MBSR learning #5: Observe your reactions and emotions

Curious George observes, image courtesy of Google images

Did you know that simply observing your own reactions and emotions is being ‘mindful’?

Become an observer of yourself, of your mind.

Just notice how you are reacting with intentional curiosity. Hmm…

The simple act of noticing your emotions and labeling them is being mindful.  Label the emotions – such as:  anger, anxiety, sadness, love, grief, etc.  This is building your skill to notice your emotions, which lets you start to put some space between you and your emotions.  Over time, with practice, the emotions start to dissipate a little and become less of a distraction in your life. This doesn’t numb you so you are an emotionless being, it helps you experience  life by noticing more and having things bother you less. It helps to keep the monkey mind in check.

Related posts:

• Post #1 – Follow my experience taking the MBSR course
• Post #2 – Mindful Eating
• Post #3 – Think of your life as having ‘Visitors’
• Post #4 -Observe your run-away thinking
• How my friends and I discovered Mindfulness

Commonalities in spontaneous healings

‘Healed body’ image courtesy of Google Images

A very interesting piece of research that I learned from Dr. Joe Dispenza while on his course was what qualities were common in people that experienced spontaneous remissions and healings.

His subjects of study were people who had recovered from health issues such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, thyroid conditions, pain, etc, when no conventional or alternative treatments had been effective.

First, it’s interesting to note what they did not have in common: they did not have the same religion and some had no religion, not ‘new agers’, not all prayed, they varied in age, gender, ethnicity and amount of exercise.

Here’s what he discovered they all had in common:

1. All believed that a higher intelligence lived within him or her (various labels used such as divine, spirit, subconscious mind, God, etc).
2. All believed that our thoughts are real – thoughts directly affect the body.  Thoughts produce chemicals in the brain that allow your body to feel exactly the way you were just thinking.
3. All believed they could reinvent ourselves.  To become a changed person, they would need to rethink themselves into a new life. All made a conscious decision to reinvent themselves.  They asked themselves:  ‘What if….  I stop being unhappy, or self-centered, or a suffering person, or feeling guilty or unworthy?’
4. All became an observer of his/her old thoughts. They refused to allow anything but their intentions occupy their mind.

Isn’t this list thought-provoking? This goes hand-in-hand with what Dr. Dispenza teaches, and my resulting experience to lower my high blood pressure so I am living without medication now.  I am living proof that kind of thinking works. Simply amazing and achievable.

Praying or Meditating, or both?

I’ve often received the question “is meditating the same as praying?”.   When I came across this quote, it made the answer very clear.

Some people choose to pray during meditation, but it does not mean you are praying if you are meditating.

Meditation is about listening. It’s about observing yourself and your mind.  There is a tremendous sense of calm that meditation can bring into your life, a connection with life that you might miss by being ‘too busy’.

This is a great blog that contains numerous quotes of clarity and inspiration:  awakenedvibrations.tumblr.com

Have a lovely day everyone.

~Wendy

MBSR learning #4: Observe your run-away thinking

Here is another great learning from my mindfulness class:

The #1 biggest obstacle for people when meditating is feeling frustrated when they can’t quiet their mind – their mind keeps getting distracted by thoughts that interrupt their meditation. Meditation becomes frustrating and they feel like they can’t meditate.

It is fundamentally important to realize that the mind will have thoughts during meditation. The mind will wander. The mind will jump around like a monkey.

The key is this:

Be mindful and aware that these thoughts are happening, and gently bring your attention back to the chosen focus of your meditation (whether it is your breath, a mantra, sensations in your body, etc). This in itself is being mindful.

Here is a great analogy:

Let the trains of thought come and go, but don’t get on.

Think of your distracting thoughts as a train.  When you are meditating or practicing simple mindfulness, you may be aware that the distracting thought (the train) has arrived. What you do not want to do is ‘get on the train’ and feed the thought or keep with the thought. It’s like you are at a train station, watching the trains come and go, but do not get on. Or if find yourself already on the train, be mindful and get off the train.

As you practice mindfulness meditation, you will get increasingly better at recognizing when the train arrives, and get better at not getting on the train, and letting the train pass you by and go away.

This is being mindful. This brings more peace into your life.

Related posts:

• Post #1 – Follow my experience taking the MBSR course
• Post #2 – Mindful Eating
• Post #3 – Think of your life as having ‘Visitors’
• How my friends and I discovered Mindfulness

 

The tragedy of life

This quote really stopped me in my tracks. It made me realize how grateful I am to have awakened.  But for most of my life I think I was living in limbo and just going through the motions.  Let’s see how you feel when you read it:

“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon but that we wait so long to begin it.”

– W.M. Lewis

Living life fully does not need to be something ‘big’ like jumping out of a plane, it’s simply being present, grateful and fully enjoying what is in front of you.