Health Journal Online

Tag: difficult emotions

  • A Meditation to Help Build Your Capacity to Navigate Difficulty

    A Meditation to Help Build Your Capacity to Navigate Difficulty

    Hello, I’m Rich, and this is our fourth module on the theme of living with meaning, purpose and resilience. 

    Resilience, simply defined, is being able to bounce back from adversity (though it should be noted that “bouncing back” doesn’t necessarily mean going back to exactly who we were before the challenge arose, since adversity can significantly change us as people). It’s our ability to meet the challenges that arise, return to our center, find our footing, and navigate effectively. It’s not about stopping all challenges in life because that would be impossible. Stress and difficulties arise in our lives all the time. It’s a question of how we meet those challenges, how we navigate through them and work with them. 

    So I’d like to offer some tools and a meditation around this. And again, this is part of a larger series on defining meaning, purpose, and, now, resilience. I like to offer resilience as the last piece because in the course of this journey to being our best, to living with purpose and meaning, we will encounter difficulties. We all do. We’re human. So I’m certain that, without a doubt, every single one of you will experience failure. I have. 

    In fact, I can say I’ve experienced failure quite continuously throughout my life. Now, what’s really important here are the words we use and the way we think about failure. I said just now that you will experience failure. I didn’t say you are a failure. I didn’t define it that way. And that’s really the critical pivot point of resilience: doing what’s called moving from an existential trait to an experiential state around the experience of difficulties. 

    So if that seems abstract, let me explain a bit further. Often when we meet challenges it’s very easy to fall into a narrative about guess who? About yourself. And very often, when we experience failure or adversity, that narrative can be negative. Those stories we tell ourselves can be as simple as, “I’m a failure,” “I’m unworthy,” “I’m inadequate,” “I’m incompetent—what’s wrong with me?” It’s a lot of self-criticism, and it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. 

    Outsmarting Our Negativity Bias

    In fact, our brains are actually wired for something called the negativity bias. It’s an evolutionary phenomenon whereby we attune to danger and threats and negative stimuli in our environment much more than positive ones. Some research says it’s roughly a rate of 3 to 1 that we pay more attention to the negative than the positive. And that is then magnified when we experience challenges and difficulties. It’s really important, then, to be aware and to work counter to that negativity bias. 

    That’s where this shift from existential trait to experiential state helps. It’s something I do a lot, so let me give you an example from my own experience. As you know, I run a non-profit, and there have been periods where we’re not meeting our key performance indicators, our core metrics, for example. In those instances, as the leader of this organization, I’ve found myself at times asking, “What’s wrong with you, Rich? This quarter was terrible.” And I feel inadequate and begin doubting my abilities. It’s almost as though I’m categorizing myself in this trait-like fashion as if I’m not competent. When in reality, our organization simply experienced a difficult quarter: there were difficult conditions in the market and the ecosystem in which we work. And as a leader I faced challenges around how to right the ship, how to pivot and consider different solutions with my team. 

    I remember there was a moment where I thought, “I’m just a failure. I’m failing at this quarter.” Then I actually paused and thought about it: We experienced the failure. I experienced a setback and a shortcoming. I experienced a failure. I had the experience of failure. That’s it. And that’s very different from framing things as, “I am a failure.”

    Tap into the Liberating Shift

    So that’s the critical shift. It’s what we at Search Inside Yourself like to call the liberating shift—from existential to experiential. And I want to invite you to join in a meditation on that liberating shift today because for me, that’s the key factor in resilience: the shifting from existential to experiential. 

    Before we get started, though, I want to encourage you to really inhabit the perspective of experiencing something. Nothing more—it’s just an experience. Take emotions or feelings, for example: they are actually physiological processes in the body. They come; they arise; we feel them; and then they go. So it’s actually a process that plays out in our bodies. When we’re triggered and have difficult experiences and feel difficult emotions, those are also just physiological processes. They’re not facts. They’re not sentences or indictments. And they’re certainly not traits. Again, we know from physiological science that emotion is a process. So the encouragement for this practice, if difficult emotion arises—whether it’s stress, anxiety, fear, sadness, whatever it might be—is to see it arise and to see it as a process, not as a trait. 

    Let’s now try a meditation that allows us to experience this firsthand. 

    A Meditation to Help Build Your Capacity to Navigate Difficulty

    Watch the video:

    Listen to the audio

    Read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.

    1. I invite you to sit in a way that is alert but relaxed at the same time—whatever that means for you. Close your eyes, if you’d like. Or just soften the visual field by gazing downward. Take a moment as we begin to collect our attention. 
    2. Now, bring awareness to your body—the felt experience of your body wherever you find yourself. Bring firm but gentle attention to your breath; the in breaths and the out breaths. Just collect your attention for a moment here, taking a minute to arrive, with your mind and your heart and your body all in this moment, whatever this means to you. 
    3. Now I’d like to invite you, just as you are, to this meditation on resilience. I invite you to consider a difficult situation or person—nothing traumatic—just something that was difficult for you, or a person who was difficult for you, perhaps over the past week or another period of time. Calling this situation or person to mind, and noting what feeling or emotion arises when you reflect on this. What sensations are you feeling in your body as you consider this situation or person? It could be something like: I am experiencing stress. Or, with regard to a person: I am experiencing anger or frustration. Whatever it is you’re experiencing, just noting it: “I am experiencing ….” 
    4. Now just as you are, note how different that is from saying “I am stressed” or “I am frustrated.” Instead, “I am experiencing” emphasizes the process. And emotion is a process. It is a state you are aware of. Name it to know it. And note how it may change as you name it and take note. With this we’re taking that small step back to gain perspective on the experience of difficulty. I encourage you to take the “I” out of it. Instead: “There is the experience of frustration. Because who is the “I”? Just bringing a kind, loving awareness to “There is the experience of stress; there is the experience of frustration in the body.”
    5. Notice how that feels to adopt that broader perspective. This is the liberating shift between I am stressed or frustrated to there is the experience of stress or frustration currently in my body. Whatever that emotion is for you, bring this quality of awareness—the experience of—and fill in the blank. Just see how that feels in the body. And then whatever arises next for you: experiences and emotions are rising and moving and changing in the body frequently.
    6. As we wrap up this meditation on resilience, take a few last breaths at your own pace, reconnecting with your breathing. And when you’re ready, open your eyes and rejoin. 

    It’s really important to bring this capacity to shift into our lives. We all have the capability to expand our perspective, and even subtract ourselves from the equation. Stress is real; difficult emotions are real. I don’t suggest we suppress or deny or push any of that away, but I am suggesting that we be in wise relationship with them, as one of my teachers Jon Kabat-Zinn likes to say. So, wise relationship with our difficulties is that liberating shift that will affect resilience. 

    I hope this has been useful for you. This concludes the four-module series of meditations for living with meaning, purpose and resilience. I’d like to end with a poem that brings all of this together. It really brings the idea of attuning to what’s alive within you and standing in that place with strength and resilience. I’ve written this poem myself. It’s called

    “The Quiet Invitation”
    In the vividness of the journey from
    Being to becoming,
    Amidst the flickering dance between action and reflection, 
    Alignment emerges, 
    A close knowing, a path glowing faintly in the mists of imagination. 
    Not so much chosen as revealed
    Even as you stand blinking in fear or wonder. 
    There comes the still, quiet voice at the center of things—that sweet, gentle calling that whispers This is true.
    This is good. 
    This is alive now. 
    You are called an invitation to wholeness
    In this everyday arc of your life. 

    So, with that my friends. Thank you so much. I wish you all well. Take good care.

    About The Author

    Rich Fernandez

    Rich Fernandez is the former CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI). He was previously the director of executive education and people development at Google, where he was also one of the first SIY teachers. Rich previously co-founded Wisdom Labs and has also served in senior roles at eBay, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America.

    About The Author

    Rich Fernandez

    Rich Fernandez

    Rich Fernandez is the former CEO of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI). He was previously the director of executive education and people development at Google, where he was also one of the first SIY teachers. Rich previously co-founded Wisdom Labs and has also served in senior roles at eBay, J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank of America.



