After reviewing the
practices we have studied in this course such as loving kindness, subtle mind,
visualization and guided meditation. It is no secret that I do not fair well
with the guided meditations. However, I do connect with the ideas and
techniques of the loving-kindness and subtle mind exercises.
These practices allow the
subject to remind himself or herself of how they love and appreciate the things
and people in their life. I feel as though everyone could benefit from a little
reminding of the good things in life.
The following was my
favorite exercise, which described as powerful in
expanding mind and heart and an antidote to anger and hatred.
Close
your eyes and rest into the natural ease of your body, repeat the following
phrases for 10 minutes.
1.
May all individuals gain freedom from suffering
2.
May all individuals find sustained health, happiness and wholeness
3.
May I assist all individuals in gaining freedom from suffering
4.
May I assist all individuals in finding health happiness and wholeness
(Dacher,
2006)
I can implement these
practices into my life very easily, when I fell stressed or overwhelmed or even
“victimized” by my current life situation I can simply perform the above
exercise to I guess in a way remind me of what is really important.
It took me four months to
get pregnant with my second child, that may not sound like a lot but when you
are living it - it feels like eternity. I would get angry and stressed each
month when that stick did not turn blue. In the fourth month I finally started
to remind myself that I have a beautiful son and there are people in the world
who cannot have children or have spent years trying to conceive and simply cannot.
When I thought this way I felt downright selfish for my self-pity. But
reminding myself of how lucky I was to be able to have children and that I
already had a beautiful baby boy made the fact that I was not pregnant right
away.. well downright silly.
This sort of gratefulness
is a very powerful and effective tool in cultivating mental fitness.
Thank you for reading my
post! Have a great week!
Pursue!
Michelle
Hi Michelle.
ReplyDeleteI too enjoyed that exercise very much. We all have our struggles and that definitely helps to open your heart when it is truly difficult. I am one of those people that have tried and tried and have not been able to conceive a child it has been very hard to get over. So I do understand your frustration. It's great that you realized the gift that it is however it comes. There have been many days that I just couldn't bare the fact that so many get pregnant or have children and don't want them and so many of us can't and would do our utmost to make it happen. Such is life though. Meditation I must say has helped me to achieve peace in some very distressing moments of emotion.
Hi Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed the exercises that we repeated over and over for 10 minutes. I think if we continually remind ourselves that we need to be happy and pursue health and wholeness that information sticks with you. It is memorization for happiness and wholeness.
~Dani~
Hi Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI certainly can relate to the difficulty of guided meditations. I guess if it was easy there would be no benefit when we achieve it. I think the glory is in the persistance that we have as we keep trying to succeed. The repetition exercises are wonderful, I agree, but have you tried to incorporate any of the other practices that we have learned about; loving kindness, visualization etc. Perhaps it is in varity that we can be more successful. I find that by trying different types of practices I feel that I have more 'tools' available to achieve peace and holistic health especially when I am overstressed and negative. If one doesn't work especially well, I have hope that I can try another and get the positive results that I need. Victimization is a very powerful negative situation. How blessed we are to have found this course and learn about the many positive options that we have and giving us the ability to have these practices in our lives and to expose them to our clients just for the taking.
Jen