Positive Philosophy

Meditation as a Tool

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OLLI

May 2024

Day 2

Breathe.

Agenda

• Review
• Discussion: How’d it go?
• Focus on the Body
• Emotions are Information
• Self-Compassion
• Meditation: Working with Pain and Discomfort

REVIEW

For Beginners

• 3 things to focus on:
• Relaxation
• Directing Attention
• Observing the Content of Your Thoughts

DISCUSSION

Discussion Guidelines

• Speak about yourself only.
• Don’t give each other advice. Practice mindful listening.
• Recognize there are only a few people in the room, but many more online. Further, the recording of this session will be available in a library.
• Take home learning, but don’t identify anyone when you talk about it later. Observe the confidentiality of our space.

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Discussion

• How’d it go?
• Say something about your experience: a comment, question, thoughts that occurred to you…anything.

FOCUS ON THE BODY

Observing Content

• Content includes both thoughts and emotions, stories, opinions, events of the day…the ego itself.

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Observing Content

• “When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present—our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes, our love—everything that moves us most deeply.”
• —Jack Kornfield

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“[The ego] consists of thought and emotion,

of a bundle of memories you identify with as ‘me and my story,’

of habitual roles you play without knowing it,

of collective identifications such as nationality, religion, race, social class, or political allegiance.

It also contains personal identifications, not only with possessions, but also with opinions, external appearance, long-standing resentments, or concepts of yourself as better than or not as good as others, a success or failure.”

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

THE EGO LABELS OUR FEELINGS…

• Awareness of the body is awareness of feelings.
• Feelings can be physical or emotional.
• Our egos tend to label our feelings as good/bad, pain/pleasure, hot/cold…
• Awareness of feelings asks us to consider that all of these feelings are sensations first – simply sensations – before the mind has a chance to label them.
• So, we try to focus on the sensations -- direct our attention and curious awareness to really feel into the sensations.

THE EGO GIVES US THOUGHTS ABOUT OUR FEELINGS…

• Part of our issue with discomfort is we have thoughts about the discomfort that further exacerbate the discomfort:
• I shouldn’t be feeling this…
• I don’t want to be feeling this…
• This feeling is ruining my life…
• So, the pain itself is part of the pain, but our thoughts about the pain make it worse.
• These meditation practices help change our relationship to the pain and discomfort – pain doesn’t go away, but we think about it differently.

Caveats

• Many of you have real trauma and injuries – meditation is no substitute for medical care. Meditation can be used alongside of other medical interventions but want to make it clear that it is not a substitute.
• Especially as beginners, we start with what we can easily deal with and then move to more difficult material.

MINI-MEDITATION: �FOCUS ON THE SENSATIONS

EMOTIONS ARE INFORMATION

PERMISSION TO FEEL

• “My message to everyone is the same: that if we can learn to identify, express, and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.”

PERMISSION TO FEEL

EMOTION SCIENTIST

• Open, curious, reflective
• Views emotions as information
• Wants to go deeper into their emotions and understand the details – seeks understanding – questions.
• No value judgements
• Growth mindset toward learning about emotions

• Critical, closed, ignores emotions
• Emotions are errors or mistakes
• Evaluates emotions – judges them, validates or invalidates them
• Labels emotions as good or bad
• Fixed mindset

EMOTION JUDGE

PROCESSING FEELINGS: �NO NEED TO ACT ON THEM RAW.

PROCESSING EMOTIONS

• Emotions can lead us to our values.

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• We can listen to them for important information.

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• If we don’t listen to them, then they get LOUDER and come out when we least expect it.

EMOTIONS ARE TEACHERS.

JOY

• Keeps us going toward things that make us happy.
• The experience of happiness, well-being, and/or contentment combined with a sense of purpose and meaning, a feeling that our life is worthwhile.
• Fleeting feeling of silliness, delight, or glee, as well as a deeper, more abiding sense of satisfaction, pleasure, or bliss.

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IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT HAPPINESS.

“The process isn’t about ignoring difficult emotions and thoughts. It’s about holding those emotions and thoughts loosely, facing them courageously and compassionately, and then moving past them [when ready] to make big things happen in your life.”

Susan David, Emotional Agility

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EMODIVERSITY

• A recent study found that people who experience “emodiversity,” or a rich array of both positive and negative emotions, have better mental health. The authors of this study suggest that feeling a variety of specific emotions may give a person more detailed information about a particular situation, thus resulting in better behavioral choices—and potentially greater happiness.
• Cannot force happiness. All emotions are worthwhile, necessary, important, and part of the human experience.
• Get away from “positive” and “negative” as descriptors – joy can be just as challenging as sadness for many of us.
• Emotions can be light, heavy, challenging, easy – lots of other, more accurate descriptors

FEAR

• Protects us against harm.
• Very important to listen to fear, be aware of our fears, and where they come from.
• Fears are always rational. They are not always based on what’s happening now.