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  • Befriend Vulnerability With A 12-Minute Meditation

    Befriend Vulnerability With A 12-Minute Meditation

    Learning to tune in to our own vulnerability is an act of courage that allows us to form deeper, more genuine relationships.

    If you’re someone who grew up being told that tears are a sign of weakness, or that you should never show fear lest you be exploited, you understand how very difficult it is to communicate complex emotions like jealousy, resentment, or sorrow. You protect these experiences, holding them close to your chest like a dislocated arm in a sling. Just as extending the injured arm would create a risk of further injury, keeping parts of yourself out of intimate relationships prevents emotional hurt and exploitation.

    You know how this looks for you.

    Maybe you become stoic and isolate yourself. Perhaps you bury yourself in work or your hobbies. If you’re in a fragile state, you might displace your anger and rage against someone innocent, or who’s an easy target. None of these things feel good, and it’s easy to feel ashamed if your actions have pushed people away.

    This limiting mindset doesn’t have to be a defining feature, however. Vulnerability can be learned. In fact, anyone can learn how to be vulnerable with themselves.

    A Practice to Begin Healing

    1. To begin, find a quiet place to reflect on these questions in silence. If you prefer, there’s also the option to write down your answers.
    2. What has been your relationship with vulnerability?
    3. Reflect on a time that turned out favorably when you made a decision to be vulnerable with someone you trust. It can be anything, even something small. Reflecting on that now, how did it feel to allow this person to witness you in your need? What did it perhaps do for your relationship?
    4. Keeping that positive experience of vulnerability in mind, is there a part of you that’s been hidden, and that you’re now needing to acknowledge? Consider a difficult emotion, like loneliness, that’s been hard to name, and the impact of just letting it be present without registering it.
    5. What would it be like to bring your experience to someone you trust? Consider the positive outcome you had in step three, in which you overcame your reluctance around vulnerability and brought your issue forward. If this were once again possible, is there something you would now need to address with someone trustworthy?
    6. Finally, reflect on what might be gained from this exercise in vulnerability: the ability to let someone else recognize and possibly help you carry a struggle, the opportunity to strengthen the bond of your relationship, the deepening of trust in addressing other vulnerable parts of your life that may show up in the future.

    A Guided Meditation to Befriend Vulnerability

    1. To begin, find a comfortable place in your home where you can sit or lie down and just listen to this meditation free of distractions, where you can just be for a few moments. Positioning yourself comfortably, allow yourself to take an in-breath through the nose. Exhaling through the mouth. Another breath in through the nose, and out through the mouth. Just continuing to breathe in this manner.
    2. In your mind’s eye, allow yourself to really observe that part of you that yearns to be seen, yearns to be noticed, that yearns to be forgiven, that yearns to be loved. And as you encounter this part of you, allow it to really be enhanced. Really notice the qualities of what it would mean to be seen, to be loved, to be healed.
    3. This is your gift. A gift to give to someone you trust. Reflecting now on this gift: Who in your life deserves to see, to know, to forgive, to love this part of you? Bring their face into your mind’s eye. Noticing the qualities that tell you this person is trustworthy, is deserving of your vulnerability.
    4. Allow yourself to see, as well, the potential for your own life and sharing this gift with this person. What would it mean to you to bring this part of you into this relationship now? Really notice them loving you. Forgiving you, healing you by witnessing you and your vulnerability.
    5. As you do so, make a commitment to yourself of what it is that needs to be said and shared with this person who has shown you that they are trustworthy.
    A 12-Minute Meditation to Cultivate an Open Heart 

    During times of crisis and uncertainty, touching into your groundedness while remaining open can help you find calm—and inspire others to do the same. Meena Srinivasan offers a guided practice for staying both rooted and open. Read More 

    • Meena Srinivasan
    • July 19, 2022



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  • Why Imagination—Not Resilience—Might Help You Heal From Heartbreak

    Why Imagination—Not Resilience—Might Help You Heal From Heartbreak

    One of the words most bandied about during challenges, even before these upside-down pandemic times, is resilience. We hear a lot about our collective need for strength, or our individual cultivation of effort in the face of adversity.

    Notable books have connoted resilience with Grit, or climbing The Second Mountain, or Bouncing Back. The Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” Alternatively, Merriam Webster likens resilience to a form of rubbery elasticity, or the ability “to adjust easily to misfortune.” The takeaway being that to survive crisis, we must quickly and easily adopt the quality of sand that gets in your teeth—or, like rubber, we must reflect a type of unchanging, indestructible goo.

    Even social scientists, who take a nuanced view of resilience as “a stable trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event,” require levels of stability and health that are difficult to maintain for even the most seasoned mindfulness practitioners.

    Who we were before cannot be resurrected; grief and trauma aren’t about stretching and then regaining our original shape, they are about being reformed into what some grief experts call the dynamic shift from Life One to Life Two.

    Cultivating resilience during times of adversity is exhausting. Many people feel weak when faced with a crisis and it is dissonant to suggest they be physically or mentally tough. As an end of life doula, I regularly see this response. A hospice patient, a woman of deep spiritual grounding, with years of contemplative practice, recently said to me, “I’m not tough. I am scared. I am tired. I am so ordinary.” To suggest that she develop resilience feels out of sync with her reality. In my experience, if a concept doesn’t provide comfort in death, it is ill formed to support us in life. This means resilience, despite its popularity and positive intent, does not necessarily encourage effective coping. 

    “Bouncing Back” from Grief

    Another challenge with resilience is the implication of elasticity. As anyone who has faced profound loss or suffering can attest, a person cannot take the same shape afterward as they had before. “Bouncing back” suggests that it is possible to go back to a prior pre-crisis life, that the past is inherently more desirable than the present.

    It may feel true in a time of suffering that yesterday was better than today, but functionally there is only this moment. Looking constantly backward leads to the belief that an imaginary past self is required to survive a crisis. This is false. Who we were before cannot be resurrected; grief and trauma aren’t about stretching and then regaining our original shape. They are about being reformed into what some grief experts call the dynamic shift from Life One to Life Two. 

    How Imagination Helps

    What then should we make of this obsession with resilience as a way to survive through suffering? What if instead of resilience, there was an alternative, one that allowed for the mysterious potentiality of an unwritten future?

    What if we met hardship not with resilience but with imagination? Imagination is about curiosity, openness, and adaptability. It encourages us to perceive the darkest moments of struggle as neither fixed, nor inflexible, but subject to change. Imagination is about expansive potential. 

    The familiar phrase “not in my wildest imagination” conjures up worst-case scenarios and magical thinking, but that is not the only type of imagination you can call on. Alternatively, there is the pragmatic imagination required to address adversity. Researchers from the University of Colorado and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai studied people’s brains after asking them to imagine ways to adapt to various types of threats. They concluded that imagination “reduces neural and physiological conditioned threat responses,” particularly by stimulating the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that oversees decision making, logic, and executive function.

    One example of this is extinction theory, an imagination practice in behavioral psychology where a person reimagines an event from the past to neutralize its negative effects. But imagination is not just for working with past trauma. Instead it is a form of cognitive flexibility that we can practice both in non-crisis situations as well as in the middle of life’s most challenging moments. 

    Start With What Matters Most

    How do we ignite the power of imagination in times of suffering? First, we must start by understanding our priorities. Begin by asking: What matters most to me right now? What must I hold on to or protect? From there, it is a matter of operationalizing our priorities into manageable, reasonable next steps. What is possible in this moment? Possible is different than desirable; it is not tied to outcomes but to one’s inner ability to choose. What choices do I have right now? How do my choices tie to what matters most? Sounds simple, but from the depths of suffering even the smallest choices feel monumental. 

    I remember after the sudden death of my sister when I was in my 20s, lying in bed paralyzed by grief. Deep within I prioritized finding meaning and making it through the experience intact, but more broadly I couldn’t imagine where my life would go, how I could live without my best friend. 

