Week #5: Turn Toward Your Fear
This week’s exercises are about “turning toward difficulties.” Why pray tell, would you want to turn toward what’s bothering you? Because we are biologically programmed through millions of years of evolution to the mode of “fight or flight,” readying ourselves for threats -- lions on the Savannah or marauding tribes stealing our women and children. Our fight-or-flight system is a little obsolete -- oversensitive -- and in need of a little updating. This week, instead of gently pushing away our bothersome thoughts when they enter our meditation, we will bring our full awareness to them as well as any corresponding physiological manifestations -- muscle tightening, queasiness, heart-rate changes, etc. The motive for these exercises is to build distress tolerance, to reprogram how our bodies react to certain stimuli, thoughts, or distressing events. It is much like exposure therapy where you help someone overcome a fear of spiders by first talking about spiders, then viewing pictures of spiders, then watching a video of spiders, then looking at one in person.
If we can sit with our discomfort and learn how to cope with it, we change our body’s reaction to it. It loses its power over us.
This week, complete the following three meditations in sequence, one immediately following the other:
Use the following link: http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness
8-minute Breath and Body, track #4
8-minute Sounds and Thoughts, track #5
Followed by this week’s new meditation,
10-minute Exploring Difficulty, track #6
Also this week, perform the Breathing Space meditation as often as you like, whenever you feel stressors arise. But, this week, try adding words to your inner experience during step one, such as, “I feel anger or fear or boredom,” and during step three of the meditation, allow yourself to bring awareness to any sense of discomfort, tension or resistance. Tell yourself to be OK and open to anything you are feeling. Spend a few more minutes on this last step this week while you breathe in and out from those locations in your body where you feel the stress manifesting.
That’s all for this week! Acquaint yourself with your discomfort, find the peace beneath, and -- until next week -- enjoy the Now!