A 12-Minute Meditation for Sitting With Uncomfortable Emotions

On this guided meditation, Diana Hill invitations us right into a soothing area the place we be taught to embrace our uncomfortable emotions, each bodily and emotional.

On this meditation, we’re going to observe sitting with an uncomfortable emotion. As people, we now have all types of feelings that present up in our day. We’ve got irritability, anger, disappointment, anxiousness, pleasure, and bodily discomfort. Avoiding our feelings or closing off to them can lead us astray from listening to the underlying want of our emotion or the values that the discomfort is pointing to. So on this observe, you’ll observe observing and providing compassion to a tough feeling.

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A Guided Meditation for Sitting With Uncomfortable Emotions

1. You are able to do this meditation sitting or mendacity down. Permit your shoulders and your higher again to loosen up. Your eyes could be closed or wanting softly at a spot in entrance of you.
2. Start to decelerate the rhythm of your respiration. Inhaling, you’ll be able to say to your self, “I’m conscious that I’m inhaling.” And respiration out, “I’m conscious that I’m respiration out.” Inhaling. And respiration out.
3. Begin to discover the slowing down of your coronary heart charge, of your blood strain, permitting you to completely be right here on this current second. 
4. Really feel your physique the place it makes contact with the ground. Really feel the air round you in your pores and skin. And hearken to any sounds inside or exterior your room, all orienting you to the right here and now. 
5. Begin to discover the place there’s discomfort. Possibly there’s an uncomfortable ache like bodily ache. Possibly there’s an uncomfortable emotion—anger, disappointment, irritation, confusion, loneliness.
6. Climb inside your physique and see the place there’s some type of discomfort for you. One thing that perhaps you want wasn’t there. And step one in being current with an emotion in your physique is to watch it. Discover the place it’s inside you, its weight, if it has a form or a texture. If it has a shade, what shade wouldn’t it be?
7. Preserve respiration as you observe your discomfort. Inhaling, you’ll be able to say, “I’m conscious of my uncomfortable feeling.” Respiratory out, “I observe my uncomfortable feeling.” Simply preserve bringing consciousness to and observing this discomfort. 
8. Now, discover the place you’re bracing your self round your discomfort. The place are you tensing or contracting? See in case you can soften across the edges of your discomfort. Let go of the strain and make extra space or no matter it’s you’re feeling.
9. Now, carry some care, acknowledgment, validation, and heat to your discomfort. You possibly can place your hand in your physique the place you are feeling it. You might use some heat, validating phrases like, “It’s comprehensible that you simply really feel this fashion. I’m right here for you.” You might even think about sending some care to this sense, bringing some heat, some acknowledgment that this can be a second of simply consolation, and that you simply’re right here for your self with it. 
10. For those who want extra heat that’s not simply your individual, you’ll be able to herald imagery of individuals or pets or nature to encompass you and be with you. You possibly can really feel that presence with you, as nicely, as you’re making area for and bringing heat to this discomfort. 
11. The final step is to ask your self, “What’s it that’s essential right here?” Possibly this ache, bodily or emotional, is making an attempt to inform you one thing. One thing that you simply want or one thing that you simply worth. What’s essential right here? And as you make contact with what’s essential to you, your worth beneath this discomfort, you now have the capability to behave on that worth, to behave on that factor that’s essential to you.  
12. Think about your self transferring all through your day, acknowledging and observing any discomfort you’ve gotten, softening round it, bringing heat to it, after which performing on that factor that’s most essential to you. What would that seem like? 
13. Once you really feel prepared, carry your consciousness outward towards sounds within the room. Discover the temperature in your pores and skin, your physique making contact with the ground. And inhaling, say, “I’ve arrived.” Respiratory out, “I’m right here.”  
14. Thanks to your observe right now.