Want to go From Conflict to Connection?
Want to improve your life and your relationships? Want to find a different way of relating towards yourself when faced with challenging situations or emotions?
There’s a way and it’s called Mindfulness Meditation. It starts from the premise that life is painful and then we add to the pain (judgments, opinions, interpretations) and create our own suffering. Sometimes it’s major events and upsets, such as losing a parent, a loved one, a job or our financial stability. Sometimes it’s the small stuff, such as our partner being angry with us, our child not listening or our own internal suffering through judging ourselves for not being good enough, kinder, more understanding or understood and the list goes on and on. After doing this moment after moment, year after year it becomes toxic and exhausting. It’s also detrimental to your whole well-being! There are actual scientific studies of brain that prove this (judging, reacting, stressing, defensiveness, anxiety, etc) is detrimental to our mental, emotional, and physical self! So I want to say that you’re not alone! This is our conditioned way of being…which means you are normal! But normal isn’t going to get you what you want in relationship!
Personally, I have struggled with learning how to relate to stress and the roller coaster ride of emotions I face in this game called life. I got much better at it on my journey towards becoming a therapist…still there were times where all my knowledge would go out the window! As a therapists I have more tools in my toolbox then most people collect in a life time! So you’d think that I’d be calm and serene…sort of like this guy (His Holiness the Dalai Lama):
Truthfully, there have been moments in my life when I feel more like this frazzled woman:
I’m not as calm as the Dalai Lama and in reality there are very few people like him! On the other hand, I’m able to be much more present to myself and others when things get rocky. So how did I learn to be more present to those sensitive places inside myself that reacts to things in the outside world? I learned to develop a mindfulness practice in my daily life so that I could be less reactive and more present. This is what mindfulness meditation is all about and it is what I teach couples and individuals in my practice. Mindfulness is about learning how to relate to your inner experience with love and compassion so that you can relate to the world and everyone in it from a place of compassion instead of a place of anger, sadness or what reactivity (defensiveness, blaming, shutting down, etc.).
When you practice mindfulness you learn to build an awareness of what’s going on in your mind; judgments, thoughts, opinions, reactions without becoming overwhelmed/taken over by them. Many times what happens is that we have a thought “My partner doesn’t love me because he is angry all of the time.” and then we react to it in some way. We buy into the story as if it were fact and we forget that emotions, thoughts and judgments are not about facts. On the contrary they are about scanning the environment to make sure we are safe but this behavior often keep us imprisoned. So, can we get rid of our thoughts, judgments and all the other baggage that comes along with this busy mind of ours? Of course not! What we can do is learn to relate to these happenings with an open heart and mind, being what is called a compassionate witness. Watching what is happening in your mind without becoming identified with them, learning to sense how your body reacts to your thoughts and instead of reacting choosing to; become still and compassionate towards them.
The best way to learn is to actually do it! So, right now I want you to take a few minutes, stop what you’re doing and practice this guided meditation (click on the link below). Take notice about how you’re feeling before doing the meditation:
[box]Tara Brach: Sacred Pause Meditation[/box]
Now pause before going on with your normal routine and make a few notes on what you experienced. See if you can practice this meditation on a daily practice or when you are feeling stressed as practicing will help you build and develop the ability to stay present to your feelings.
Activity for incorporating mindfulness practice into your life:
The following quote is from a talk that was presented by Tara Brach, PhD and Rick Hanson Psychologist.
“Neuroscience now has the studies to prove that the quality/how we pay attention to our internal experiences (emotions, thoughts, judgments, reactions, etc.) changes our physical structure, our biochemistry, our emotional experiences. It changes how we behave so practicing mindfulness meditation helps us to face our internal experiences (reactivity, emotions, thoughts, etc.) in a way that leads to changing how we relte to the external world. This helps us attune to ourselves and the rest of the world with compassion.”
Below is a free podcast by Tara Brach about mindfulness and relationships. Set aside sometime free from distractions and make yourself comfortable so that you can really take in her teachings as well as the meditation at the end of the talk. Click on The Unreal Other for the talk and then Mindfulness Meditation
To schedule a couples session or to learn more about practicing mindfulness meditation please contact me at 954-793-6442 or you can email me at acaringcounselor@yahoo.com
Until next time! I wish you peace…
You are a marvelous writer.All contents were expressed in a clear and simplified manner and it was meaningful too.I enjoyed reading your post as well as learned from it.Patience is important to achieve mindfulness.
Hi Daniel…thank you for your beautiful appreciation of this post! I actually have a blog on Mindfulness at http://liveindmoment.blogspot.com/ Please feel free to visit my blog and post comments there. I do love to write and this flows so well with my passion for helping others. It’s great when I get feedback that validates this work. Thank you again 🙂