This is a meditation for using triggers to bring more awareness and more mindfulness to your life and your experience.
So go ahead and start by relaxing into your seat or the bed or the floor,
Wherever you're lying or situated.
Just get comfortable,
Wiggle out any aches or pains and settle in.
And as you settle in,
Bring your awareness to your breath as it breathes in and out of your body naturally.
Then you can choose to go ahead and direct your breath to deepen inside of your belly.
And by doing so,
You're sending a message for your parasympathetic nervous system to let your body know it's time to relax and it's okay to relax and let go.
So go ahead and take a few deep breaths and start to bring awareness to your thoughts.
Just allowing the thoughts to come and go.
And each time you notice a thought,
You can thank it,
Acknowledge it,
And come back to your present moment using your breath or the sensations in your body or the sounds in the room to bring you back to this present moment.
Now in this present moment,
Be aware of a trigger,
A familiar trigger that you experience in your life.
So this trigger can be a tone of voice that somebody uses that makes you feel contracted,
Resistant,
Scared,
Or the trigger could be a mess that somebody makes in your home.
Whatever the trigger is,
You know those experiences that you have where you're just going about your day and something happens and suddenly you find yourself feeling activated emotions,
Anger,
Frustration,
A sense of deep sadness that just comes seemingly out of the blue but is really triggered by an event or some experience that your mind or your body registered from your environment internally or externally.
And often times we resist triggers,
We try to avoid them,
And we really think negatively about them because they often don't feel good.
But what if you were to use these triggers as an opportunity to become more mindful,
To deepen your mindfulness practice?
And that's the intention for today,
How you can use triggers to build and deepen a mindfulness practice and make it a habit in your daily life.
So just feel into a memory of a trigger and see how your body responded physically,
See the stories that your mind came up with,
And notice the emotions that you felt.
Just take a moment to think about a recent trigger or a frequent trigger and how your mind,
Body,
And emotions react to that trigger.
And now imagine that you're becoming aware like a witness,
You're seeing the reaction of your mind,
Your body,
And your emotions to this trigger,
And you're making a choice,
Or you made a choice in this time in the past to stop and to use this trigger to become present with yourself,
Deeply present,
Not just with the reaction itself,
But what is underneath the reaction,
That calm and still and centered place within you.
So this trigger occurs and then you see it and you choose in this moment that I'm aware of this trigger and I might feel these things in my body and they may not settle immediately,
But what I'm doing is I'm inviting in a new neural pathway,
A new pattern to take place when I'm triggered,
Where I become aware,
I take a breath or two in,
I get curious,
And I choose to use this as a mindful moment.
And in doing so,
I'm increasing my capacity of having a locus of control,
As we say,
More command over your body and your emotional experience than letting it be in control of you.
So we're noticing a trigger rises up,
We're taking in a few breaths,
We're getting present with the body,
We're becoming aware of the story,
And in this mindful state,
You can take care of the body.
So if the trigger caused the body to feel unsafe,
You can hold your hand on your heart,
On your belly,
You can use soothing touch on your body,
Or something that can just let your body know that you're here with it,
You're present and you're mindful and that you're safe in this moment.
It just gives a little more sense of calm to your system,
A little deeper sense of grounding and centeredness is available.
And when you're aware of the story,
You can see it and just notice it mindfully.
It's like,
Oh,
There's the story,
There's the narrative.
And right now,
I'm not worried about whether it's true or not,
I'm just noticing it and giving it a little space,
Being mindful of what my moment reality is right now.
I'm standing here in this moment and taking a breath.
And that can slow down the thoughts and give you a little more space as well.
And then emotionally,
Just noticing the emotions,
They might be sadness,
They might be anger,
And you can notice them as pure emotion without the added story.
And that's how you bring greater mindfulness,
Is by just allowing the pure emotion of anger to be felt,
Giving it some breath,
Allowing it to have support through the breath and letting it move,
Because that's what happens with emotions,
They move through our system.
And if it's sadness,
Same thing,
Or frustration,
Worry,
Fear,
Just notice it.
Just let yourself feel it,
Not getting caught up in it,
We're just feeling it gently,
Loosely,
Like holding a feather in the palm of your hand,
Where you can blow it away really gently.
That's how softly you're holding your emotion and touching it with your awareness.
So each time you notice a trigger as you move forward and move in the world,
See if you can use that trigger as a moment of mindfulness,
Where you're touching yourself,
Your heart,
Your body with kindness and compassion,
Touching the physical body with your hand,
Touching your emotions with awareness and your mind with spaciousness.
And from there,
You're more grounded,
You're more centered to do something about whatever triggered you.
You can have more choice and more options when you're not reactive and we're more responsive,
And through mindfulness,
We can respond and not react.
So the commitment is to build this mindfulness practice,
This awareness practice,
Centering practice in relation to triggers.
So triggers are no longer something to be avoided,
Not something bad that happens to you,
But rather teachers that can bring you to greater mindfulness and ultimately to greater peace.
And thank yourself for being willing to do this work and create a more peaceful world through creating peace within your own heart.
Thank you so much.
