I have a love-hate relationship with meditation and mindfulness practices. On a rational level, I understand the benefits. On an emotional level, I know I feel good when I do this regularly, but on a practical level, I struggle to stick with it. I seem to get on and off the wagon many times. Sustaining the practice is difficult for me.
Last week, I started meditating again and I learned something wonderful I wanted to share with you…
But before I do this, I’d love to hear from you if you have a regular meditation or mindfulness practice?
If you do, what helps you stick with it?
I’m currently using the Waking Up app (highly recommended and if anyone is interested in trying it out, I can send you a link for 30 days for free – I’m not getting anything out of this, just really like the app and happy to share the goodness. It starts with a 30 day course to gets you into it, with explanations and guidance ☺).
Today the focus was on paying attention to all sensations and thoughts that come up and just noticing if they are pleasant or unpleasant.
Without judgement about whether you like it or not and without trying to get rid of the unpleasant sensations or hold onto the pleasant ones. Just notice.
As I did this I noticed some itching, some tense muscles but I didn’t try to do anything with it. I just let it be and that in itself was extremely comforting. I did the same with any thoughts that popped into my head, labelling it – pleasant or unpleasant – and then letting it go.
And then I understood, what if we could do that as we go through life…
For example, when someone says something hurtful we can say to ourselves, that was unpleasant and notice what happens in our body (pleasant or unpleasant), notice the thoughts (pleasant or unpleasant) and let it be for a while… without responding straight away.
I enjoyed the idea of just noticing and naming thoughts, emotions, sensations – pleasant or unpleasant – without necessarily doing anything about it in that moment.
Why don’t you give it a try?
1. Put on a timer for 2-5 minutes (whatever you think you can manage).
2. Close your eyes
3. Focus on your breathing for 3 breaths
4. Notice sensations, thoughts, feelings and label them – pleasant or unpleasant.
And that’s it.
How was that for you?
A practice such as this helps build our resilience when something unpleasant happens and we don’t want to react out of our default but rather give ourselves time to process and then choose our response.