Meditation is all about letting things go: your thoughts, stress, emotions. It is not that you aren’t allowed to think about things during meditation, you simply observe everything that comes through your mind and then let it go. This meditation exercise can help you with this.
- Find a comfortable posture. You don’t even need to close your eyes if you don’t want to.
- Notice, right now, the position of your body. Can you feel any physical tension in the body? Which parts feel warm, and which ones cold? Does the tension have a shape, a color, a texture? Be aware of what they are. What happens to the tension and tightness as you become aware of them? Do they release or stay there?
- Become aware of any emotions that are touching you at the moment. What happens when you observe them? Get a sense of how strong the emotion is. Don’t try to let go. Putting effort into letting go just creates more tension – instead, become aware of it and allow the emotion to take its own course. Let the emotion let go of itself if it wanted to. If the feeling lingers on, can you be okay with that, and accept it as it is?
- At the end of this short meditation, see if you’re willing to let go of anything that you found out – anything that you’re now holding on to, trusting that you have within you all that needs to be known.
- This exercise comes from the guide, Mindfulness for Dummies, written by Shamash Alidina.
- Want to know more about mindfulness? Take a look at our special 19 Days of Mindfulness.
Photography Chad Madden/Unsplash.com
