Being With Hard Emotions

Hard emotions are a natural part of experiencing life as a human. For many of us, our tendency is to distract ourselves, numb out, or suppress the discomfort that arises in the body with difficult emotional states. Instead, so often what the emotional pain in our bodies needs is acknowledgment by being held in spacious awareness.

In this meditation, we move through a brief body scan before resting the awareness on a particularly challenging area, and holding that space with loving awareness.

Transcript

Hi friend.

Welcome and thank you for being here today for your meditation.

Whatever condition you're currently in,

Whatever emotions are present,

Regardless of how you're feeling,

I just welcome you to show up exactly as you are to this meditation.

And as we get started,

I invite you to really take your time to find a comfortable position,

Whether that's lying on the earth,

The ground,

Maybe with your feet on the floor,

Your knees in to touch,

Or maybe in a seated position in a chair or on a cushion,

Maybe cross-legged or with the bottoms of your feet on the floor.

Just taking your time,

Finding a position,

A posture that feels supportive and comfortable for you.

If you're lying down,

Your arms might rest along your sides with your palms facing up.

And if you're seated,

You might let your palms rest against the top of your thighs or let your hands rest in your lap.

And let your spine be nice and long,

But see if you can allow there to be a spaciousness in the spine so that it doesn't feel rigid.

And seeing if you can let there be an openness to the chest.

And if it feels comfortable for you,

You can let your eyes close or you can let your eyes rest in a fixed gaze out in front of you,

Letting your periphery vision soften.

And to begin,

Let's take some time to take a few deep breaths,

And starting by letting out all of the air you currently hold in the body.

And then taking a deep inhale through the nose,

Filling the belly,

The lungs.

And a slow exhale through the nose or the mouth.

Again,

A deep inhale,

Taking your time.

Slow exhale.

And one more time,

Letting this inhale open the chest,

Reaching out towards the crown of the head.

And a slow exhale to soften down through the body.

And take a moment just to briefly scan through the body.

We'll be with the body a little bit more deeply here soon,

But just taking these first few moments to scan through and notice what you notice.

Notice where there's tension.

Maybe there's movement in the eyes or maybe they're soft.

Notice where your body feels more spacious and at ease.

And just notice the variety of different sensations in the body,

The tingling,

Vibrating,

Warmth and coolness.

Maybe there's places that feel numb.

And then bringing your awareness into the forehead.

See if you can let there be a spaciousness here,

A softening through the eyebrows,

The temples,

And a softening of the eyelids and the skin around the eyes.

And letting this sense of softness and ease spread out through the cheekbones and into the jaw.

And maybe moving your jaw back and forth,

Left and right.

And softening your lips and your tongue,

Letting it fill the lower palate of the mouth.

And relaxing the tongue all the way down to the root.

And feeling into the gums and the teeth.

And then letting your awareness and this sense of spaciousness spread into the ears and the back of the head,

The skull.

And now letting your awareness slide down into the throat.

Feeling into the back of the neck,

The front of the throat,

And the space in between.

Letting there be a softness in the shoulders.

Feeling the melt down your back like ice melting into water.

And softening all the way down through the arms and bringing your awareness into the hands.

Feeling the hands from the inside out.

Sensing into each finger and the space between the fingers.

And now bringing your awareness into the region of the heart.

Noticing what sensations are here.

If there's any tightness or tension,

Just allowing that to be.

Noticing the expansion and contraction of your lungs as you inhale and exhale.

Noticing the beating of your heart.

Now let your next inhale be received in a softening belly.

And again with this next inhale,

Let your belly expand out,

Expand out,

Soften,

Become full.

And now let your awareness spread out into the bowl of the pelvic region.

Noticing your sit bones touching the floor.

Noticing your feet touching the floor.

Feeling supported by the earth.

Maybe even imagining roots digging down through any foundation beneath you,

Down deep into the earth.

Keeping you rooted and nourished and supported.

And now let your grounded awareness spread through the legs,

Down into the feet.

And noticing again where your feet are in contact with the earth.

Maybe imagining roots coming out of this part of your body as well.

And now again,

Take a moment to let your awareness spread through this entire body.

Feeling into this body as a field of sensations.

And notice where in the body you feel the most tension.

Whatever emotion you might be sensing in the mind,

See if you can sense into where you feel it most in the body.

And once you've found that area,

Become curious about the sensations that you're feeling.

Maybe tightness,

Tension.

Maybe there's a sense of emptiness.

And if emotions arise for you,

That is completely normal.

And see if you can allow these emotions to flow.

Maybe even pausing this meditation for a few moments to allow yourself to release and express this emotion outwardly.

And now begin to sense into any feeling of spaciousness around the sensations of pain that you feel,

Of tightness and tension.

And maybe at first this spaciousness is hardly detectable.

But even so,

See if you can stay with this spaciousness that has a loving and motherly kind of quality to it.

That can hold these difficult feelings and sensations with tenderness and with acceptance.

Not as a way to try to cover over what's present or to get rid of it or to immediately feel better,

But just to validate the experience by allowing it to be here and to be felt.

And if it feels very difficult to sense into any feelings of spaciousness,

Then you might move your awareness to a different part of the body that feels more spacious.

And now as you breathe with both the spaciousness and the feelings of tension,

See if you can imagine the spaciousness gradually growing.

Imagine that this spaciousness is limitless.

That there is no limitation to how vast it can become,

But just letting it grow slowly.

Just as a little bit of salt can greatly impact the taste of a small cup of water,

Imagine that this spaciousness is growing in the same way that adding more water to the cup reduces the intensity of the taste of the salt.

Or in this case,

The intensity of the tension and the pain.

And if it helps,

You might bring a hand or two hands to your heart or to the area where it feels most difficult to feel into.

And staying present with the breath,

The breath as a source of healing.

The breath as a support for expanding the spaciousness around the pain.

And sometimes when we tune into the feelings of pain within the body,

The mind will want to turn the pain into stories or get lost in thought about the situation that is causing pain.

And if this is happening for you,

Just notice this tendency of the mind and see if you can bring your awareness back into the body,

Back into the breath,

And into your sensations in the space of endless vastness that can hold this pain.

And you can allow this space to grow as large as you need it to be.

Maybe it's as expansive as the ocean,

Maybe it's as expansive as the cosmos.

And now beginning to let go of this image or feeling of the spaciousness and bringing your full awareness to your breath.

Feeling your body as it expands and contracts with each inhale.

And each exhale.

And see if there's anything that your body needs to hear from you right now.

Maybe it's as simple as everything's going to be okay.

Or maybe it's I care about this pain,

I support you.

And maybe answers will come in time.

Just offering whatever little message it is that you need to hear in this moment.

And as we bring this meditation to a close,

I would like to offer a quote from Joan Halifax.

She says,

This is the gift of the darkness that we can see into the depths of suffering and find the light therein,

Our own darkness and light and that of others.

And in seeing and understanding,

We harvest the fruits of compassion.

And inviting a few deep breaths into the body.

Deep inhale through the nose to fill the belly and the lungs.

Slow exhale through the mouth or the nose.

And again,

Two more times on your own.

Taking your time to come back into this space.

Noticing sounds and sights around you.