Naming Thoughts, Emotions and Judgments

Guided Mindfulness Meditation to build awareness of the dynamics of mind along with the skills of peaceful open monitoring and equanimity.

Transcript

Number five,

Naming thoughts,

Emotions and judgments.

Begin by finding a comfortable posture and by bringing your awareness to the breath.

Take a few moments to let yourself arrive and allow the breath to draw you gently into internal awareness.

Allow the gaze to soften,

The eyes to close.

Bring your awareness to the mind.

In this practice there are three things to look out for in turn,

Thoughts,

Emotions and judgments.

The aim of the exercise is to name these aspects of our internal awareness as neutrally as possible,

That is by noticing them without adding any drama or story or further commentary to them.

Begin by naming your thoughts.

For example,

Each time you encounter a thought silently say,

Here is the thought about my day,

Here is the thought about what I will do later,

Here is the thought about this practice.

For the next two minutes notice and name thoughts as they arise,

But otherwise add no energy to each thought.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next,

Turn your attention to emotions.

What do you notice?

What are you feeling?

Explore by naming emotions as they arise in your awareness.

This is sadness.

This is joy.

This is sadness.

This is joy.

This is sadness.

This is sadness.

This is joy.

This is worry.

For the next two minutes,

Notice and name the emotions that arise.

Try and resist the urge to analyze why the emotion is present and instead hold it within compassionate awareness.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Finally,

Turn your attention to judgments.

Ask yourself,

Where am I judging?

What am I judging?

Then name each judgment as it arises in your mind.

For example,

I'm judging my performance.

I'm judging myself.

I'm judging this exercise.

I'm judging life.

Spend two minutes here noticing and naming judgments as they arise and noticing silence if no judgments are present.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Take five more breaths as you bring this practice to a close.

Preparing gradually to reenter wakefulness and in your very own time,

Allow the eyes to open.

That was number five,

Naming thoughts,

Emotions and judgments.

Thank yourself for finding time for this practice.

And don't forget to record your reflections in your mindfulness journal.

Reviews

I enjoyed this meditation. Informative🌿🌿🌿🌿

I really appreciated this exercise. Thank you!

I really needed the help in identifying/naming thoughts l, emotions, and judgments. Thank you!

Very helpful-- succinct, clear, effective. Thank you!!

I had no idea how many judgements I make. I don't know if I did a great job staying detached but the instructions/modeling was great, and two minutes silence per category was more than sufficient

Helpful and interesting, thank you.

Thank you, I've been studying my emotional intelligence for the last few months and this practice has given me more tools to work with 🙏🏻

Simple yet very significant. Thank you.

Quite good for a beginner like myself. Silence for reflection was pleasant and very rewarding 🙏🏻🌱👌🏻😊

Very good short meditation. Thank you for the silent spaces to notice thought, emotions and judgements.

I don't think I've ever realized that I could be holding so many different emotions and judgements at the same time. No wonder I was feeling so discombobulated. Thank you for bringing this to my awareness.

Very practical practice. I have trouble naming emotions, especially happiness, and what it meant to objective label thoughts. This practice made it clear, at least to me, how to do that. I also had a personal insight about how often my judgments tend to be critical (especially about myself).

Wonderful and thoughtful exercise!

Good to have the quiet spaces to pay attention to thoughts, emotions and stares of mind.

Really nice - good time spent in reflection and awareness. Namaste

Very helpful, thank you. Your voice is very calming, clear and pleasant.

Very important meditation
I need to do it often

Really helpful exercise. Love the 2min pauses with no talking to practice naming. Will definitely come back to this mediration again.