Welcome to Day 2 of Mindfulness Practice
Today we’re going to be looking at the practice with the mindful enquiry of feelings. The power of thoughts, (imagination and ruminating) can alone create feelings which create a physical response in the body.
The practice of noticing which feelings have strong aversions and which are desired helps the experience of observing without judgement. Seeing them as neither good or bad, but just as they can be.
Benefits:
Being aware of the emotions and feelings that affect our physiological states aids the choice of behavioural responses and helps us become more attuned with our values, beliefs and thought processes. This is a core idea in therapies like acceptance and commitment therapy and dialectical behavioural therapy.
Making judgements about our own experiences can often lead to us becoming quite distressed. For example, thoughts like “this is horrible” and “I can’t take any more” are both judgements associated with distress. Practising mindful awareness around feelings teaches us to accept more of our experience without judging it. This has been shown to help people live more fulfilling lives.
“The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain.”
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