    During even the darkest times there are surprising glimmers of light that one can use to ignite imagination and ease the overwhelming grief. The momentary glimmers are proof points for imagination, reminders that there is something other than the pain.

    So, I started imagining small things; putting on my shoes, going to class, taking a walk by the lake. Gradually, I pictured more expansive parts of my life—getting an internship, applying for a job, finding ways to give back. These things helped me focus and I held on to them. It wasn’t a heroically resilient process. I had very little rubbery strength. It was tiny moments of imagination that slowly helped me fill in the shape of Life Two. 

    Ignite Your Imagination

    While we can’t imagine suffering away, we can imagine space within suffering for other occurrences—laughter, connection, compassion. Many recently bereaved families describe unexpectedly meaningful conversations with perfect strangers, or feelings of gratitude at an outpouring of support from a friend, or momentary peace when a ray of sunshine hit their face. During even the darkest times there are surprising glimmers of light that one can use to ignite imagination and ease the overwhelming grief. The momentary glimmers are proof points for imagination, reminders that there is something other than the pain.

    One of the most powerful ways we utilize imagination is through choice. Pain can create a tunnel vision that limits our ability to see a wider picture. Imagining there are choices can help us cope. Imagining choices is different than positive thinking. Positivity assumes outcomes, it often relies on a belief that “things will all work out.” But there is no guarantee of a positive outcome in every situation—as bereaved people well know.

    Imagination suggests that even in hopeless situations we have a choice to show kindness, to accept help, to experience more than just one way of being. For example, dying people commonly feel pain and fear; asking them to imagine something meaningful offers the possibility to feel something alongside the pain, even if only for a moment. Imagination applies equally to end of life as to everyday life. 

    People try to survive trauma and suffering with strength, grit, or resilience all the time—by hardening. But the point of a mindfulness practice is not merely hardened survival. There is space between the suffering where mystery lives, where we can soften and be curious, where the uncertainty isn’t one of dread, but of wide vistas and joyous laughter. If we cannot accept suffering, we cannot free ourselves from the fear of it, and we cannot find the spacious repose without imagination. That’s the mystery.

    A Mindfulness Practice to Help Face Crisis and Trauma 

    Try this imagination exercise as a structured process for facing crisis and trauma.  

    1.  Using a breath or a mantra, acknowledge “Who I was before this time of suffering cannot be resurrected.”
    1. Choose an aspirational word, something you would like to experience in the midst of this hardship—peace, growth, connection, surprise, reconciliation.  
    1.  Using your aspirational word as an anchor, imagine what it would feel like, for example to be at peace. Do not look far into the future but consider where you might choose peace in this moment.
    1.  Sometimes in acute crisis imagination feels impossible. But it is a pragmatic skill that develops with practice. The simple act of imagining moves us from the bleak stuckness of suffering into the unwritten potential of the future.
    How to Mend a Broken Heart 

    When love falls apart, embracing your life as it is—agony, misfortune, and all—can help you heal. Try this three-step mindfulness practice to help you find stability and a little bit of ease. Read More 

    • Elaine Smookler
    • July 16, 2020

    About The Author

    Meredith Parfet

    Meredith Parfet

    Meredith Parfet is the founder and CEO of Ravenyard Group, a crisis management consultancy focused on the wellbeing of leaders and teams. She received an MBA from Northwestern University, a Masters in Spiritual Care from the Iliff School of Theology, is an End of Life Doula and a hospice chaplain. www.ravenyard.com



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  • The Wellness Trap: What Mindfulness Can’t Fix

    The Wellness Trap: What Mindfulness Can’t Fix

    If you’re a human living in 2026, you likely have a laundry list of things you’d like to have fixed. Your list might look something like: affordable housing, the global economy, cost of groceries, your headache, your backache, an aging body, the cost of gas, the price of groceries, global warming, and maybe something to deal with occasional self-doubt or chronic busyness. 

    And that’s just the top of the list. 

    In our collective overwhelm and longing to find peace or respite from the current landscape we find ourselves in, anywhere but “here” feels good, even if for a moment. 

    Some of us have turned to spirituality, looking for answers. Some of us have tried distracting ourselves with activities and to-do lists. And for others, we’ve taken an even deeper dive into wellness practices, supplements, and workout programs that promise us ways that we can “be well.”  

    In our collective overwhelm and longing to find peace or respite from the current landscape we find ourselves in, anywhere but “here” feels good, even if for a moment. 

    Enter Mindfulness. 

    When Practice Becomes a Commodity

    For decades, teachers like Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, and Joseph Goldstein helped introduce Insight Meditation (Vipassana) to Western audiences. They made a contemplative practice that had existed for centuries more accessible to people searching for a different relationship to stress, suffering, and the mind itself. 

    Over time, mindfulness moved beyond meditation centers and into schools, workplaces, therapist offices, and hospitals—and later, the larger wellness industry as a whole.

    In essence, mindfulness has become the new “superfood.”

    Somewhere along the way, however, mindfulness became more than a practice. It became a prefix. Today, when we encounter words like mindful eating, mindful communications, mindful parenting, mindful productivity—the adjective itself lends an air of credibility to what follows. 

    In essence, mindfulness has become the new “superfood.” The label itself is imbued with authority over what follows it, encouraging us to believe that simply adding the word “mindful” to an activity somehow lends it to being the wiser, more educated, or healthier choice in the room, when the reality is much more nuanced. 

    Have We Lost the Plot?

    In my quest to find some answers, I picked up a copy of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Full Catastrophe Living. Kabat-Zinn is credited with translating mindfulness into a clinical context known today as MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), where practitioners in healthcare and hospitals have incorporated these practices. 

    The title comes from a line in Zorba the Greek, where the “full catastrophe” refers to the messiness of life (stress, work, uncertainty, insecurity, love, joy, illness, loss) and all that comes with it. The book’s basic premise is that we cannot control what happens to us in this life, but we can change our relationship to what happens. 

    Mindfulness, when applied to myriad life situations, has a helpful outcome: it helps regulate our emotions, cultivate self-awareness, and support our mental well-being.

    The issue has never been, Does mindfulness help?—but rather what we now expect it to help with.

    And yet, as mindfulness has grown more popular, so too have our expectations of it. In some cases, the word “mindful” has become a linguistic indicator for wellness all by itself. 

    The issue has never been, Does mindfulness help?—but rather what we now expect it to help with.

    Labels Come with a Price

    Part of mindfulness’s appeal is that it offers something many of us desperately need: a way to meet our lives with more balance, greater awareness, and less reactivity. 

    But as more people have recognized this desperate need, and perhaps tried more than a few things that haven’t worked to meet it, mindfulness has begun carrying responsibilities far beyond its original scope. 

    We want the feeling of relief more than the skill of being with discomfort that might not have any easy answers. 

    In some instances, expectations around mindfulness can morph into what some contemplative teachers might describe as a form of spiritual bypassing, where, more often than not, people look to the practice itself to be the solution instead of being part of a much larger process that involves our participation. In other words, we want the feeling of relief more than the skill of being with discomfort that might not have any easy answers. 

    Marketing has played a large part in helping so many of us become more aware of mindfulness, but to what end? We may attend more mindfulness workshops or participate in corporate mindfulness retreats, but I think we should consider whether we’re asking mindfulness to carry the weight of responsibilities that fall outside of the practice. 

    Mindfulness was never meant to fix the “full catastrophe” of living, but rather to give us the tools to meet ourselves where we are.

    Confusing the Path for the Destination

    The wellness trap begins when we mistake any one practice or form of healing for the solution itself. Mindfulness was never meant to fix the “full catastrophe” of living, but rather to give us the tools to meet ourselves where we are.

    Yes, mindfulness practice can help improve things like attention, focus, communication—which can have the effect of making work places better and more efficient. But when did mindfulness become responsible for making workplaces healthier? Or more productive? When did it become responsible for helping us have better leaders or helping us address burnout? None of these are inherently bad uses of mindfulness, of course; but when we attribute the success or failure of such endeavors to a practice like mindfulness, we fail to see the process accurately. 

