What To Do When Your Mind Won't Quit | Bart van Melik

93 snips

Apr 3, 2026

Bart van Melik, a New York meditation teacher rooted in Buddhist practice, tackles the stuff that keeps busy minds spinning. He explores forgiveness without force, boredom as something to investigate, ways to reconnect with the body, and how to work with anxious what-if thoughts. There’s also a simple calming breath practice and a big focus on kindness and community.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ADVICE

Stop Forcing Forgiveness To Get Over It

Don’t force forgiveness or use meditation to make pain disappear; notice whether you’re secretly trying to bypass regret.
Bart van Melik reframes forgiveness as giving up all hope for a better past and watching whether your attitude toward the old tape softens.

ADVICE

Use Boredom As Meditation Material

Treat boredom as an object of meditation by asking what it is and how it feels instead of why it’s happening.
Bart van Melik says boredom rises and passes like a wave, and studying it reveals why you reach for your phone.

ANECDOTE

Mindful Salsa Dancing Made The Body Click

Embodiment can come through movement and ordinary chores, not just formal sitting practice.
In a Bronx VA hospital, one man skipped sitting meditation and did mindful salsa dancing with an imagined partner to feel his body.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Buddhist tools for forgiveness, boredom, worry, and getting out of your head.

Meditation teacher Bart van Melik leads a live community Q&A — and the questions that come in are ones most meditators have quietly wrestled with for years.

Bart is the guiding teacher at Community Meditation Center in New York, where he leads weekly sessions grounded in Buddhist tradition. In this episode, he takes on four of the most common sticking points in practice: forgiveness, boredom, disconnection from the body, and the spiral of anxious "what if" thinking.

His approach throughout is warm, precise, and grounded — less about achieving a particular state and more about learning to hold whatever arises with curiosity and kindness.

Topics covered:

Forgiveness — why forcing it can backfire, what it means to "bypass" difficult emotions, and the reframe that changes everything: forgiveness as giving up all hope for a better past
Boredom — how to get genuinely curious about it instead of fighting it, and what it can teach you about why you reach for your phone
Getting into your body — why embodiment looks different for everyone, and how to find the activities (yes, even mindful salsa dancing or vacuuming) that make it easier
Worry and "what if" thoughts — the Buddhist framing of worry as an obstacle to clear seeing, and a simple breathwork technique from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche — exhale heavy, exhale calm — that works even in the hardest moments
Community as practice — the Buddha's teaching that friendship and community isn't half the path. It's the whole thing.

About Bart van Melik: Bart van Melik is a meditation teacher and guiding teacher at Community Meditation Center, a global and local community that meets weekly via Zoom. Monthly sessions are donation-based and open to all. Learn more at https://www.cmc-ny.org/.

Get the 10% with Dan Harris app here

Follow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTok

Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Join Dan and Emmy Award-winning journalist Allison Gilbert at 92NY on May 17th for a live conversation about how mindfulness can deepen connection and combat loneliness, available in person and via streaming. Register here. Join Dan, Sebene Selassie and Jeff Warren for Meditation Party, a 3-day immersive retreat at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, October 16–18, 2026. Register here.

To advertise on the show, contact sales@advertisecast.com or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris