Meditation to explore difficulty.
Make yourself comfortable sitting upright on a chair or on a cushion on the floor.
Allow your body to be relaxed but your mind to remain alert.
You can close your eyes or just lower and soften your gaze so that you're not distracted.
Begin by noticing your breath,
An anchor to help you be present in this moment.
As before,
Allow your attention to rest on your breath,
Wherever it's most noticeable to you.
Remember,
You don't have to try and change your breath in any way,
Just let it flow naturally.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
As you breathe in,
Expand your awareness to encompass the whole of your body.
Your whole body sitting and breathing in and breathing out.
Noticing the breath and the expansion and contraction of your body.
Many times when we sit to meditate,
When we notice thoughts or emotions arising,
We simply register where our attention has been drawn and then we return to the breath or the body and begin again.
This time,
We're going to do something a little different.
If you can,
See if you can notice in this moment whether there are particular thoughts or emotions taking place for you.
Are there any particular thoughts that are passing through your mind in this moment?
Thoughts about what's happening now or about what has happened in the past or things that may not have happened yet.
Perhaps there are some thoughts that may be difficult in some way.
Perhaps you can also notice that if there are difficult,
Difficult thoughts,
There may be some emotions linked to those thoughts experienced in the body.
Can you bring your attention to that part of your body that's experiencing emotion at this time?
If you can't experience any difficulty right now,
Any difficult thought or emotion or a difficult physical sensation,
Perhaps you could bring to mind now an unpleasant experience or feeling that may have arisen today or in recent days.
It could be an unpleasant feeling triggered by hearing something or seeing something or thinking about something.
Perhaps some experience has brought up a feeling of frustration,
Sadness or loneliness or a stronger feeling of anxiety,
Fear or even anger.
Or perhaps there are difficult sensations in the physical body that you've had in the past,
In the recent past or the distant past that you can bring to mind.
It's quite normal for us not to want to experience difficult feelings,
Difficult emotions,
Difficult sensations.
But alongside the many wonderful thoughts and feelings we sometimes experience,
Difficult thoughts and feelings too are part of our human condition.
So instead of trying to push these feelings and thoughts away,
We can manage them now in a different way so that they have much less power over us.
We begin with an intention to nurture ourselves and take care of our difficulty.
As we breathe in,
We become aware of an unpleasant feeling that may have been triggered recently.
Perhaps we can experience that as a sensation somewhere in our body.
If so,
Imagine that you can breathe into that part of the body.
As you breathe in,
The breath enters your body and it moves into that part of the body that's experiencing difficulty.
Seeing now if it's possible to stay with an awareness of these bodily sensations and perhaps seeing what our relationship is to them.
Are we trying to get rid of them?
Are we able to give them our full attention?
Can we breathe into them and accept them and just let them be?
Perhaps we could say to ourselves,
It's okay.
Whatever this is,
Whatever I'm experiencing,
I can be open to it.
Using each in-breath to bring awareness and each out-breath to begin to soften and open up to this experience.
Breathing in,
Our breath bathing us in awareness.
Breathing out,
Softening and releasing.
In this moment as I breathe,
I'm taking care of my unpleasant feeling.
Breathing in,
I'm aware of an unpleasant feeling.
I nourish and bathe that feeling with awareness.
Breathing out,
I'm caring for that feeling with kindness and love.
As I breathe in,
I allow this difficult feeling to be embraced by the energy of my awareness.
As I breathe out,
I allow this difficult feeling to be calmed and soothed.
Breathing out,
I'm caring for that feeling.
Whatever my experience in this moment,
It's okay.
It's possible to stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations,
These feelings,
These emotions.
To have a new type of relationship with them,
To breathe into them,
To accept them,
To let them be.
Allow them to be just as they are.
Softening and opening up to the sensations that you become aware of.
Letting go of tensing and bracing and perhaps inwardly saying to yourself,
Softening,
Opening,
Releasing.
Breathing in,
Bringing the energy of awareness to this feeling.
Breathing out,
Calming and soothing this feeling.
Breathing in,
I'm aware that I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I smile.
When you notice that the bodily sensations or difficult feelings are perhaps no longer pulling you to the same degree,
Just simply return to watching the breath and being aware of the body expanding and contracting.
If another feeling or another difficulty arises,
We can choose to return to being attentive to that experience.
Breathing in and bringing all of our attention and care and loving kindness as we soothe,
Release and let go.
Breathing in,
I'm aware that I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I smile.
Breathing out,
I smile.