    Mindfulness is a tool for cultivation, not the solution itself. Put another way: mindfulness is one way of relating to experience of any kind. This, however, is very different from being a solution for eliminating the experiences we don’t want.

    Coming Back to the Foundation

    So, what does mindfulness really offer? And why do we keep expecting mindfulness to “fix” whatever feels out of alignment in our lives? 

    Jon Kabat-Zinn has repeatedly emphasized that mindfulness is not simply a technique but “a way of being in wise relationship to experience as you find it.” That distinction matters. 

    Jon Kabat-Zinn has repeatedly emphasized that mindfulness is not simply a technique but “a way of being in wise relationship to experience as you find it.” That distinction matters. 

    Most of us avoid unpleasant emotions, conversations, and uncertainty whenever we can. This is a deeply human tendency. We fall into the Wellness Trap when we start looking for something or someone to make that unpleasant feeling go away for us. We “outsource” our agency when we assign those unwanted experiences to be dealt with by our meditation app, retreat, self-help book, or supplement. 

    We live in a time where so many offers for relief are available to us. Our trap isn’t what to use; it is expecting whatever we engage with (however it comes) to do the work that belongs to each of us. 

    When we mistake a practice as a “cure-all,” we are effectively giving away our agency to be part of the solution to what ails us. 

    Buddhist teachings make the argument that while we cannot prevent pain and suffering, we do have some influence over our circumstances. What this means for most of us, as Kabat-Zinn suggests, is that life is the catastrophe: joy, fear, illness, love, uncertainty, all of it. 

    Mindfulness invites us to learn how to live with those experiences. The goal is to help us be present with our discomfort instead of avoiding it altogether. 

    Cultivating a mindfulness practice is not a substitute for healthcare, community, rest, boundaries, meaningful work, or structural change.

    The wellness trap emerges when mindfulness is expected to carry more than it was ever designed to hold. Cultivating a mindfulness practice is not a substitute for healthcare, community, rest, boundaries, meaningful work, or structural change. It shines a light on things that we need to see more clearly, helps us understand where limits are and why they look the way they do. 

    And hopefully, it helps us each see that our issues (as we identify them in each of our lives) are less about our capacity to endure and more about the causes and conditions of our circumstances than anything else. Perhaps most importantly, mindfulness can help us discern the difference between what needs our compassionate acceptance and what needs our compassionate acceptance combined with thoughtful action.



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  • Reprogramming The Panic: Choosing Conscious Response Over Avoidance

    Reprogramming The Panic: Choosing Conscious Response Over Avoidance

    Our nervous systems are made to keep us safe from danger—but what happens when they’re responding to threats that no longer exist? Writer Catherine Swett explores how we can meet these disruptive moments with sovereignty over avoidance, and over time teach our nervous system how to respond to discomfort and anxious moments.

    The Trap of Avoidance

    People often say, “I have anxiety. I cannot do crowds.” For a long time, I believed that was my whole story. But looking back, it was not just anxiety. It was avoidance. Every time I avoided, I quietly reinforced the fear.

    Anxiety is not a monster outside of me. It is my body and brain sounding alarms. The problem is the software is outdated. It is coded from times when my body truly could not escape real threats.

    Anxiety is not a monster outside of me. It is my body and brain sounding alarms. Heart racing, tunnel vision, fight or flight, doing exactly what it was designed to do: protect me from danger. The problem is the software is outdated. It is coded from times when my body truly could not escape real threats.

    Reprogramming in Real Time

    Of course, this does not mean every internal alarm is false. Sometimes our bodies are alerting us to genuine danger, and those protective instincts deserve our attention. The real work is learning to discern when to trust the alarm and when to question it.

    When I walk into a crowd—a situation that might feel overwhelming, but that is actually not dangerous for me—and I feel panic rise, I have two choices. I can avoid it and confirm the fear, or I can walk through it and teach my body something new. I choose the latter. Each time I navigate what my nervous system warns is unsafe, I show it that I am safe.

    This is not “just anxiety.” It is real-time nervous system reprogramming. I had to walk through crowds until I proved to my system that I was no longer its prisoner.

    There is a line most people are never taught to notice. Avoidance often comes from fear, the kind where you spend your life running and the thing you fear keeps chasing you.

    Recognizing the Line Between Fear and Choice

    There is a line most people are never taught to notice. Avoidance often comes from fear, the kind where you spend your life running and the thing you fear keeps chasing you. That eventually catches up.

    But there is another place. A place where you understand yourself. You recognize the environments, dynamics, and stimuli that activate your nervous system in unsafe ways. And you also know this: if you need to walk through it, you can. You are capable. You are conscious. You are not trapped.

    You do not need to constantly expose yourself to triggers to prove resilience.

    The difference is that you do not need to constantly expose yourself to triggers to prove resilience. Once you face the root of what makes something destabilizing, you gain the ability to choose if and when that exposure belongs in your life. That is not avoidance. That is conscious choice.

    Lessons from Monks: Discipline, Not Detachment

    I have thought about this in the context of monks. I used to assume they were peaceful because they were detached, above it all. That was ignorance. Monks feel, think, and experience frustration, desire, and disturbance, just like anyone else.

    Healing is not about becoming untriggerable. It is not about enduring everything life throws at you. It is about understanding yourself deeply enough to respond consciously.

    The difference is what they choose to subject themselves to. They do not abstain out of fear. They abstain with discipline, because they understand their minds. Peace is not passive. It is actively protected. That protection requires internal work, not constant exposure.

    Healing is Sovereignty

    Healing is not about becoming untriggerable. It is not about enduring everything life throws at you. It is about understanding yourself deeply enough to respond consciously. Thoughts rise. Reactions flare. Old patterns knock, and that is okay.

    A life of avoidance with no self-work is fear in disguise.

    A life of avoidance with no self-work is fear in disguise. A life of conscious choice, rooted in understanding, is sovereignty. By locating your perception, observing your nervous system, and noticing patterns in real time, you gain the ability to respond instead of react.

    Growth Looks Like This

    We know that healing is not linear. There will be ups and downs, and that’s normal. But in general, here are grounding statements that reflect the growth process:

    • I do not rush to correct my feelings
    • I delay decisions until my nervous system settles
    • I let context and awareness arrive before action

    By treating perception and reactivity as interfaces, not flaws, urgency becomes information instead of command.

    By treating perception and reactivity as interfaces, not flaws, urgency becomes information instead of command. Intensity becomes data instead of danger. Insight alone does not stop the spiral, but noticing the system in motion gives me room to respond instead of react.

    By seeing perception this way, I can engage with reality as it is. I can separate the present from the echoes of the past and act with awareness instead of just reacting.



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  • Walking Grief Home: Six Companions for Living With Loss

    Walking Grief Home: Six Companions for Living With Loss

    When someone we love dies, the world doesn’t end, but it does lose its shape. The familiar becomes strange. Time stretches and collapses. Movements feel halting, as if the body has forgotten how to belong to itself. In these early days, when the heart feels unmoored and the ground unreliable, we long for something steady enough to walk beside us—not to fix the unfixable, but to accompany us as we learn to live inside a world that has changed.

    After decades as a clinical psychologist and later as a bereavement volunteer, I’ve come to understand grief not as a problem to solve but as a relationship to tend. Mindfulness offers a way to do that. It helps us meet life moment by moment without abandoning ourselves, and it cultivates qualities that soften our experience of whatever is here.

    Mindfulness, in its deepest sense, is not about calm. It is about capacity.

    Mindfulness, in its deepest sense, is not about calm. It is about capacity—the capacity to stay close to what is true, even when what is true is painful. It does not guide us toward “getting over” grief. Instead, it teaches us how to walk with grief. And as we walk, six companions begin to emerge as lived experiences shaping how we meet our loss.

