Mindfulness with Nathanael ROUX
Thoughts and emotions
Goal : Deepen
our understanding of mind
Thoughts
Help:
- split
- thoughts linked to
the past / future / present moment
- thoughts linked to a
stimuli from one of the 5 senses door
- thoughts arising
from nowhere by themselves
Advice:
- Abide contemplating
thoughts unfolding
- Appear / stay /
disappear
- Recognize them for
what they are
- Become available
for the next one
- Each time we lose
contact
- No complaint, no
judgment
Additional exercise:
- Notice thoughts with
embedded emotions in it
- Identify gap between
thoughts and reality
- Identify recurring
patterns, habits and conditioning
- Notice associated
feelings : pleasant / unpleasanty / neutral
Benefit: see thoughts as
mental events, keep distance, do not systematically follow them or
react to them
Practical exercise: investigate how thoughts invade our mind
constantly, disconnect ourselves from reality (here and now) and
trigger automatic reaction
Additional benefit: transform progressively and shift from automatic
reaction to wise answer and gain serenity
Emotions
The 6 emotions are : anger,
disgust, fear, joy, sadness and surprise
The atlas of
emotions
Advice
When emotions storm is coming, it's
important to turn our attention toward the associated body sensations
and to look at them mindfully.
Where are they located and how do they evolve ?
- Do they move ?
- Do they change ?
- Do they grow ?
- Do they shrink ?
- What shape do they have ?
- What color do they have ?
- Are they vanishing ?
-
- if yes where do they go ?
As soon as body sensations
are back to normal, come back to breathing mindful awareness.
If no more strong body sensation,
look at your emotions, are they still there ?
Commentary
Meditation on thoughts and emotion is
quite complex, that’s why it is done after all the others.
Especially, without a strong breathing meditation practice which have
develop a strong mindfulness, it’s impossible not to get immediately
involved and lost by thoughts and emotions
and to keep enough distance with them in order to be able to observe
them.
So, if meditation on thoughts and emotions is too tough for the moment,
that’s ok, it only means that you have to spend more time to strengthen
your mindfulness using breathing meditation and come back later to
thoughts and emotions.
The traditional comparison to describe mindfulness, thoughts and
emotions are:
- The sky and the birds
or the clouds which are passing by without changing or altering it
- The sea and the waves,
small or big, even if the surface is stormy, underneath it is always
quiet and still
Link
Step7 : Loving kindness
