Hello,
And welcome to the Daily Insight.
My name is Kevin Griffin.
Today I want to offer you a practice for working with difficult emotions.
This is a way that we can come into more balance with our moods and emotions,
Hold them with more mindfulness,
More care,
And become more equanimous,
More balanced in our relationship to our emotions.
Begin by settling into your regular meditation posture,
Whether it's sitting upright or lying down.
Just making sure that you can stay alert and relaxed,
At ease as you do this practice.
Beginning with some mindfulness of the body to settle,
Release tension,
Relaxing the muscles in the face,
Letting your eyes soften,
Relaxing the jaw,
Moving the attention down to your shoulders,
Relaxing the arms and hands,
Softening the belly,
Letting the chest be open.
It's very important for this part of the body to be soft and undefended as we work with emotions.
And now just checking in with your mood.
How are you feeling right now?
Not building a story around that,
Just seeing if you can notice how you're feeling.
And then starting to connect with the breath as a meditation anchor point.
Feel the breath at the nostrils with the air moving in and out.
Feel the chest and belly rising and falling.
And again,
Softening the belly so that you're not holding tension.
Emotions appear in the body even though they're often thought of as mental states.
This is a vital insight to start to recognize feelings in the body.
Not so much naming them,
Although that may arise,
But just to notice that feelings are happening in the body.
We have a natural tendency to avoid feeling unpleasant emotions,
To ignore or try to suppress pain.
But this is ultimately a destructive practice as those feelings will always surface in one way or another.
If they're not held with kindness,
With openness,
They will tend to come out in more destructive ways.
So despite our resistance,
We need to learn to open and feel these feelings.
This is where mindfulness of the body comes in.
So as you're sitting right now or lying down,
Just seeing if you can soften,
Open,
Perceive what's appearing emotionally,
Whether pleasant or unpleasant,
Really the same process.
If there is some subtle or not so subtle unpleasant,
Painful emotion present,
Notice the tension that appears in the body as you try to open to it.
Here you might find it helpful to take a deeper breath so that we are literally opening the body,
Physically expanding.
And this comes with an attitude,
A mental attitude of openness,
Of acceptance.
Instead of pushing away what we're feeling,
We're welcoming it,
Receiving it.
As we do this,
We stay in touch with the breath as well.
The breath gives us a neutral anchor,
A soothing rhythm that can help us to hold these challenging feelings without running,
Without suppressing.
As you work with this process of opening and feeling,
Notice too the thoughts that arise.
Feelings trigger thoughts.
Thoughts trigger feelings.
This interaction is one of the main drivers of emotional states.
In some sense,
It's interrupting this interaction between thoughts and feelings that allows us to let go of the difficult moods.
When we start to tell a story or figure out or analyze what we're feeling,
Those thoughts themselves trigger more feelings.
And those feelings trigger more thoughts into this cycle of destructive feelings,
Of destructive emotions.
Our mind tends to believe that it has the power to control our feelings.
And this belief gets acted out through this process of analyzing or suppressing.
As we begin to explore this process we see the futility of trying to mentally suppress or get rid of feelings simply by thinking.
Feelings are impermanent.
They come and go.
If we can simply sit with them,
Allow them to come,
They will go.
This is the trust and insight that arises through this process.
I hope you find this a helpful meditation and reflection.
