Treat Yourself Like A Friend

A meditation practice from the same session as before, this visual meditation track titled "Treat yourself as a friend" is about self-compassion and how we treat ourselves versus how we treat others. It provides two scenarios for listeners to analyze their thought processes. The track's goal is to help listeners understand that everything that we say and think has a physical reaction in our bodies and that we should treat ourselves as a friend.

Transcript

Treat yourself as a friend. We're going to be bringing to mind two different scenarios to help you realise what happens with your thought processes. So getting yourself into a comfortable position. Sitting upright. Let's start by bringing attention to your breath. Just noticing the air coming in and out. Perhaps noticing if it's cooler air on the in-breath and warmer air on the out-breath. You might want to close your eyes so you can get a visual of the scenario. So here's the first one. Imagine you're out on the town with a really good friend and you're going somewhere you're really excited about. Could be going out for dinner or a drink, To watch a movie, Whatever you do in your life that you find exciting. And you're all dressed up and feeling great. You might want to imagine what you're wearing. And you're walking down a really busy street where there's lots of people milling around. And as you're moving down the street, Your friend falls off the curb into the street. There's no immediate danger. What do you say? What do you do? Can you imagine that? What's your natural reaction when your friend falls over in this busy place? Just bringing that to mind. Okay, Let's just reset by feeling your feet on the floor. Perhaps your feet inside your socks or shoes. And here is the second scenario. So you're out on the town again, You're going to the same event, Dressed in the same clothes, Feeling excited. This time you're on your own. You're on your own. Lots of people milling around, Feeling excited inside. And then you fall off the curb into the road. Again, No immediate danger. What do you say to yourself in this scenario? How do you feel? Can you feel the effect that this has on your body right now? So this practice is a really short one just to let us realise the contrast of how we treat other people and how different it is to how we treat ourselves when we do something like make a mistake. So usually in the first scenario, We're caring and kind and say, Oh, Are you okay? And reaching out and perhaps helping them up, Maybe laughing about it. But when you're on your own, It's a different story. And there's usually a word like idiot or stupid and feeling humiliated and embarrassed. Is that how it was for you? So in our culture, It's very much something that we are kind to others. We're not actually very kind to ourselves. A lot of the time, We might talk to ourselves in a detrimental way. And everything that we say and everything that we think has a physiological reaction in our body. So if we're not very nice to ourselves, Then we feel that. So you might want to just take a few moments after this practice and just writing down what you discovered in this. So let's finish this off by just noticing our breath again. Just noticing the cool air coming in and the warm air coming out. Gently opening your eyes with a new sense of wanting to speak to yourself in a slightly kinder way, If possible. Thank you.