Soothing our system through acceptance [Meditation for chronic illness folks #4]
Soothing our system through acceptance [Meditation for chronic illness folks #4]
In this 15 minute meditation we soothe our systems and find a gentle sense of inner peace through accepting everything that goes on inside
Hi friend!
Welcome to the last meditation of this season. I’m going on my usual one-month-ish break in April, but I will be back with more meditations next season (more on that later).
I have always had a difficult relationship with my emotions. They felt painful and horrible in my body and I didn’t always know what to do with them. After many years of practicing yoga and mindfulness I finally realised that what was making it all so painful and difficult was not the emotions themselves, but me fighting them and being annoyed by them. I realised, in fighting my emotions, trying to get them to leave, I was also not accepting myself fully. My emotions are there as a guide to what I like and dislike, to what is just and what is unjust and so forth.
I started working with a more radical version of acceptance — not a lying flat on the ground and accepting everything that happens to you — but accepting everything that went on inside me, loving it, welcoming it, listening intently as a good parent would to a child. It took me many years to master this kind of acceptance, and I’m still working on it, but I found that it soothed my system, gave me a deeper sense of inner peace, a gentle sense of control, and more energy for my creativity as I was no longer spending psychic energy on fighting everything that went on inside.
Soothing our system through acceptance is what today’s meditation is all about.
There are two versions, one with and one without music. Some people are sensitive to music while others need music.
Also, it is completely up to you whether you want to listen to the meditation with your eyes closed or not. There are no rules here. Listening with your eyes closed will give you a more intense experience, but sometimes intensity is not what’s best for our brains and bodies. I once went through a period where closing my eyes would start a technicolour disco inside my mind and so I began listening to meditations with my eyes open. I discovered that I got a lot from the meditation even with my eyes open.
Enjoy! And let me know how it went in the comments below.
With music:
Without music:
How did it go?
How did you find this meditation?
What came up for you to welcome and accept?
Was it hard or easy to welcome everything in?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Ahh thanks as always for such beauty and all the work you put into delivering this to us all, which of course you do not only with your time energy and resource but without charge too. Deeply appreciated. I had to listen twice because I am very distracted. My body is telling me it needs rest, it needs peace, it needs quiet, it needs stillness. And I am resisting. Doing doing doing. Distracting myself. In meeting myself where I was at and in doing my best though I was able to fully open up and receive a compliment a friend shared with me this morning, acknowledge how distracted I am and I loved what you said about thoughts being a friend. It reminded me of a break up letter to pain that I wrote where I connected with the pain standing up for me when I could not and saying no on my behalf. It changed my relationship with it for good. I love the idea of befriending all parts of ourselves.
Thank you once again for such a gentle and kind meditation. It feels very nourishing to my body today.