    These companions—Presence, Grace, Memory, Becoming, Belonging, and Trust—form a relational model of healing. They do not arrive in order. They circle, overlap, and return. Together, they help us stay close to ourselves as we navigate a world reshaped by loss.

    Presence: Allowing What Is

    Presence is not passive. It is a wholehearted “yes” to the reality of the moment, even when that reality is painful. Presence asks only one thing of us: to allow what is here to be here.

    Grief is not a single emotion but a gathering of states—sorrow, anger, confusion, numbness, longing, exhaustion. Presence invites each one to be recognized.

    Grief is not a single emotion but a gathering of states—sorrow, anger, confusion, numbness, longing, exhaustion. Presence invites each one to be recognized. This is simple to understand but difficult to practice. Most of us try to manage grief the way we manage everything else: by tightening, organizing, or trying to stay in control. But grief is not something the mind can manage. It is a visitation—an unmistakable presence that arrives with its own timing.

    The first gesture of presence is permission. Permission to feel everything—not because it will fix anything, but because it is honest. To feel everything can leave us feeling lost, but as E.L. Doctorow wrote, “It’s like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Presence accompanies us, breath by breath, until we begin to regain our footing.

    Grace: Life’s Quiet Movement Toward Us

    If presence is how we meet life, grace is how life meets us back. Grace is not dramatic. It is the easing that comes when we stop bracing against what is true.

    We do not manufacture grace; we receive it.

    We do not manufacture grace; we receive it. It often appears in small, almost imperceptible ways: a friend’s steady companionship, a loosening of the chest, a stranger’s kindness, the relief of a deep exhale.

    These moments do not erase the pain, but they remind us that we are not entirely alone within it. Grace opens a small space inside the ache. Over time, it helps us weave the loss into the fabric of our lives—not as something to overcome, but as something that deepens us, widens us, and makes us more tender.

    Memory: The Waves That Carry Love Forward

    Grief moves in waves—not the predictable rhythms of tides but the wild, irregular surges of the ocean in winter. A scent, a song, a phrase, a slant of evening light can break over us with startling force. These waves are not mistakes or punishments. They are the movements of love trying to find its way in a world that has changed shape.

    Love does not end when a life ends, but it does change form.

    Memory is also a doorway into the continuing bond that remains. Love does not end when a life ends, but it does change form. As presence steadies us and grace softens us, memories begin to shift. What once shattered us may eventually bring warmth when the heart remembers not only the pain of loss but the depth of love that made the loss so devastating.

    We begin to speak to our loved ones in quiet moments, carry their gestures, and seek their wisdom. Memory becomes a companion, not an adversary, as we learn to carry the bittersweetness of a life that has loved deeply and lost profoundly.

    Becoming: Letting the Loss Shape Who We Are

    At some point—often so subtly we don’t notice it—something inside begins to shift. Not because the sorrow has lessened, but because the heart has begun to make room for the loss. This is the arising of Becoming, the slow integration of grief into our sense of self.

    Becoming does not ask us to forget; it asks us to remember differently.

    Becoming does not ask us to forget; it asks us to remember differently. To remember in a way that honors love as well as loss. Becoming is not a stage, nor does it unfold in a straight line. There will be days when the heart feels spacious and days when the ache returns with full force. Becoming honors both clarity and confusion. It is the work of letting the loss shape us without letting it define us.

    Becoming is not the end of grief—it is the beginning of a new relationship with our loss.

    Belonging: Finding Our Place in a Changed World

    Loss shakes our sense of belonging. The world feels unfamiliar, and we feel unfamiliar within it. Yet belonging is not lost; it is changing.

    As we adapt to this new way of being, we come to realize that belonging isn’t something others give us. Instead, it’s a consciousness that we are present—alive, supported by the earth beneath us.

    As we adapt to this new way of being, we come to realize that belonging isn’t something others give us. Instead, it’s a consciousness that we are present—alive, supported by the earth beneath us. This feeling grows from how we engage with ourselves and our surroundings. When we stop neglecting ourselves, a new sense of belonging gradually develops as the world continues to embrace us: the warmth of sunlight, the simple pleasure of a cup of tea, the scent of a forest, the welcoming signs of growing more comfortable, and the quiet resilience of standing in the shadow of mountains.

    The continuing bond with the person who has died becomes part of this belonging. Their presence lives in our choices, our gestures, our ways of seeing. We discover that we are still part of the living world, still part of a story that continues to unfold.

    Trust: The Quiet Confidence That We Can Live With This

    Grief asks us to trust what we cannot yet see. Trust grows when we begin to sense that the heart is larger than the loss. Not because the loss is small, but because the heart is vast. It can hold sorrow and love at the same time. It can hold the one who is gone and the one we are becoming.

    Trust is not the absence of pain. It is the recognition that pain is not the only thing present. Over time, trust reveals an inner sturdiness—a kind of Kintsugi of the heart, where the broken places are reconstructed and highlighted with gold.

    Trust is not the absence of pain. It is the recognition that pain is not the only thing present. Over time, trust reveals an inner sturdiness—a kind of Kintsugi of the heart, where the broken places are reconstructed and highlighted with gold. The loss becomes part of our strength, not because it stops hurting, but because it has been integrated into who we are.

    A Relational Model, Not a Linear One

    Walking grief home is not a series of stages or steps. These six companions move in all directions. Some days one leads; other days another rises first. They circle, overlap, and return, each shaping and being shaped by the others.

    Walking grief home teaches us something profound: that we can belong to our own lives again.

    Presence steadies us. Grace meets us. Memory connects us. Becoming reshapes us. Belonging roots us. Trust holds us.

    Walking grief home is not about waiting to arrive somewhere new. It is about learning to live here and now with a more spacious heart—one capable of holding the full complexity of love and loss. It teaches us something profound: that we can belong to our own lives again. Not the life we expected. Not the life we planned. But the life that is here—the life that is still unfolding, still calling to us, still offering moments of beauty, tenderness, and meaning.

    A Simple Practice for the Next Wave

    When the next wave of grief arrives, try this:

    Pause. Feel your feet on the ground. Let one breath be exactly what it is. Name what is here—sadness, longing, numbness, love. Place a hand on your heart. Say quietly, “This belongs.”

    Not because it is easy, but because it is true.



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  • 10 Subtle Micromovements That Reveal Anxiety’s Early Indicators in Adults

    10 Subtle Micromovements That Reveal Anxiety’s Early Indicators in Adults

    You’re sitting in the waiting room to go into your first big interview or give the presentation you’ve been working on for weeks. Maybe your foot starts tapping quicker and quicker, or you start twirling your hair. Why is your body doing this, and what can these small movements tell you? 

    Micromovements serve as the body’s way to signal rising anxiety.  

    Learning to recognize early tension triggers can help build emotional resilience and maintain calm through the day.

    When you hone awareness, you can use mindful techniques to respond, which can help you preserve well-being and maintain focus in work and play. Plus, learning to recognize early tension triggers can also help build emotional resilience and maintain calm through the day.

    Here are 10 common signals your body might be sending you. 

    The 10 Subtle Micromovements

    1. The Brow Furrow or Knit

    We often knit our eyebrows together when looking at a computer screen or reading a dense email. While in some cases, this might be due to awkward positioning at your desk or a need to make adjustments to your screen, worry or mental strain can trigger this tiny contraction of the forehead muscles. The brain signals these muscles to tighten as it tries to process a difficult problem, mirroring the internal effort to solve a stressful situation.

    2. Jaw Clenching or Grinding

    Do you ever catch yourself clenching your jaw in a stressful moment, like when you’re driving through heavy traffic or working under a tight deadline? Awake bruxism, another term for grinding, is common, affecting up to 23% of adults. A tense jaw is part of your body’s physical defense system: it’s preparing to stabilize your head and neck in the presence of physical threat.

