Meditations for Difficult Emotions

 

                When difficult emotions  such as fear or anxiety arise in our lives, what do we do?  Try to distract ourselves in some way?  Try to “stuff them” down?  Wallow endlessly in them?  Complain to our friends?   Yell at the universe or whoever we think caused them?  The teachings of the Buddha contain a better and  fundamentally different way.

                We can learn simple meditation practices that can help us be at peace with our emotions, no matter what they might be.  The following meditation is simple but very powerful, and it is something you can do by yourself at home or elsewhere.  Let’s take a walk through the steps involved.

• Find yourself a place where you can  sit quietly and be comfortable.  Sit upright with your head level and your back relatively strait—but not rigid and tense.  This will help to keep you awake and alert.  There is no need to sit in the lotus position or any other exotic position.  Sit in a favorite chair if you want.
• Close your eyes (unless you are uncomfortable doing so)  and take 6 or 8 slow, deep, and mindful breaths.  Breathing mindfully means that you are breathing and that you are aware of the physical sensations of breathing.  

•        Now allow your breath to become natural and whatever it wants to be.  Continue to breathe naturally and mindfully for a few minutes and allow your mind and body to settle.

•       Now focus on the feeling of stress (or anger, or fear, or self loathing…)  Still breathing naturally, your breathing has about 10% of your attention (it’s in the background) and the rest of your attention goes into feeling the emotion.  There is no need to describe or explain it—just feel it.

•        Where do you feel  the emotion in the body?  What does it actually feel like?  Stay with the feeling of the emotion for a few minutes and observe how it feels in the body.  Notice how it changes over time--perhaps shifting location, sometimes feeling more intense, and then almost vanishing.
  

•       Now shift your focus for a few minutes and notice the thought stream that accompanies the emotion.   Just observe the thoughts as they move through you, but don’t get caught up in them.  There is no need to judge the thoughts or judge yourself for having them.  It is the thought stream that powers the emotion and keeps it going.
  

•          If your difficult emotion is stress (for example) begin  repeating silently, and coordinated with the breath:  “Hello stress… I know that you are there.”  Say the first half of the words on the in-breath, and the second half on the out-breath.  Continue to do this for several minutes.

•        Next, shift your attention again and begin repeating, silently and coordinated with the breath:  “Aware of stress…Smiling to stress” and actually smile (it doesn’t need to be huge; a small smile is just fine).  Repeat this silently for several minutes and continue to breathe.

•         And finally, return attention to just the physical sensations of breathing again.  Just breathe easily and allow any accumulated tension to leave on each out-breath.  There is no need to try to force anything, and if the tension doesn’t leave that’s just fine.

•        When you are ready, open your eyes and bring your attention to your immediate surroundings.

                When you are doing this for the first time, it may be helpful to have some very short notes on a piece of paper to remind you of the steps.  Once you have done this several times you will be able to do it without notes.

                 This meditation can also be done as a micro-meditation at various times during your day-to-day activities.  If you are feeling stressed, angry, anxious, fearful, or ashamed take a few conscious breaths and say silently to yourself “Hello anxiety, I know you are there” and “Aware of anxiety… Smiling to anxiety.”  This is easy to do and does not take any time out of your day.

                It’s important to understand that this practice is not some sort of trick to make your emotions go away.  What we are doing here is learning to peacefully co-exist with the anxiety (or any other difficult emotion) so that its presence is not any sort of a problem.  The feeling is there, and you are ok with it being there.  We are training ourselves to have a different relationship with the emotions that arise within us.

 

 

Note:  For a much fuller presentation of these teachings, please see The Wisdom of the Buddha: Using Mindfulness to Change Your Life, Chapter 7: When Strong Emotions Arise, and Chapter 6:  Breaking the Grip of Habit Energy and Reactivity pages 87-88. Chapters available via e-mail on request.  Paperback and Kindle formats of the book are available from Amazon.

 

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            If you have questions, comments, or ideas for new Blog topics please contact Dale at ahimsaacres@gmail.com.