Working With Grief And Strong Emotions

This guided meditation offers a gentle way to meet grief and other strong emotions with presence, compassion, and care. Through mindfulness of emotions, you’ll learn to acknowledge what you’re feeling without becoming overwhelmed or pushing difficult feelings away. This practice can support you in times of loss, sadness, heartbreak, anxiety, or emotional intensity, helping you create more space around whatever is arising.

Transcript

Hello. We're going to do some mindfulness of emotions today. So let's begin by taking our good meditation posture, Whatever that means to you. As we work with emotions, It's important to stay very grounded in the body. So noticing where we may already be holding some tension. Beginning to move those muscles and relax them. Finding a sense of balance and ease in the posture itself. When you feel grounded in the body. Let's begin with some mindfulness of the breath, Just noticing the natural cycle of the breath as it enters and then leaves the body. Now that we have entered the present moment more fully. We can shift our attention from the breath. To whatever emotions might be present today. You might have a. . . Purple elephant experience where I say, Don't think of a purple elephant, You immediately do. Or in this case, I say, Bring your attention to your emotions. And you say, I don't have any emotions. If that's the case, You could even ask yourselves. How am I feeling right now? And just notice what emerges. You mate. Notice it. Particularly seemingly positive emotions like joy or contentment arise. Seemingly negative emotions. Frustration. Sadness. Here, We're learning to be with the emotions as they are. So whatever is present for you today, Just bring your full attention to it. Just allowing yourself to be with the energy of the emotion. We are giving ourselves time, Space, And permission to feel what we feel. Without judgment. Just be with whatever is present in you today. Similar to mindfulness of the breath practice. We might notice a tendency to spiral into thought. To leave the present moment of life. Our emotions. And to move into. How to fix things, How to change things, How to manipulate the situation so that we don't feel this way or so that we feel more of this way. Instead of just being with them. When you notice that you have gotten distracted. In mindfulness of the breath, We would say, Thinking in combat. Here. It's a slightly different phrase, But the same idea. We would just say, It's okay to feel this. Having acknowledged that, We come back to feeling the emotion itself. Oh, You know what I'm going to do? It's okay to feel this. We acknowledge it, We come back to feeling the feeling. The Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron, Summarized this practice very succinctly. When she said, Drop the story, Feel the feeling. We notice the stories arise, Say, It's okay to feel this. Come back to feeling whatever emotion is underneath. If. . . One feeling goes away and another one emerges. That's fine. We shift our attention to that one. Which is being with whatever is here. Without judgment. It's okay to feel this. We'll close with a deep breath, Breathing in. And out. As we emerge from the meditation. In our post meditation experience, We can continue. To be present for whatever emotions might arise.