Exploring Difficulty - Emotions, Thoughts, Situations

Taken from my 8 week mindfulness course, this meditation is designed to support you navigate difficult thoughts, emotions, or situations. You will be guided to address and unpack a challenge that you are facing in your life, in a safe, compassionate, and curious way. A new way of relating to potentially unsettling stimuli. While this work can be uncomfortable, it almost always liberating, insightful, and healing too.

Transcript

Hi,

Welcome to this meditation exploring difficulty.

This guided session is designed to support you in facing difficult emotions with compassion.

It may be challenging at times,

You may feel triggered in response to some of the visual imagery that I'm asking you to bring up and some of the emotional content that I will ask you to consider.

I encourage you to maintain an attitude of openness,

Of non-judgment and of compassion throughout.

So take a moment to get really comfortable,

Make sure you will not be disturbed.

Take a moment to find the right position to sit or kneel or lay down in.

And when you are settled,

Go ahead and take a deep cleansing breath in through the nose and out through the mouth,

Sighing out audibly and just releasing any tension that needs to be released.

And again,

Two more of those at your own pace in through the nose,

Allowing the diaphragm to fully expand as you draw air in from the belly and filling the chest.

And when you're ready,

Sighing that out again.

And on your third and final deep cleansing breath,

Just noticing what is shifting in your body.

Are you able to relax a little bit more,

Sit a little more deeply into the moment?

And when you have resumed your regular uncontrolled breathing pattern,

Just witnessing the breath taking care of itself,

Spend the next few moments really honing in,

Focusing on the sensations of breathing.

Tap into your anchor point.

And as you begin to feel more settled and still and present,

Begin to widen your sense of awareness to take in your body as a whole.

What does it feel like to be in your body in this moment?

And now move your awareness to focus on the sounds and thoughts that are present to you right now.

Sounds and thoughts have a lot to teach us and they have a lot in common from a meditative perspective.

They both come into our experience all by themselves.

They remain for a time and then they drift off all by themselves without you needing to do anything about it.

Whether you engage with them or not,

They will come and they will go.

So be aware of what there is to hear in your environment and what there is to be witnessed in the contents of your thoughts.

Now we have two paths.

Whichever you choose is perfect.

There's no right or wrong answer.

If you are aware of any challenging or painful experience arising right now,

Whether that's thoughts or emotions,

A memory,

Anything at all,

Then go with what is coming up.

Lean into this.

Allow your attention to rest on this for a moment and just bear it in presence and we will proceed together shortly.

If nothing is coming up for you right now,

Then I encourage you to deliberately bring to mind something difficult that is going on in your life at the moment.

Something that you are willing to stay with for a short while.

The severity or urgency of the matter is not important.

Just that you are aware of it as being somehow unpleasant,

Unresolved or unsettling.

Could be anything big or small,

Trivial or crisis.

It is up to you.

There is no right or wrong answer and still if nothing comes to mind,

You might wish to bring up a past difficult experience that you have a clear memory of.

So just take a moment now to be with whatever is coming up for you.

Even if it is challenging,

Even if it is uncomfortable,

We are here to learn a new way of being with it.

And as this meditation progresses,

I encourage you to remember that you are not alone.

I am here with you and that you are doing this,

You are practicing in this way in the service of yourself,

Of your broader life and of the people in your life who depend on you.

So remember this truly is an act of generosity and compassion and love and I hope that provides a compass to guide you through this challenging work that we are doing here.

So the first step is to allow the thought or the feeling to remain on the workbench of our mind,

So to speak.

It can be helpful to visualize yourself or someone who looks like you standing at this workbench,

Considering how to work with this difficulty.

Now shift your attention to the body so that you are aware of the physical sensations that are occurring alongside the thought or the emotion.

I wonder if you can breathe into that,

Breathe into those sensations.

Do those sensations have a particular color or a texture or a weight or a lightness?

Next,

Deliberately shift your focus to the part of the body where these sensations are strongest.

The breath can provide a very useful vehicle to do just this,

So take a gentle and compassionate breath.

As you shift awareness to this part of the body by breathing into it and breathing out from it.

Once your attention has honed in on the bodily sensations and you feel these sensations are center stage in your field of your awareness,

Remind yourself that you are not trying to change them,

Rather you are here to explore them with friendly curiosity.

Explore them as physical sensations that are coming and going,

Not something that is happening to you.

It may be supportive to say to yourself inwardly,

It's okay for me to feel this.

Whatever this is,

It is okay to allow myself to be open to it.

Then,

See if it's possible to stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations and seeing your relationship to them.

How are you relating to this experience?

Are you aware of it,

Wanting to be rid of them?

Do you feel anticipation of them passing?

Are you able to give them your full attention,

Really being with them,

Breathing with them,

Accepting them and simply letting them be as they are,

As pieces of your broader experience?

Again,

It may be helpful to repeat inwardly,

It's okay,

Whatever this is,

It's okay that I'm open to this and using each out breath to just soften a little more and open a little more to these sensations.

You may wish to deepen this attitude of acceptance and openness to any of the sensations you are experiencing by saying to yourself just from time to time,

Here it is,

I see you.

Thank you for being here,

It is okay for me to feel this.

This is part of the work and I am grateful for this opportunity to meet with this experience.

Encourage yourself to become intimately familiar with what there is to be felt in this emotion or what there is to be felt beneath the thoughts around this difficulty.

What is the totality of your experience in this moment?

Can you detect a particular coolness or a warmth,

A darkness or a lightness,

Any textures or colors,

Any sense of an internal posture,

As it were?

And as you proceed with this meditation,

Are you aware of any changes or shifts in the way you are relating to the feelings,

The thoughts,

The emotions?

Are you aware of a different level of acceptance than when you sat down and began?

Do you find it easier to let things be?

Are you aware of any insight crystallizing?

And if you are,

I encourage you to let that be on the periphery of your experience.

Certainly welcome it in,

Certainly put a pin in it for exploration later.

But as you become aware of it,

Maintain this present moment expanded awareness of your experience.

And just continue to soften and open to the sensations more and more.

Become aware of letting go of any tensing or bracing,

Inwardly encouraging yourself to soften and open with each exhale.

I wonder if you notice whether your attention is still being pulled so much to the original content I asked you to bring to mind.

And I invite you now to make a conscious decision to choose to return to the breath with 100% of your awareness,

And rest with the breath as your anchor.

In the following moments,

Notice if you feel awareness being pulled back to the same content,

Or to new thoughts and feelings,

Or to new bodily sensations,

Or the bodily sensations you just experienced.

Notice where awareness is trying to go,

And just witness that.

Witness that experience,

As you again and again,

Non-judgmentally,

Return awareness to the sensations of breathing at your anchor.

And whatever is still present,

Just breathing in and out of it.

And you can begin to deepen each breath now,

Gradually deeper on the inhale,

Gradually longer on the exhale.

And with each breath,

Expand awareness throughout your body,

Until you are a cloud of sensation encompassing your full embodied experience.

And take this moment just before you open your eyes to reflect on what came up for you.

And perhaps a message of gratitude to yourself for showing up,

And choosing to courageously look inwards at that which is uncomfortable.

This is a skill that is severely lacking in western industrialized cultures.

So well done,

And thank you for your effort.

When you're ready,

Open your eyes.