I sit with the question: How do I want my leadership to be experienced? I take a moment to name and honor that I accept the fullness of my purpose as a leader with ease and with honor today. I create the presence and qualities within myself of how I want my leadership to be experienced. 
  5. I use this time as an opportunity to see the qualities as words floating all around me. With every breath I inhale these words and I exhale these words. I breathe in these qualities and I see them with every inhale floating throughout my body, permeating every cell, tingling my fingers, guiding my steps, and resonating on my tongue. Maybe I see words floating around, and breathing in and out words like kindness, empathy, confidence, wisdom, love, thoughtful, reflective, responsive, inclusive, courageous. 
  6. Perhaps there are other qualities that you might invite in and are completely welcome in this moment for what best serves my leadership today. I see myself walking in my power responsibly. I see these qualities surrounding me and surrounding every space that I’m in, every meeting that I am present, every communication I exchange. I embrace this moment. And I embrace this silence to use the power of my breath in full support of my leadership today. 
  7. And I give gratitude for my leadership, I give gratitude for my purpose. I anchor to this and I go forth and I lead.

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10 Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement: 2021 

What remains, amid loss and suffering, uncertainty and fear, is the breath. Ten mindful women offer the wisdom of their practice, from their hearts to yours. Read More 

  • Amber Tucker, Ava Whitney-Coulter, Heather Hurlock, Kylee Ross, Oyinda Lagunju, and Stephanie Domet
  • June 22, 2021