Exploring difficulty meditation.
Sit for a few moments,
Focusing on the sensations of breathing.
Then widen your awareness to take in the body as a whole.
And then shift your focus onto sounds and thoughts.
While you're sitting in meditation practice,
If you notice that your attention keeps being pulled away to particularly painful or difficult thoughts,
Emotions or feelings,
You might do something a little different from what you may have been practicing up until now.
The first step is to allow the thought or feeling or emotion to remain on the workbench of the mind,
So to speak.
Second,
Shift your attention into the body so that you become aware of any physical sensations that are occurring alongside the thought or emotion or feeling.
Third,
Deliberately moving the focus of attention to the part of the body where the sensations are strongest.
The breath can provide a useful vehicle to do this,
So once your attention has moved up close to the bodily sensations and they are centre stage in the field of awareness,
Remind yourself that you are not trying to change them,
But to explore them with friendly curiosity as physical sensations that are coming and going in the body.
Then see if it is possible to stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations and to see your relationship to them.
Are you able to give them your full attention,
Breathing with them,
Accepting them,
Letting them be?
It may be helpful to repeat to yourself,
Softening,
Softening,
Opening,
Opening and using your each out breath to soften and to open to the sensations.
If there are no difficulties or concerns coming up for you during this meditation practice and you want to explore this approach,
Then when you are ready,
Seeing if you can deliberately bring to mind a difficulty that is going on in your life at the moment,
Something you don't mind staying with for a short while.
It doesn't have to be very important or critical,
But something that you are aware of as a somewhat unpleasant,
Somewhat difficult,
Maybe just something unresolved.
This could be a misunderstanding,
An argument,
A situation you feel a little angry about,
Something that has happened that you feel regretful or guilty about,
Or even a worry about something that might happen.
Now once the troubling thought or situation has been brought to mind,
Allowing it to rest on the workbench of the mind and then let your attention drop into your body,
Tuning into any physical sensations that the difficulty is evoking and seeing if you are able to note,
To approach,
Maybe to move up close to whatever feelings are arising in the body.
Becoming mindful of these physical sensations,
Deliberately directing your focus of attention to the region of your body where the sensations are the strongest.
Breathing into that part of the body on the in-breath and breathing out from that part on an out-breath.
Observing the sensations,
Observing how their intensity shifts up and down from one moment to the next as you cradle them in your awareness.
Seeing if it's possible to say inwardly to yourself,
Softening,
Softening,
Opening,
Opening on each out-breath.
When you notice that the bodily sensations are no longer pulling your attention to quite the same degree,
Simply return 100% of your focus to your breath and continue with that as the primary object of attention.
And so continuing to focus on the breath for a while to anchor yourself back to this present moment,
Then beginning to open your eyes and to move very gently until the sound of the bells.
And let'sB IDLE TO B TO Anyway you
