🍃 This self-compassion practice can help you work with difficult emotions so they aren’t so overwhelming. You can use this any time you may be feeling unpleasant, difficult feelings, and it’s a good idea to practice this way of being with emotions with less intense emotions first.
🍃 As you bring mindful awareness to how you are feeling, try noticing and naming the emotion, and then becoming aware of the felt sense of this emotion in your body.
🍃 Soften into that location in your body, letting the muscles be soft without trying to make the sensation go away, but rather just being with it with loving awareness. You can say, “soften…soften…soften…” quietly to yourself if you like.
🍃 Soothe yourself now for struggling in this way. You might like to offer your body physical touch, such as by putting your hand over the area of discomfort, or even over your heart, feeling your heart beat and your body breathe. Perhaps kind words arise in our mind, and if you wish you can say these kind words to yourself, or just repeat “soothe…soothe…soothe.”
🍃 Allow the discomfort to be there. Let the discomfort come and go as it pleases, like a guest in your home. You can repeat, “allow…allow…allow.”
You can use these three words like a mantra, reminding yourself to lean in with tenderness toward difficult emotions and suffering.