    3. The Shallow Breath

    During a stressful meeting, you might notice your chest rising and falling rapidly while your stomach remains perfectly still. Internal tension disrupts normal breathing, leading to a shift to rapid, shallow chest breathing. The autonomic nervous system enters a sympathetic response, treating minor mental strain the same way it treats actual physical danger.

    4. Finger Tapping or Cuticle Picking

    When we’re anxious, we might repeatedly taps a desk or pick at the skin around our fingernails during a long pause in conversation. The nervous system drives these small, rhythmic movements when it contains too much restless energy. The motor system generates repetitive actions to help discharge that excess stimulation and restore internal balance.

    It’s common to curl our toes tightly inside our shoes or bounce a heel rapidly against the floor. This lower-body tension shows that stress has traveled down the musculoskeletal system. The body prepares its legs and feet for sudden action, keeping you in a constant state of hyper-vigilance.

    6. Lip Biting or Chewing

    Sometimes we trap our bottom lip between our teeth or chew on the inside of our cheek. The lower lip bite is the classic signal of I’m thinking that over or I’m trying to decide—moments that often come with some anxiety or uncertainty. It might seem strange, but this self-regulating behavior increases physical sensations in the mouth. The nervous system uses this sensory input to distract you from emotional discomfort.

    7. Subtle Neck and Shoulder Tensing

    Here’s one to notice: when a difficult email arrives, see if you shrug your shoulders up toward your ears without realizing it. This posture mimics a protective instinct to guard the neck from a sudden blow. Muscles in the upper back tighten to prepare you for a perceived threat.

    8. Hair Twirling or Touching

    Do you tend to wrap a strand of hair around your finger or stroke your head during a challenging presentation. This form of fidgeting is a pacifying behavior. The gentle, repetitive touch provides comfort to an overstimulated brain, helping to soothe rising internal agitation.

    9. Eyelid Fluttering or Rapid Blinking

    In many situations, people blink rapidly when answering a stressful question. Rapid blinking is an important facial expression that indicates heightened anxiety and fatigue. The accelerated blink rate reflects a sudden spike in adrenaline and stress hormones within the nervous system.

    10. The Freezing Response

    Sometimes a sudden loud noise or receiving unexpected news can cause a lock in posture. We stop moving for a few seconds. This momentary pause represents the primal freeze response. The brain temporarily halts all motor functions to evaluate its surroundings before choosing an action.

    The autonomic nervous system is a network of nerves that regulates involuntary body processes, like heart rate and blood pressure. 

    This system relies on the sympathetic and parasympathetic networks. The sympathetic nervous system drives the “fight or flight” response, accelerating heart rate and muscle readiness during perceived danger. The parasympathetic nervous system manages the “rest and digest” system, lowering heart rate and encouraging recovery when the threat passes.

    You might notice that many of these micromovements are a primal body-response to perceived physical threat—even when no such immediate threat is present. Micromovements are the physical spillover of this intense internal activation; they often serve as unconscious attempts at self-regulation, as the motor system discharges excess nervous energy.

    Micromovements prove that the body actively communicates a specific need—and often, that need is simply rest.

    Anxiety signals a chronically overactive sympathetic nervous system. When this stress response remains active, the adrenal glands flood the bloodstream with stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.

    It’s easy to miss early nervous system warning signs when our attention is fractured. Micromovements prove that the body actively communicates a specific need—and often, that need is simply rest. Recognizing these micromovements is the first step toward altering behavioral responses and proactive stress management.

    Mindfulness as a Solution

    Mindfulness offers a way to keep our awareness in the present moment. This practice trains interoception, which is our ability to  accurately perceive internal bodily signals. 

    One way that mindfulness can help us build better interoception is through practices like the body scan, a structured exercise in which individuals monitor physical sensations from head to toe. As you scan your body, assess how each part feels. This can help determine where an emotional reaction took place and where it sits. For example, you may experience tension in your stomach, and can intentionally breathe into the belly to relax that tension.

    Mindfulness training strengthens structural connectivity within the brain’s interoceptive networks, supporting emotional well-being. Mindful practices put you back in the driver’s seat: when you experience yourself as the observer of your thoughts, you have more say in how you respond. This more objective stance de-escalates the anxiety cycle, rewiring neural pathways to foster better emotional regulation. 

    In addition, focused sensory attention gently steers the mind away from anxious and negative thought loops. It involves focusing on the world around you by using all five senses. This practice establishes a supportive relationship between the mind and body.

    Need Some Practice? Start here. 

    You can build bodily awareness through simple daily routines. 

    • Set a recurring phone reminder for a daily check-in—for example, a 60-second exercise to pause and scan the body for physical indicators of stress. Alternatively, detecting a micromovement could also trigger the mindful pause. This is when you would start doing a body scan.
    • Expand this routine with the 4-7-8 breathing technique to regulate heart rate. This involves breathing through the nose for four seconds, holding the breath for seven seconds and exhaling through pursed lips for eight seconds. A study from the National Institutes of Health shows that structured slow-breathing exercises significantly lower blood pressure and reduce stress responses.
    • A micromovement journal can reveal your personal patterns, and writing about your stress can also help to understand and alleviate emotional hooks. 
    • For deeper exploration, the RAIN method guides you to recognize, allow, investigate and nurture internal sensations. This four-step mindfulness technique helps to process difficult emotions and break reactive habit loops.

    Focusing on just one type of micromovement per week keeps the practice manageable. This supportive practice emphasizes personal compassion over perfection, empowering you to reclaim agency over your daily lives.

    Bring Personal Awareness Into Daily Life

    Anxiety often begins with quiet physical signals. Mindfulness provides the tools to listen to these subtle bodily signs. This clear awareness transforms you from a passive reactor into a conscious, proactive manager of your inner state. Recognizing early bodily shifts allows professionals and practitioners to build greater emotional stability.

    This post comes to us from Lola Marks, Senior Editor at Body+Mind.



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  • Embodied Compassion for Difficult Emotions

    Embodied Compassion for Difficult Emotions

    When you’re overwhelmed and feeling the urge to resist or repress painful, confusing, or distressing emotions, use this meditation from recovery coach Emily Jane to practice staying present with courage and compassion.

    One of the core principles of mindfulness practice that can be a challenge for people is the notion that it actually makes more sense to accept our emotions rather than resist them. Especially when it comes to painful, confusing, or frightening emotions, this move towards ourselves in compassion can feel incredibly counterintuitive. 

    This week, author and recovery coach Emily Jane guides us through a practice you can use anytime you need support bringing curiosity, courage, and compassion to difficult experiences.

    Embodied Compassion for Difficult Emotions

    You can read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or, listen to the audio practice.

     When we experience difficult emotions, our natural tendency is to repress or resist them, and yet it is often this very resistance that creates even more stress and suffering. In this meditation, we will begin to gently shift our relationship by creating space for our uncomfortable emotions. We will invite them in and sit with them with compassion, like an old friend.

    We will start the meditation with some mindful awareness, then turn towards the emotions, sensations, and parts of ourselves that we might usually avoid or wish we didn’t have to feel. 

