Mindfulness training improves concentration, attention span, and memory. Mindfulness can help you regulate your emotions by decreasing emotional reactivity while increasing compassion for yourself. Your capacity for empathy can and will increase with regular mindfulness practice.
It is only when the mind is open and receptive that learning and seeing and change can occur.
~ Jon Kabat-Zinn
Alleviate Stress and Negative Thinking
Humans naturally tend to focus more on the negative aspects of situations, ourselves, and others, a phenomenon known as negativity bias. This tendency can erode our self-esteem and lead to irrational judgments about our friends and family.
As for our stress response, it is deeply rooted in our biology, stemming from our innate fight-or-flight mechanism. Stress is essentially our body’s way of preparing to face or flee from perceived threats. While this response was crucial for our ancestors’ survival, in modern times, it often manifests in situations where physical action is neither necessary nor helpful.
Meditation offers a powerful tool to counteract both negativity bias and the stress response, allowing us to appreciate the goodness present in our lives. By uplifting our hearts and minds, we gain the energy and strength to devote to what truly matters.
Alleviate Feelings of Anger and Frustration
Anger is often a useful and important emotion, but, left unchecked it can get the best of us and take us out of the present moment. At its core, anger is about conflict: conflict with others, ourselves, or situations.
Bottling up anger wears on your health. On the other hand, lashing out stresses the body and it can make you feel destructive, dangerous, and out of control.
Bringing mindfulness to your anger can lead to the realization that when the emotion of anger is present, it’s often a knee-jerk reaction to the softer emotions beneath – like hurt or fear.
And so, by practicing mindfulness and gently acknowledging those emotions you allow yourself to regain control over your emotions and reactions, promoting a sense of calm and clarity amidst tumultuous feelings.
Observing Frustration
Annoyance, frustration, and anger can be challenging emotions to work with. We often judge ourselves for feeling frustrated, equating this emotion with negativity
Other times, we might feel so righteous about our frustration that we hold onto it tightly.
By exploring how frustration feels in the body, we can learn to be present as it arises, neither avoiding nor grasping at it. In the resulting space that’s created, we can invite in self-compassion and understanding.
After all, these emotions are not good or bad, nor right or wrong – they are what make us human.
This guided meditation asks us to recall a past moment of slight annoyance or mild frustration.
By sitting with this sensation and observing it, we learn we can let it move as it wants to.
I invite you to find a posture that balances comfort with alertness, whether standing, seated, or lying down. May this meditation be of benefit to you.