8 Week
Introduction to Mindfulness Course
Week Four Resources
Week Four: Opening Meditation
Week Four: Exploring Emotion Through Like/Dislike
Week 4
Audio Files
for Your
Support
Week Four: Anxiety Attack Audio
Click to Access
Ways to Approach
Anxiety
Week Four: RAIN
Week Four: Mindfulness of Difficulty
Journal Prompts
How might I approach difficult emotions Mindfully?
What are signals the body sends as difficult emotions first begin to arise
that I can tune my awareness to?
Can I notice the urge to turn away, avoid, distract, deny,
and instead STAY?
Tip: Being with difficult emotions in a safe space such as formal practice
allows you to become intimately familiar with the emotion.
It allows you the opportunity to non-judgmentally observe how
emotions arise, what they feel like in the body, what kinds of
thoughts begin to surface, urges to speak or take action, etc.
Yet, you remain the observer.
There is a little space between you and what you're feeling.
When you can dwell in this space, choice arises giving you the
wisdom to respond rather than react.
Jalaluddin Rumi 🔹
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
∙
Nayyirah Waheed🔹
If the Ocean can calm itself, so can you.
We are both salt water mixed with air.
Dana Foulds 🔹
Allow
There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightening bolt,
containing a tornado.
Dam a stream and it will create a new channel.
Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet.
Allow and grace will carry to higher ground.
The only safety lies in letting it all in -
the wild and the weak;
fear, fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors of the heart,
or sadness veils your vision with despair,
practice becomes simply bearing the truth
in the choice to let go of your known way of being,
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.
Jennifer Wellwood 🔹
Unconditional
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me,
and becomes Itself transformed
into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is purest delight -
To honor its form, true devotion.
∙