As we turn inward, engaging in mindfulness practices, we learn to more generously respond with compassion to ourselves and others.
Our sitting practice can attune us to physical sensations, at times heightening them, which can be applied to mindful meals, movement, sound, etc. During our meditation practices, we can also notice and observe how sensations in the body (an itch in the ear, tight shoulders, for example.) can arise. Much like our thoughts, they may come and go. When they linger there, they can hold a message for us (constriction can be indicative of anxiety/trauma/stressor); and, they always invite choice: 1) We can halt the reaction to move/adjust/change it, breathing into it and observing it dissipate, 2) we can breathe into it, notice no change, sit with the discomfort and notice the body as a whole or 3), we can, with intention, respond to it, adjusting our posture/itch/etc with observance and intentionality.
This practice of sitting with discomforts, choosing responses in mindful practice, without a need to immediately soothe/react, provide a felt-sense of helpful responding to life's pulls and discomforts. They also help us more compassionately respond when we notice a reaction (in ourselves and/or others), fully aware that in the next moment, and in the next, another choice is offered. When we can acknowledge, integrate, and move through our less wise choices (reactions), we move to greater wholeness, freedom and acceptance,
Our sitting practice can also support internal sensing, which further support humility and compassion. Here, we more keenly understand that what we/others "see," "touch," "taste" "feel," "hear" are partial glimpses of experiences/"truths"-in that moment. And, what's going on "out there" is nicely intertwined and reflected in with what's going on inside. Distinctions, categories, separations of ourselves from aspects of ourselves and/or others make less sense and are untenable.
."...take a month and show some kindness
for the folks
who thought that blindness
was an illness that
affected eyes alone.." Maya Angelou
Our sitting practice can attune us to physical sensations, at times heightening them, which can be applied to mindful meals, movement, sound, etc. During our meditation practices, we can also notice and observe how sensations in the body (an itch in the ear, tight shoulders, for example.) can arise. Much like our thoughts, they may come and go. When they linger there, they can hold a message for us (constriction can be indicative of anxiety/trauma/stressor); and, they always invite choice: 1) We can halt the reaction to move/adjust/change it, breathing into it and observing it dissipate, 2) we can breathe into it, notice no change, sit with the discomfort and notice the body as a whole or 3), we can, with intention, respond to it, adjusting our posture/itch/etc with observance and intentionality.
This practice of sitting with discomforts, choosing responses in mindful practice, without a need to immediately soothe/react, provide a felt-sense of helpful responding to life's pulls and discomforts. They also help us more compassionately respond when we notice a reaction (in ourselves and/or others), fully aware that in the next moment, and in the next, another choice is offered. When we can acknowledge, integrate, and move through our less wise choices (reactions), we move to greater wholeness, freedom and acceptance,
Our sitting practice can also support internal sensing, which further support humility and compassion. Here, we more keenly understand that what we/others "see," "touch," "taste" "feel," "hear" are partial glimpses of experiences/"truths"-in that moment. And, what's going on "out there" is nicely intertwined and reflected in with what's going on inside. Distinctions, categories, separations of ourselves from aspects of ourselves and/or others make less sense and are untenable.
."...take a month and show some kindness
for the folks
who thought that blindness
was an illness that
affected eyes alone.." Maya Angelou
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