This non-judgmental exercise will help you practice separating your judgment of your experiences from the experiences themselves.
When you begin to untangle the two,
You start training your mind to let go.
So sit in an upright position and let the eyes close.
During the breath,
Invite both awareness and relaxation into the body and mind.
Breathing in,
Reach the spine upward and bring energy into the body.
And breathing out,
Let everything go.
Let the jaw go slack.
Just let it hang loose.
Drop the shoulders away from the ears and soften the muscles of the face and belly.
Start opening your awareness to include any sensations in the body.
Mindfully observe that feeling for a few moments.
Then open yourself up to other experiences in the body.
After settling into this practice for a few minutes,
Notice when the mind begins judging.
The mind may label some experiences or feelings as good or right and others as bad or wrong.
Don't encourage or discourage these judgments.
Just notice them when they come up.
So continue like this just for a few moments while I'm quiet.
Now invite the sense of hearing into your practice.
When you hear a sound,
Recognize that you're hearing.
If a judgment arises about the sound,
Recognize it,
But don't try to do anything about it.
Continue practicing with openness,
While I stand quiet just for a moment.
Whether you are hearing,
Feeling something in the body,
Or hooked into a thought,
Remain aware of your experience.
Whenever a judgment is present,
Name it and leave it be.
Resist the tendency to put it away,
But don't engage with it any further.
Now finish with a few deep breaths now,
Settling the awareness back into the body.
Good.
We can be very emotionally reactive,
Especially when we are hurting.
So part of the practice of hypnosis is observing the judging with our awareness,
Of knowing that our judgment is not who we are or what anything is,
And over time,
Refraining from judging our judging or reacting to our reactions.
This path of mindfulness meditation involves learning to open to experience,
Moment by moment,
With kindness and compassion towards yourself.
Now this is easier said than done,
Which is why we all need daily practice.
The next time you have a noticeably pleasurable or painful experience,
See whether you judge the experience as good if you like it,
Bad if you don't like it,
Or boring if you don't have any particular feeling one way or the other.
Right now,
From the intention to suspend your hair trigger tendency to judge everything according to whether you like it or not,
And also your tendency to react emotionally or fairly automatically.
This is not meant to be ideal,
Just as an exercise to recognize what your mind is doing and to bring into greater awareness when they do arise.
The more we can be present for our experience,
The less caught up we are in the painful aspects of it.
We can witness experience from a distance with perspective,
So that we can choose our best response with a sense of space and ease without reacting from a sense of emergency,
Urgency or stress.
Over time and with practice,
You may find that being less emotionally reactive,
Harshly judgmental becomes more and more of a default setting.
You may also find that you're kinder and more accepting of yourself and your experience of pain,
However they may be.
As you've noticed,
Anger,
Resentment,
Fear,
Self-loathing and contraction usually increase the intensity of our pain,
Mentally and physically.
Meditation and mindfulness,
As well as hypnosis,
The art of being present in a non-judgmental way,
With whatever is happening in the mind or body,
Can help diffuse that anger and contraction,
Leading to less and less pain over time.
Whenever you're dealing with your chronic pain,
It's important to know and remember that as long as you're breathing,
There is really more right with you than wrong.
So let me just repeat that.
As long as you're breathing,
There is really more right with you than wrong.
No matter what is wrong,
No matter how much pain you're in,
No matter how dire the situation seems,
There is really more right with you than wrong.
Your work is to remember this,
And to mobilize all of your interior resources to work for you,
To improve the quality of your day-to-day and moment-to-moment life.
One of these interior resources is opening up to the power of the present moment.
As you've probably experienced before,
The power of now is enormous.
Yet for reasons ranging from evolution to habit,
Our minds mostly persist in living in the past,
Or in the future,
In memory,
Or in constant anticipation,
In worry,
Or even in planning.
When you inhabit this moment,
You realize and feel how powerful and healing it can be.
Be alive right here,
Right now.
Where else can you fully live?
But it does take practice,
And that's why this session can be so helpful for you.
You can come back to it over and over as training wheels to help you build the habits of present moment awareness so that you can incorporate it to alleviate physical pain,
Emotional pain,
And mental suffering.
Of course,
It's easier to show up more in the present moment,
As long as it's pleasant.
This path of mindfulness involves learning to open to experience moment-by-moment with kindness and compassion towards yourself.
The next time you have a noticeably pleasurable or painful experience,
See whether you judge the experience as good if you like it,
As bad if you don't like it,
Or boring if you don't have any particular feeling one way or the other.
Remember that mindfulness,
The art of being present in a non-judgmental way with whatever is happening in the mind or body,
Can help diffuse that anger and contraction,
Leading to less and less pain over time.
Good work,
And namaste.
