Home practice - week 6

• Meditation - Kindness to Self practice twice each day (click here to download a guided meditation)

  You can also download three variations of meditation 8 from the playlist that accompanies the workbook by clicking here. And if you want a longer practice, you can combine it with the Body Scan (from week 1), Mindfulness of Breathing (from week 2) or Mindful Movement (from week 3) practices.

  Remember to take care of yourself and not strain, over-do, or do anything that does not feel comfortable.

• This week’s Mindfulness in Action practice is to spend some time in the green zone every day.

  The feelings and emotions in the green zone include contentment, serenity, satisfaction, equanimity, appreciation, wonder, affection, empathy, kindness, love and compassion. It also includes the experiences of being absorbed in an activity: relaxation, fun and playfulness. The green zone is where creativity occurs, because it allows us to step out of habitual ways of reacting to things and people, and to look at them with a fresh perspective.

  Here are just a few examples of ways you could do this:

  • Stop every now and then and appreciate the world around you - the sky perhaps, or a bowl of fruit, the color of someone's clothing.

  • When you talk to someone try to connect with them as another human being. Give them your whole attention, really listen to them, be interested in what they say.

  • Have some fun. Make time for a fun activity, or make sure you have some fun in your ordinary daily activities. Be playful. Take things a little less seriously.

  • Do something that absorbs your attention. Something that makes you concentrate on it, to the exclusion of all other concerns, that causes you to be in the present moment. This could be a work task, a hobby or an everyday activity.

  • Commit random acts of kindness. Do something nice for someone, stop and chat with someone, offer to make tea or a meal for someone who is under pressure or in difficulty.

  • Spend some time with a friend.

  • Tell someone you love that you love them.

  • Let your creative Self play! Come up with your own green zone ideas and activities - the possibilities are endless...

Enjoy your practice!

The three major emotion systems

Blue (circle to the left): DRIVE system

Red (middle circle): THREAT system

Green (circle to the right): SOOTHING system

No system is better than the other. They are each appropriate at different times.

What causes stress, overwhelm, burnout, etc is getting “stuck” in the DRIVE and THREAT systems.

Most of us need to turn up our experience of the SOOTHING / green system and turn down the amount of time and energy we spend in the DRIVE and THREAT systems.

• In The Little Mindfulness Workbook :

  • you can review the key concepts from our live session by reading chapter 7 of the book.

  • you can download journal templates that accompany the workbook by clicking here.

• You can practice longer if you combine any of the Kindness to Self meditations with the Body Scan, Mindfulness of Breathing or Mindful Movement practices.

• You might like to check out Dr Kristin Neff’s work around Self-Compassion by clicking here. She also published the first empirical study on Self-Compassion in 2003. Click here to read the article.

• You may be interested to learn more about Tara Brach’s “RAIN” tool for mindfulness and Self-compassion by clicking here.

• Reflect on your practice and learning: notice what your experience is, jot down some notes in a journal, or share some reflections in the FB group to help your learning.

Poem

Love after love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~ By Derek Walcott

(click here for an audio version)