Compassionate mindfulness
This was the name of the course that we had all been signed up to take part in. I am not going to go through each stage of it here because that would be disrrespectful to the course leaders, but I will attempt to give a flavour of the first session.
**Breathing exercise to focus the group**
**Some background to what mindfulness is- there are a LOT of definitions and different teachers have their favourites. Suffice to say it is a lot more than 'living in the moment' . It certainly is NOT about 'emptying the mind' and it's not a religion.** This particular course was mostly based on the work of John Kabat-Zinn
Check this webpage for bios of some other leading mindfulness gurus https://themindfulsteward.com/mindfulness/16-of-the-most-respected-mindfulness-teachers-of-modern-day/
**some background to research and how brain activity can be positively affected by regular mindfulness practises**
**A guided meditation**
And before you knew it the time had passed.
Did it feel strange being in my workplace, with colleagues trying to be relaxed. Yes of course, but very quickly the whole point of just accepting that each feeling came and went, each thought came and went and actually allowing oneself to just have some quiet time was pretty fabulous in itself.
The big takeaway from the first session was to allow yourself to take some time for yourself. I can hear you shouting at the screen right now, but please bear with. Just a couple of minutes to stop, take a deep breath, let it out. Repeat. And then move back to whatever it was you were doing.
STOP- stop, take a breath, observe and proceed.
OK that wasn't too bad, still had a list of things to do but went home at the end of the day feeling far more energised than I had been at the start of the day.
Next post will explore the next part of the journey on self compassion. If you would like to read up on this before I post I have recently read this and found it to resonate with me. Check it out https://www.mindful.org/the-transformative-effects-of-mindful-self-compassion/
