If you’re overwhelmed and feel the urge to confront or suppress painful, confusing, or distressing emotions, use this meditation from recovery coach Emily Jane to practice staying present with courage and compassion.
One of the core principles of mindfulness practice that can be a challenge for people is the idea that it’s actually smarter to accept our emotions rather than resist them. Especially when it comes to painful, confusing, or frightening emotions, this step of self-compassion can seem incredibly counterintuitive.
This week, author and recovery coach Emily Jane walks us through a practice you can use anytime you need support, bringing curiosity, courage, and compassion to difficult experiences.
Embodied compassion for difficult emotions
You can read and practice the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
When we experience difficult emotionsour natural tendency is to suppress or resist them, and yet it is often this resistance that creates even more stress and suffering. In this meditation we will begin to gently shift our relationships by creating space for our uncomfortable emotions. We will invite them in and sit with them with compassion as with an old friend.
We will begin the meditation with mindful awareness and then address the emotions, sensations, and parts of ourselves that we normally avoid or wish we didn’t have to experience.
- Start by finding a comfortable position: sitting in a chair, on the bed or floor, or lying down. When you are ready, you can close your eyes or look down. Allow your shoulders to relax, your jaw to soften, perhaps open and close your jaw a few times, creating slight movement and inducing relaxation. Let all the small muscles around the eyes, forehead, cheeks soften as much as possible.
- Now bring awareness to the surface beneath you. Feel that support holding you. As your feet touch the floor, feel the connection between your feet and the ground, feel the support that is already there.
- Pay attention to your body temperature and the temperature of the air around you. Notice the weight of your body and the gentle pull of gravity holding you up.
- Now bring your awareness to the natural rhythm of your breathing. Follow the path of the breath through the body. Noticing how it enters the body, where the breath enters the body – perhaps the chest, abdomen, ribs. And notice how it leaves the body. Just take a moment to feel one full breath from start to finish and then the next.
- Now take a slightly deeper breath in through your nose, let the breath flow into your belly, and then exhale with a sigh. And again inhale through the nose and slowly exhale with a sigh.
- Now become aware of your body as a whole. Pay attention to what you feel in this moment, in this body. See if you can approach your experience with curiosity and a sense of compassion.
- Be aware of any sensations, noting any emotions present or areas of tension, discomfort or heaviness. Whatever is here, see if you can just let it be here and gently make room for it.
- Now become aware of the part of you that is aware. The part of you that is aware of your breath, body, sensations and emotions. See if you can lean into awareness itself, this observing presence, and notice its qualities. Perhaps there is peace, quiet, or a sense of peace and compassion.
- Rest for a moment in this compassionate awareness. When you feel supported, place one hand over your heart. Feel the warmth of your hands, the gentle pressure, just offering your body care and support.
- Now recall a difficult emotion, memory, or situation. Nothing too intense, just something you find a little challenging. Maybe something that’s been troubling you lately, an interaction that upsets or irritates you, or just a feeling you’re carrying.
- As you remember this, pay attention to what is happening in your body. Sensations, restlessness, tightness, heaviness, or a sinking feeling may begin to appear. You may notice an emotion. Just feel whatever comes up and name the emotion. Describe any sensations.
- See if you can just observe the sensationsimply being a compassionate witness to the discomfort or pain and allowing the experience to be there without immediately pushing it away. Remember, you don’t have to pretend everything is fine, and you don’t have to like it. But see if you can welcome it, making room for it, allowing it to be exactly what it is. And if it seems complicated, that’s okay. It’s our human nature to resist discomfort, so if there’s resistance, just notice that too without judgment.
- As you sit with this emotion or feeling, notice that there is space around it. The space inside the body, the space around the body. The support is still there under you. The breath is still moving, and this emotion, this sensation, is only part of your experience. It’s a part of you, but it’s not all of you.
- Now just get a little closer to the emotion and gently place your hand on the area where you feel the emotion or sensation most strongly. Offer these words with your hand: “I see you. I am here with you. I offer you space, compassion and love.” Notice what happens when you say these words. Maybe that part of you reacts to words. You may be experiencing less resistance to it. Perhaps the discomfort or pain eases, or you even find peace. Perhaps nothing will change at all. Whatever happens, it’s okay. There is no right way to experience it.
- Just spend a few more moments with that emotion, that feeling. Then bring your awareness back to your breath, and as you breathe in, imagine that you are breathing compassion into your body. Let it flow into the center of the emotion, and on the exhale let it expand into the space around you. Inhaling compassion, exhaling compassion. And as you breathe, allow that emotion to integrate into the fullness of your being.
- Now begin to feel the body as a whole. Support under you, the ground that holds you, you feel the support of gravity. Gently remind yourself with the following words: “I can feel difficult emotions when I create a space of compassion for them.”
- Now gently bring your awareness back to the space around you. Pay attention to any sounds in the room, air temperature. Invite some gentle movements in your body. Maybe a light rocking or a light shaking of hands. Take one last deep breath through your belly and exhale completely. When you’re ready, you can open your eyes by going back in time.
