I am always looking for ways of engaging with you to share this journey and practice, and to assist you in your unique path. So when I reflect on your participation, your openness to the teachings and your desire to practice with me, I feel truly blessed and humbled.
So thank you so very much for allowing me to be part of your journey.
Now that the cold winter days are drawing in and the sparkly christmas lights can be seen all around and christmas is just around the corner I wanted to share with you a very simple practice that helps me when I feel stressed out, overwhelmed, or irritated.
This time of year can be full of a range of emotions and many people find this time of year particularly difficult.
Hopefully you will have a totally blissful, relaxed and fun filled Christmas holiday and won't need this, but just in case your Christmas gets crazy busy with loads of family and celebrations, you might find the Hour-Glass Practice (below) useful.
Wishing you a very happy, and peaceful Christmas and New Year.
With love,
Kerstin X
You can imagine this practice shaped like an hour-glass...
1, Acknowledging
Bring yourself into the present moment by deliberately adopting a dignified posture.
Then ask:
What is going on with me at the moment?
Notice and acknowledge your experience, instead of turning away. Accept all your experiences in the body. Emotions and thoughts, and stay with them for a few moments, allowing any negative feelings or experiences to be present.
2. Gather
Then gently focus your full attention on to the breathing.
Experience fully each in-breath and each out-breath as
they follow one after the other.
The breath can function as an anchor
to bring you into the present and to help
you tune in to a state of awareness and stillness.
3. Expanding awareness
Expand your awareness beyond the breath to the whole body, and the space it takes up, as if your whole body is breathing. Having a sense of space around you, too. Hold everything in awareness.
You can find a guided version of this practice on
SoundCloud
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction CourseMindfulness is a training of the mind in awareness.
Life in today’s world can often feel like a never-ending rollercoaster and many people suffer with stress, anxiety, overwhelm and low mood.
Mindfulness can be a way of dealing with the demands of life and enable us to be with things as they are, even when they are difficult.
Through the practice of Mindfulness we can increase our ability to know what goes on in our internal world and in our external world.
This allows us to notice our emotions more easily and enables us to respond from a place of choice. Mindfulness enables us to notice and fully enjoy the good moments whilst becoming more approaching of the difficult.
Simply put:
‘It’s finding peace in a frantic world during frantic times.’ – Jon Kabat-Zinn