ANGER

• Shows us what we value.
• Alerts us when boundaries are crossed.
• Concerned with justice and fairness.
• “Good, clean anger” gives rise to social justice and helps us act to protect others.

SADNESS

• Connects us to each other, helps us reach out for help and alerts others to reach out to us to help, lets us know what we value.
• Sadness over the loss of something or someone shows us what’s important to us, whether a relationship, an idea, or a hope.
• Launchpad for empathy, understanding, and support. Helps us recover from loss.

DISGUST

• Protects us from poison – both physical and social.
• Along with fear, disgust works to keep us safe.

BIG IDEAS

• All emotions serve a purpose. All are valid.
• Observing and understanding our emotions can lead to greater mental and physical health.
• While happiness is a lovely goal, it can’t be forced.
• Gratitude and the evolution of “fake it ‘til you make it.”
• Suppressing emotions never works.

MEDITATION/CBT CRITICISM

• We’re not just observing and allowing our feelings, so the perceived negative ones can move over to allow more space for the perceived positive ones like happiness.
• Sometimes, meditation or CBT can seem invalidating to our very real and valid feelings.
• What mindfulness can do is allow us to approach our emotions with kindness, curiosity, and compassion. It can allow us to relate to our feelings differently.

EMOTIONAL AGILITY

“NOT trying to change your thoughts, NOT trying to force yourself to think differently, but to allow your headspace to open up so we can calmingly choose how to personally and internally respond to situations that life will throw at us.”

--Alex, college student

Pema Chodron: Bodichitta, the Awakened Heart

“…facing into your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors willingly, with curiosity and kindness.”

“…we can let the circumstances of our lives harden us so that we become increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and make us kinder and more open to what scares us. We always have this choice.”

Breathe.

Let’s try it.

Cultivate the observer with our emotions.

MINDFUL SELF-COMPASSION

SELF-COMPASSION

• What is self-compassion? The same as compassion for others:
• Notice suffering.
• Feeling moved by others’ suffering so that your heart responds to their pain (the word compassion literally means to “suffer with”)
• Having felt this shared pain, you feel warmth, caring, and desire to help. You offer understanding and kindness.
• When you feel compassion, you realize that suffering, failure, and imperfection is part of the shared human experience.

SELF-COMPASSION IS NOT…

• Pity or self-pity
• Self-pity: immersed in your own problems, your own suffering, forget about others, exaggerate your own uniqueness in your suffering; isolation and disconnection, emotional drama. “No one else has ever suffered pain like this!”
• Self-indulgence
• You don’t let yourself “get away with anything.” Maintain health, acknowledge feelings, not numbing them with a quart of ice cream and an 8-hour binge of Gilmore Girls.
• Self-Esteem
• Self-esteem is related, but can focus on separating yourself in order to make yourself feel better. It’s about self-worth, perceived value, or how much you like yourself. There is no self-evaluation involved in self-compassion. You deserve compassion no matter what – all human beings deserve compassion and understanding – it’s always available.

THREE ELEMENTS OF SELF-COMPASSION

• Self-kindness vs. self-judgment
• Common humanity vs. Isolation
• Mindfulness vs. Over-identification

SELF-COMPASSION…

Is, honestly,

the most important thing we need to grow in ourselves.

IN SUM…

FEELINGS…

• Physical and emotional
• Sensations
• Purpose of the emotions
• Bring compassion to yourself throughout this process.

STRATEGIES

Focus on sensations

Notice your thoughts

Take it moment by moment; notice changes

Move to a different area of the body that is at ease

Anchor in a easy place, just touch the edge of pain, go back and forth between pain and ease

STRATEGIES

Put the discomfort in the context of the whole body

Offer compassion and validation

Connect to the breath, use breathing strategies

MEDITATION RX

1. This week, expand your practice to two minutes every day.
2. Again, focus on being gentle with yourself. Employ some self-compassion.
3. Increase your awareness of emotions as information and helpful guides to what we value. All emotions are valuable, not just the happy ones. Begin to notice and get curious about your emotions. Maybe take one emotion each day and learn about it.

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MEDITATION: WORKING WITH �PAIN AND DISCOMFORT