Mind Over Monkey

✨The subtle moments ✨ I had a lovely experience today in our group meditation class, regarding one particular homeless client. He arrived agitated, sceptical, pacing and fidgeting. He sounded angry and mistrusting of people in the building. It took him a long time to finally settle during the sitting practice (in which time he made an origami bird out of scrap paper!) but by the end he was still, calm, with a big smile on his face. He expressed how different he felt, looked totally relaxed in his body, then chatted and laughed over tea with everyone else. It was like a dark cloud lifted and we all felt it 🌞
~
These small moments mean a lot to me. It also reminds me that when you *stay with yourself* during any feelings of discomfort in meditation - be it boredom, anxiety, restlessness, self-criticism - it will pass and on the other side is often calm, open expansiveness. It takes practice, patience and a readiness to let go of trying to control yourself or your surroundings. To give our companion The Mind a rest for a while.

If you’re trying meditation, perhaps remembering this will help 🌛

There’s been some commentary around mindfulness making people happy, relaxed and (somehow, therefore) more passive towards world issues... a kind of ‘oh well, just stay zen’ attitude. I think that is far from reality!

This article and it’s findings fit with my own experience of dealing with my own sh*t and wanting to / feeling able to become more active in wider social & environmental issues 🌝

Perhaps when (more of) our own psychological needs are met, we have greater capacity for others and the more-than-human world 🌍

Fill your own cup up first and all that jazz!
What do you think?

Happy People Don’t Ignore The World’s Problems, They Act To Solve Them New research refutes the idea that happy people tend not to care about societal problems.

When we‘re a baby or toddler, we tend to feel an emotion and express it immediately - we cry, shout, laugh, squeal, rage, stamp, sulk, and so on. Somewhere along the line, we’re taught to stop fully expressing, or to ‘control’, our emotions (which is often also gender dependent). Anger, sadness or jealousy or even ecstatic joy and love can be seen as something we need to hide or keep to ourselves. But when we keep these bottled, the high level of energy generated from the emotion can turn inward and mutate.

All transient emotional experiences (which typically last for 90 seconds as a chemical reaction within the body) are healthy and a signal for something - they are our motivational drivers for survival! Paying attention to them is key to *emotional regulation* (not control) -- regulation is wisely responding to what we feel, by fully feeling it and giving it space; whereas control can involve suppression or numbing.

Today in week 2 of the course, we did a body scan meditation with a piece of paper in front of us. I invited participants to
1) scan through the body slowly
2) notice any sensations/emotional states arise
3) stay with it, investigate it with curiosity and
4) draw where they felt something using symbols for that sensation, eg dots for sharp pain, squiggly line for tingling or hunger, etc.

It was fun to experiment with this more playful way of using a body scan meditation and lovely to see the visual imprint of what each person experienced! Some started to connect physical sensations (eg tightness in the chest) with an underlying emotion (eg nervousness)

In paying kind attention to ourselves in any given moment and giving space to whatever arises, we allow emotions to pass through us, rather than getting stuck/frustrated or shutting down/numbing.

As the old saying goes, “you gotta feel it to heal it”!

Let me know if/how you find time to relate to your emotional body 🌞 I’d love to know what practices other people do out there 💃 🤸‍♀️ 🧘🏻‍♀️ 🖊 💭 🌈

🎨 Art as Meditation 🎨

Last night was the launch for new weekly ‘Life Drawing Laid Bare’ classes at in Hackney- and it was a delight! Well done to the Reilly sisters for starting it up 👯‍♀️. Next week I’ll be co-facilitating the class with Miranda (cofounder) and Imogen (life model), bringing together Mindfulness and Life Drawing.

We’ll be playing with the senses e.g. drawing to different pieces of music and experimenting with sight, all whilst seeing how this impacts what appears on the paper - letting go of our judgemental inner critic about being good/bad and just drawing, scribbling, shading, splodging and whatever else you wanna do! Then we’ll tune into different emotions through short guided reflections, which will interact with the model’s poses, allowing you to draw whatever you see.

Come and join us from 6:45 (starts at 7pm) regardless of your experience or talent! £10 On the door + materials or book on Eventbrite (search “life drawing laid bare mindfulness”) 👍🏼 💕 🎨 🖼

🌱 Last chance to book your place on the 4-week course, starting this weekend! 🌱

🐕 Dogfulness 🐕

I had a lovely grounding meditation with friends this morning, and feeling much more dog right now (until I went onto Instagram 🤔😅 so I’ll make this brief)

Have you got any tips on being fully present over the holidays? Maybe limiting screen time, or getting out into nature, or putting phones away, or cooking together? Maybe you’re giving experiences instead of physical gifts?

Tell me! I’d like some more inspiration 💡

Really starting to enjoy this flyer making stuff!
BUT what's on the flyer is more important...
Who wants to join me in January for a yummy 4-week course on Saturdays? We will be exploring:

Week 1: Foundations of mindfulness - the senses
Week 2: Body awareness - physical sensations, emotions
Week 3: Mind awareness - thoughts, beliefs
Week 4: Mind-body-environment connection

More info on the flyer and here:
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/commonhealing/324248/

Book your place based on your income level (£60/80/100)

Know someone who would like to receive a mindfulness course for Christmas? Then book a place online and slip this printout inside their card 🥳
www.tickettailor.com/events/commonhealing/324248

Facebook event is here for more info:https://www.facebook.com/events/1033118053698298/

Basically, we’re all just walking, talking, emotional trees 🌲😆🌳