Addressing Challenging Thoughts During Meditation

In this session we discuss how to address challenging thoughts that can arise during meditation. We discuss how to respond doing a mindfulness session (your mind wanders, you bring it back). But was also discuss it from a self healing perspective (using the thoughts as a point to curiosity or option to enquire deeply).

Transcript

So if we're practicing mindfulness and our mind goes back to something that happened 10 years ago, Something we have to come to terms with now, Should we ignore these thoughts or address them? So it's an interesting question and I'll answer it in two ways. If you are practicing mindfulness, Pure mindfulness, Right? You pick an anchor, Traditionally the breath, Your mind wanders, You bring it back, Your mind wanders, You bring it back, Right? So no matter what arises, A deep thought, Something that you've been working on, A issue, Challenge, Trauma from the past pops up in your awareness. Whatever that is, Whatever it is, You go, Okay, That's interesting. I acknowledge it and you bring your focus back to the breath. Same thing if it's a positive thought, Love, Joy, Like anything, Your mind wanders, You become aware of where it's wandering and you bring it back. From a base, Pure mindfulness perspective, That's what you do. If your mind is not focused on the sensations of the breath or whatever anchor you chose, You bring it back. Your mind wanders, You bring it back, Your mind wanders, You bring it back, That's it. However, And there's a few caveats here. Mindfulness alone, I don't think is the only practice you should be doing, Because there's this risk of just not addressing the things that pop up. I focus on mindfulness primarily, But then I do parts work, I do insight work, I do a variety of other different things to sort of help process and move it along. So if during mindfulness, Something arises, Something significant that you would like to address, And you just want to practice the mindfulness, In that moment, You acknowledge it and you go, Okay, I see this thing that's important to me, And I will come back to it, And make sure you do. You finish your mindfulness session, And now you've got this thought, This thing that you're coming to terms with from the past, And you go deeper into that with other practices. Maybe you do a somatic practice where you find it in the body, And really connect to the sensations in the body, The body keeps the score. Those emotions, Moods, Memories, Thoughts, Are messages to hear. You approach and accept it all with compassionate curiosity and calm confidence. That's one approach. The other approach could be to use those thoughts themselves as a mindful anchor. This is an advanced practice. So with meditation, Mindfulness meditation rather, You can choose anything to be the anchor of your focus. Traditionally, It's the breath. Your mind wanders, You bring it back to the breath. Or it could be what you hear. Your mind wanders, You bring it back to hearing, And so on and so forth. But you could choose a specific memory, A specific thought, A specific emotion. Your mind wanders, You bring it back to that point. Your mind wanders, You bring it back, And you get really curious about what's inside that space. So by analogy, Let's say you're feeling a little bit, A light, A very small amount of tension in the body, Small amount of pain. This is something to practice on. You find that space in the body, And you really feel all the different sensations, The movements, The flow, The different component parts of that pain, That sort of space in your body. Your mind wanders, You bring it back, And you get into the nitty gritties of it. You're using that physical sensation of pain as the point of meditative focus, Non-judgmentally looking at it all. You could do that mindfully on that significant event 10 years ago. That is a deep mindfulness practice, And it is quite challenging and confronting, Or it can be. So go careful and go slow. When that happens to me, My response is to sort of acknowledge it in the moment, And then commit to return, And then address it with a different practice. I do intuitive guidance work, Deep somatic work, Inner healings work, Part therapy sort of work. I have a therapist that I speak to if significant events or things pop up during my meditations. That's how I sort of deal with those sort of things, Because like I said with base mindfulness, Anything that pops up, You acknowledge it, And you bring it back. But if you're doing this for healing, Those things that are popping up are important, And they want to be heard. So it doesn't mean you ignore them forever, Just in that session.

Reviews

That was really helpful! I struggle with this a lot so this was excellent guidance! Thank you!