    1. Begin by finding a position that feels comfortable, either sitting in a chair, on your bed or the floor, or lying down. When you’re ready, you can close your eyes or lower your gaze. Allow your shoulders to relax down, your jaw to soften, maybe opening and closing the jaw a couple of times, creating a little movement and inviting some release. Let all the little muscles around the eyes, the forehead, the cheeks to soften as best they can. 
    2. Now bring awareness to the surface beneath you. Feel into that support, how it holds you. If your feet are touching the floor, feel into that connection between your feet and the ground, feeling into the support that is already here.
    3. Notice the temperature of your body and of the temperature of the air around you. Notice the weight of your body and the gentle pull of gravity holding you.
    4. Now bring your awareness to the natural rhythm of your breath. Follow the pathway of the breath through the body. Noticing how it enters the body, where the breath lands in the body—perhaps the chest, the belly, the ribs. And notice how it leaves the body. Just take a moment to feel one full breath from beginning to end, and then the next.
    5. Now take a slightly deeper inhale through the nose, allow the breath to flow down into the belly and then exhale with a sigh. And again, breathing in through the nose and exhaling slowly with a sigh.
    6. Now bring awareness to your body as a whole. Notice what it feels like to be you in this moment, in this body. See if you can approach your experience with curiosity and a sense of compassion.
    7. Become aware of any sensations, noting any emotions that are present or areas of tension, discomfort, or heaviness. Whatever is here, see if you can just allow it to be here and just gently make space for it.
    8. Now, become aware of that part of you that is aware. The part of you aware of the breath, the body, the sensations and emotions. See if you can lean into the awareness itself, this observing presence, and notice its qualities. Perhaps there is calm here, a stillness, or a sense of peace and compassion.
    9. Rest for a moment in this compassionate awareness. If it feels supportive, place one hand on your heart. Feel the warmth of your hands, the gentle pressure, just offering the body care and support.
    10. Now bring to mind a difficult emotion, memory, or situation. Nothing too intense, just something you’ve been finding a bit challenging. Perhaps something that’s been worrying you lately, an interaction that’s upset or annoyed you, or just a feeling that you’ve been carrying.
    11. As you bring this to mind, notice what happens in your body. Maybe sensations begin to emerge, restlessness, tightness, heaviness, or a sinking feeling. Maybe you notice an emotion. Just feel into whatever arises and name the emotion. Describe any sensations. 
    12. See if you can simply observe the sensation, just being a compassionate witness to the discomfort or pain and allowing the experience to be here without immediately pushing it away. Remember: you don’t have to pretend it’s all okay, and you don’t have to like it. But see if you can welcome it, making space for it, letting it be exactly as it is. And if this feels challenging, that’s okay. It’s in our human nature to resist discomfort, so if there’s resistance, just notice that too without judgment. 
    13. As you sit with this emotion or sensation, notice that there is space around it. Space inside the body, space around the body. The support beneath you is still there. The breath is still moving, and this emotion, this sensation, is only one part of your experience. It’s a part of you, but it’s not all of you.
    14. Now just move a little closer towards the emotion and gently place your hand over the area where you feel the emotion or sensation most strongly. Through your hand offer these words, “I see you. I’m here with you. I offer you space, compassion, and love.” Notice what happens when you say these words. Maybe this part of you responds to the words. Maybe you experience less resistance towards it. Perhaps there’s a softening or you even find peace in the discomfort or pain. Perhaps nothing changes at all. Whatever happens is okay. There’s no right way to experience this. 
    15. Just spend a few more moments being with this emotion, with this sensation. Then return your awareness to the breath, and as you inhale, imagine breathing compassion into the body. Let it flow into the center of the emotion, and as you exhale, allow it to expand into the space around you. Breathing in compassion, breathing out compassion. And as you breathe, allow this emotion to integrate into the fullness of your being. 
    16. Now begin to sense the body as a whole. The support beneath you, the ground holding you, feeling the support of gravity. Remind yourself gently with these words, “I can be with difficult emotions when I create a compassionate space for them.”
    17. Now gently bring your awareness back to the space around you. Notice any sounds in the room, the temperature of the air. Invite some gentle movement into the body. Maybe a gentle sway or gently just shaking the arms. Take one final deep breath into the belly and exhale fully. When you’re ready, you can open your eyes, returning in your own time.



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  • Are Shame and Guilt Bad—Or Do We Just Need a Different Relationship With Them?

    Are Shame and Guilt Bad—Or Do We Just Need a Different Relationship With Them?

    In the new Apple TV series, Margo Has Money Problems, Michelle Pfeiffer, in a comeback performance, plays a mom, Shyanne, who got pregnant after a one-night stand with a married man. Now her daughter, Margo, whom she raised on her own, has herself given birth to a child with a married man who’s not in the picture.

    At one point, in a parking lot outside the chain restaurant where Margo works, Shyanne has a total breakdown. Having failed at her first stint babysitting her grandchild, she hands over the boy to Margo and shouts that she is a horrible grandmother just as she was a horrible mother: “I wish I could be a better person, but I’m not!…and I will not be judged, by him or anyone else.”

    As much as we may recoil from shame and guilt, these emotions are a part of being human. Yet so many of us, maybe most of us, handle them very poorly.

    This is a classic shame spiral. We start feeling bad about something we’ve done or are unable to do, then leap straight to the appraisal—not of our wrongdoing or inability, but of ourselves: We are bad and we want to hide away because of it, lest we be judged even more.

    Guilt and shame are dirty words, painful words. As much as we may recoil from them, though, these emotions are a part of being human. Yet so many of us, maybe most of us, handle them very poorly. We beat ourselves up psychologically. We beat others up verbally (and in extreme cases physically) in an effort to inflict guilt and shame and retribution for wrongdoing. At a global level, wars are fought and people die out of vengeance—simply because we have so much trouble dealing with how to respond when we do something wrong or are wronged.

    Taking a Closer Look at Guilt and Shame

    Yes, these are tricky emotions, and this is likely not the first time you’ve considered them, but it never hurts to contemplate the thornier sides of life with a fresh mind. If you meditate, you spend your life doing that. Each time, hopefully, with a more open mind.

    To begin, it helps to distinguish guilt and shame.

    Meditation teacher Caverly Morgan expresses the difference succinctly in her book The Heart of Who We Are: “When you feel guilty, there’s a judgment that something you’ve done is wrong. When you feel shame, you believe that your whole self is wrong.”

    Is it realistic to think that an emotion that’s been around as long as anyone can imagine is just going to be removed from the human toolbox?

    Brené Brown, author of the groundbreaking book on human vulnerability, Daring Greatly, says on her website that while guilt is “adaptive and helpful” and can spur accountability for our actions, shame, “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” is neither helpful or productive. She goes on to “call for an end to shame as a tool for change.”

    I’m a huge Brené Brown fan, so I get where she’s going. Shame is so damaging. It ruins whole lives and families (witness Shyanne’s breakdown in the parking lot). And it is quite often wildly ineffective in bringing about change. I’m sure we’ve all tried to shame someone into better behavior only to have it backfire.

    Yet, is it realistic to think that an emotion that’s been around as long as anyone can imagine is just going to be removed from the human toolbox?

    If They’re Not Going Anywhere…How Do We Learn to Live With Them?

    Other researchers are not quite as ready to completely eliminate shame from the spectrum of human responses. Rather, they simply caution us to notice the ways our responses are so very often maladaptive.

    In his recent book, The Power of Guilt, developmental psychologist Chris Moore says we have guilt in the first place to motivate us to repair harms and heal relationships. Shame, he goes on to say, by contrast, tends to make people shy away from interacting with others, leaving a relationship damaged, perhaps permanently. This tendency to descend into a deep dark place makes shame into a dangerous drug.

    Psychologist June Tangney, co-author of Shame and Guilt, however, admits to being shame-prone herself and counsels that it’s possible to be resilient in the midst of shame and divert ourselves from spiraling. In other words, we might be better off accepting that shame is going to emerge and figure out how to work with it more effectively.

    Our problem with shame, then, may not be that as a group we have no need for it, but rather we have a bad habit of taking it way too far.

    Evolutionary psychologists like Dacher Keltner see shame as part of a family of human responses known as the self-conscious emotions—guilt, shame, pride, and embarrassment—that all play a role in regulating social behavior. According to these students of human behavior, “…shame serves the important function of appeasing observers of social transgressions, a function which reestablishes social harmony.” In other words, publicly blushing when you’ve done something wrong signals to others that you know you’ve made a mistake and you care. To say, for example, that someone “has no shame,” means they don’t care what others think about their behavior. Think of certain world leaders who seem to do and say whatever they want, regardless of how immoral or illegal it is, and without concern for the harm those actions cause.

    Our problem with shame, then, may not be that as a group we have no need for it, but rather we have a bad habit of taking it way too far. A very little bit of shame can go a long way. Even a little bit too much can be destructive. The lesson then, seems to be: Shame is likely to be a part of life, respond appropriately and in proportion to that feeling, and focus entirely on action in the future.

