Hi,
My name is Kimiko Bokura.
Welcome to the practice on responding to challenge.
Wherever you are,
Move a little bit to make yourself even more comfortable.
I invite you to take a deep breath in.
And as you breathe out,
Notice your contact with the ground.
As we begin,
Allow the eyes to look down about 45 degrees with a soft focus or fully closed if you wish.
In this practice,
The invitation is to explore your response to a challenging emotion through three steps.
Pause,
Reflect,
Respond.
Now see if you could bring to mind a situation where you recently experienced an emotion that had some charge or was a challenge.
Choose a situation where there was a medium level of charge,
Maybe on a scale of 1 to 10,
Where 10 is most challenging.
Choose a 4 or a 5.
Initially,
As you explore,
It is helpful not to be overwhelmed by the challenge.
It could be at work,
It could be at home,
Or it could be with one of your friends.
What is the situation that you would like to use to try out these steps?
Picture it in your mind.
Were there other people involved?
How did you know that you are starting to get emotionally activated?
Now let's apply the tools of pause,
Reflect,
Respond.
The first step is to pause.
Right in the middle of that situation,
Imagine yourself pausing and see what it's like to take a deep breath and notice how your body feels.
Sometimes,
Just taking five deep breaths can help you down-regulate.
The next step is to reflect.
What emotions are present?
And look again at the situation.
What other conclusions could you draw about what happened?
Or what the other person's intention could have been?
And the last step is to respond.
Bring to mind two possible responses.
And for one of them,
What would the kindest response look like,
Both for you and the other person?
Imagine yourself responding in one of those ways.
And how does that feel?
Now letting go of the images of that situation.
Taking a deep breath in and on the out-breath,
Letting go of that situation.
Breathing in and letting it go on the out-breath.
Feeling the contact with the ground,
The contact with the chair.
Throughout your day,
Bring attention to when you are started to get activated and apply these three steps.
Pause,
Reflect,
Respond.
Thank you for joining me in this practice of responding to challenge.
