Hey there everybody,
This is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I am here with you with
this week's mindfulness meditation session.
And this is going to be our final practice in relation to the month of focusing on self-acceptance.
And we've looked at it through a variety of lenses as we do.
So I thought it would be kind of interesting for this last session to focus on something
that you've probably had the experience of before,
But basically what I'd like to do
is invoke what that experience is like outside of the context of when it actually naturally
happens.
So the thing I'm thinking of as far as like a name for this is the idea of hindsight is
2020,
Which of course we've all heard that now.
You could say that about a lot of things,
You know,
The choices you've made in life
and,
You know,
Looking back on mistakes and what was I thinking and things of that nature.
But that's actually not what I'm talking about.
What I'm talking about is if you've ever had the experience of reflecting on your past,
And of course,
In line with this theme of self-acceptance,
Self-compassion,
Self-love,
Whether it was purely in your mind's eye or if you found yourself having the experience
where you look back at photos,
Whether like they're printed photos or photos that are
online somewhere or digital,
Where you kind of look back at yourself at some moment in
your past and you have this moment,
And again,
This is my experience,
I'm assuming this happens
to lots of people,
Where you look back and you're like,
For me,
You know,
That girl,
That young woman,
You know,
Was so much harder on herself than she needed to be.
You know,
I look at photos of,
Let's say,
Like my 20s or something like that,
And I
am pretty confident that for most of my life,
I've always been rather self-critical and
feeling like I could always be more fit or,
You know,
Whatever it might be.
And then I look back,
And I'm like,
Girl,
You look fine,
You look great,
You know,
Stop,
You know,
Like if I could send a message back in time to past me,
Who was expending so much
unnecessary mental energy on self-criticism and putting pressure on myself to improve
and change and be something other than who I was,
You know,
It would be a pretty powerful
thing to be able to go back.
And of course,
In line with this theme,
Hindsight is 20-20.
I see that now as a 50-something with,
You know,
The clarity of time,
But at,
You know,
At that moment,
I just wasn't,
I didn't have that perspective.
So what is the significance of this along the lines of self-acceptance?
You probably maybe are anticipating where I'm going with this.
The idea is in this moment,
In this present right now,
Whoever you are,
Whatever age you
are as you're listening to this and watching this,
What if you could imagine that there's
a future you,
Five years,
10 years,
20 years,
30 years,
Looking back on this current you,
Which for future you is past you,
Thinking probably many of the same things like,
You
know,
Why did they work so hard?
Why did they put so much pressure,
You know,
Or why did I put so much pressure on myself?
You know,
Why did I not see,
You know,
Something that is a value and meaningful that I now
know in 2045,
But I didn't know in our case,
Early 2023.
So I think you get the idea of the spirit of it because I think there's value in,
No,
We can't go back and change the past of our younger selves based on where we are in our
timeline at the moment.
But what we can do is we can almost imagine and embody the perspective of that future
us who will be looking back with that 2020 hindsight and perhaps making some changes
regarding our self-acceptance,
Our self-love,
Our self-compassion,
Since this is the only
time that we can actually do it.
So a little bit of a little slightly more far out way of looking at things,
But I just
think there's something to be said for that.
And you can take that whenever a direction feels resonant for you.
Now of course,
One of the things that helps us to cultivate self-awareness so that we
can have these moments of epiphanies regarding future me wouldn't want me to be so hard on
myself,
Future me wouldn't want me to be so self-critical,
Et cetera.
We can have these spontaneous moments of self-awareness,
Self-realization.
I think more spontaneously and more naturally and with more ease because of our meditation
practice.
So let's go ahead and get down to it.
I'm going to set my timer for 10 minutes as usual.
Oh wow.
Both shoulders cracked.
Sorry.
That just made me laugh.
And when you're ready,
If you haven't already,
Closing your eyes or lowering your eight gaze
and taking some of those slower,
Longer,
Deeper breaths and just allowing ourselves to settle
in.
Remembering we can always circle back to that deeper breathing if we find it supportive
and not putting any pressure on ourselves to breathe perfectly,
To meditate perfectly
and keeping with our theme of self-acceptance,
We're just going to be very open to and accepting
of how this moment and this practice is.
So if you find that your mind is all over the place,
Planning,
Imagining,
Whatever it
might be,
That's totally okay.
You're just going to allow your awareness of that racy mind to see it and if it's helpful
with slightly more nuance,
Labeling those different thoughts for what they are like
planning,
Strategizing,
Remembering,
Worrying,
And then not pushing them away,
But instead
once you've labeled them,
Just turning your attention back to the present moment,
To your
anchor of noticing the sensations of the breath or noticing sounds or noticing some other
physical sensations like holding your body in its entirety in your awareness or focusing
on just one part like your feet.
Just picking whatever feels easy,
If you find yourself being drawn into putting pressure
on yourself or having expectations regarding how you'd like this to be,
Remembering that's
just more thoughts,
Totally expected,
And we're just going to once again see them,
Perhaps
label them and then just come back and if today you're finding it on the easier side
to remain present in that state of mindful awareness,
Just keeping going and if you're
finding it's a little more of a struggle today,
I just want to acknowledge that of course
that can happen for many of us,
It's most of the time and even though it might be tempting
to judge yourself and say you should be better at this or something along those lines,
Just
acknowledging that it's not really that easy.
The irony,
As you've heard me say before,
Is that even though it does require effort
to notice our minds have wandered,
To catch ourselves thinking and to bring our attention
back,
Then when you get back into that sweet spot of just sitting,
There is something very
deeply restful about that and I'd invite you to allow that to nourish you in whatever
way feels right,
Taking the rest from not feeling obligated to follow our thoughts all the time.
So for the last two or so minutes,
Let's just sit in silence together until that final bell,
Just coming back again and again to that restful mindful awareness state as best as we can.
Alright,
That's our ten minutes.
So happy end of self-acceptance month and I think next month we're actually going to
kind of proceed along a similar vein but not quite the same so I won't spoil it for you but
something to look forward to and as always thank you so much for taking this time for yourself
and for allowing me to accompany you on this journey and I will see you next week.
Take care.
Bye.