    In other words: Do not beat yourself up. Meet the feeling, but don’t build a home there.

    Focusing on Repair

    Knowing how guilt and shame tear at the heart and sever the bonds that hold communities together, spiritual traditions developed forms of atonement—honest acknowledgment of harm, repairing the harm if possible, and vowing not to repeat it.

    Catholics have the confessional and the season of Lent. Judaism has Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. In Islam, tawba, repentance, is practiced continuously, but especially in the last ten days of Ramadan. Twelve-step programs devote several steps to atonement and making amends. While the place of confession in Buddhism is little known, the ancient code of monastic discipline calls for regular acknowledgement of wrongdoing, including in some traditions the collective wrongdoing that has occurred “since beginningless time.”

    It’s not necessary to engage in one of these traditions to develop a healthy relationship with guilt and shame—but it can certainly help to examine our own experience to see how we might be easier on ourselves and on others while still addressing the feelings that emerge when things go wrong.

    Guilt—that uneasy feeling about doing something wrong or not fully showing up—can be a motivator. But as all the researchers, teachers, and commentators here note, it too can gnaw away at us and morph into shame. Fortunately, a practice like mindfulness can help interrupt the descent into needless shame and help us focus on our future actions. In mindfulness practice, we can begin to see what’s happening more clearly and as the ancient prayer goes, forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.



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  • Mindfulness and Hypnosis: Tools for Navigating Chronic Illness

    Mindfulness and Hypnosis: Tools for Navigating Chronic Illness

    Several years ago, I experienced what at the time I did not realize was the beginning of a life-changing journey into chronic illness. 

    It started with noticing shortness of breath when I bent over to pick something up off the floor, and rapidly snowballed. It felt as if I had stepped into an alternate reality, where I went from being a healthy person whose life was punctuated with hiking, dancing, and travel, to someone whose body would no longer cooperate with life. At my worst, my heart rate spiked throughout the day and night to levels that would send healthy friends running to the ER. I was exhausted and at times too weak to walk.

    Already a Buddhist meditation teacher and hypnotherapist, I found myself on a crash course in treating a complex medical condition and learning how to live a meaningful life inside a body that had fundamentally changed.

    This was the beginning of a complex condition involving almost every system in my body, eventually traced back to my time living in a small cottage that unknowingly housed an uninvited tenant: black mold. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined how profoundly this experience would change my body, my life, and my work.

    Already a Buddhist meditation teacher and hypnotherapist, I found myself on a crash course in treating a complex medical condition and learning how to live a meaningful life inside a body that had fundamentally changed. 

    Over the years that followed, I worked to carve out spaces of healing, resilience, and joy, rebuilding a life that in many ways felt happier and more free than the one I had lost. I also found myself supporting more clients navigating complex illnesses themselves. Again and again, I saw how mindfulness and hypnosis could help people feel a renewed sense of hope, agency, and capacity to relate to their lives and bodies differently.

    A Nervous System Mobilizing Against Threat

    When we live with chronic illness or pain, it can often feel like we are stuck on high alert—and with good reason. The body is designed to detect danger and mobilize quickly against threat. We have survived across generations of human evolution because of this finely honed system. It’s an incredible gift—until it’s not.

    Pain, stress, illness, and other issues can send signals throughout our body communicating that something is profoundly wrong. It’s our system’s way of saying, “Hey! Stop! Please take care of me.” 

    “Maladaptive neuroplasticity” happens when the body and mind begin to reorganize in order to address the ongoing threat that is occurring. Unfortunately, we don’t always reorganize in a way that helps us long-term or feels particularly good. To our brain and body, it’s about one thing and one thing alone: our survival. 

    But in chronic conditions occurring over time, this repeated activation can make our nervous system extra sensitive to threat. Our body’s warning system begins to fire over and over, responding to even small changes in posture, environment, or life conditions as if they were a five alarm fire. This is part of why hypnosis and meditation have been shown to be highly supportive for chronic illness and pain, when used in complement with appropriate medical care.

    You’ve probably heard the term “neurons that fire together wire together,” meaning that when we repeat anything over and over, we build strong neural pathways that operate automatically. This trait is fantastic in so many situations: we effortlessly remember how to drive a car, we see the face of someone we love and a feeling of warmth washes over us, we wake up and go to our meditation cushion because it’s a habitual part of our routine.

    Our brains are incredibly efficient. They want to save energy, so they create shortcuts to do so. This is often helpful, but when it comes to chronic pain and illness, this can result in heightened sensitivity, and what some researchers call maladaptive neuroplasticity. 

    What does that mean for us? Essentially, the body and mind begin to reorganize in order to address the ongoing threat that is occurring. Unfortunately, we don’t always reorganize in a way that helps us long-term or feels particularly good. To our brain and body, it’s about one thing and one thing alone: our survival.

    Over time, an inner algorithm is created in the brain, body, and nervous system: We get exposed to a trigger or feel the beginning of the symptom and automatically, a cascade of chemical, physiological, and emotional responses fire up within a fraction of a second. Emotions are heightened, thought loops start spinning, discomfort worsens, and the neural pathways connecting things like fear, grief, hopelessness, frustration, and physical symptoms grow stronger. 

    The wonderful thing about neuroplasticity is that you have agency over more of this process than you might imagine, especially when it comes to navigating habitual thoughts and reactions, distress, and overwhelm.

    Neuroplasticity Means You Have More Power Than You Know

    It’s understandable that these processes can feel big, automatic, and beyond our control, but that’s not the full picture. The wonderful thing about neuroplasticity is that you have agency over more of this process than you might imagine, especially when it comes to navigating habitual thoughts and reactions, distress, and overwhelm.

    This is where mindfulness and hypnosis can offer real support. Both practices help you notice when the alarm bells start going off, so that you can interrupt the cascade of reactivity and learn to steer it in a different direction. Through relaxation, breath, focused attention, visualization, and active work with the subconscious mind, you can begin to support the nervous system and create space where triggers, symptoms, and recurring attitudes and thoughts can be met and worked with. 

    The more you practice cultivating and resting in qualities like safety, compassion, kindness, and relaxation, the more hardwired and automatic they become. Just like you’ve strengthened the muscles of stress and overwhelm, you can strengthen the muscles of ease, trust, and permission to rest and take care of yourself.

    One of my clients has described this process as being able to access her “own little sanctuary”—a place where even in the midst of years-long, complex illness, she is able to rest, remember her wholeness, and feel relief. With that, her sleep has significantly improved along with her overall sense of hope, personal power, and wellbeing.

    Addressing the Whole Person

    Of course, this does not mean thinking we can just “meditate away” a condition that needs treatment. These practices are best done in conjunction with medical care, because they allow us to navigate the full spectrum of our experience—from stress around doctor’s appointments and treatment protocols, to changes in our relationships and career, to celebrating the wins and progress when they do come. Living with pain and illness touches our bodies but also our identities, spirituality, and outlook on the world. These practices can allow us to show up for all parts of it. 

    Adding meditation and hypnosis to our chronic illness care regimen can reveal that we have more power than we think: the ability to interrupt familiar thought loops, to create moments of relief and inner safety, and even to reshape the emotions, beliefs, and patterns that can make life with chronic illness feel harder than it already is.

    Adding meditation and hypnosis to our chronic illness care regimen can reveal that we have more power than we think: the ability to interrupt familiar thought loops, to create moments of relief and inner safety, and even to reshape the emotions, beliefs, and patterns that can make life with chronic illness feel harder than it already is.

    This is so powerful because in the type of mind states available through meditation and hypnosis, the mind becomes more flexible, creative, and adaptive. In fact, early research suggests that mind-body practices like meditation and hypnosis may influence brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a molecule linked to neuroplasticity, learning, pain modulation, and the nervous system’s capacity to adapt in response to stress. 

    When we add these practices to our toolbox, we are partnering with the subconscious mind so that we can remodel our relationship to illness from the inside out.



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