Inner Exploration

Meditation

A quiet place

Your opinion matters
Your opinion matters
Web Wisdom

Meditation is a practice that helps personal growth by providing a quiet space for thoughts and reflections.

It encourages focused attention and promotes self-awareness and emotions management.

Regular meditation can lead to increased clarity, reduced stress and improved mental well-being.

By creating a quiet environment, meditation really empowers individuals to explore their thoughts, emotions, and goals.

This exploration can contribute to personal development and creating a feeling or sense of inner peace.

Your Toolbox 1

Book: Happy Mind Happy Life - Dr Rangan Chatterjee 2022

Compassion -induced Meditation

A great method for giving yourself away to others, inside your own heart, is with the practice of Loving Kindness Meditation.

This has been known to reduce stress and increase happiness and empathy.

It helps people become less focused on themselves, which can be associated with increased feelings of anxiety and depression, and helps them feel closer to others, including strangers.

*You can practice for two minutes or twenty minutes, depending on the time you have available or your preferences.

*** Sit in a quiet space with your eyes closed. Take a deep belly-breath, in and out.**

*** Think of a person you feel close to. Imagine them standing next to you sending unconditional love to you. Feel the warmth and compassion flowing towards you.**

*** Focus on sending your own love back to that person. Remind yourself that this person is just like you - trying to do their best to have a happy and contented life.**

*** Now picture someone else you feel close to. Send warmth and love out to them. Some people find it helpful to say to themselves, “may your life be filled with happiness, health and wel-being”**

*** When you feel ready, try the same technique with someone you are neutral about and perhaps do not know well , such as a work colleague or a fellow parent from the school run. Trying this technique on someone you don't like is especially powerful.**

*** Finally send love and compassion out to all the people all over the globe. Say to yourself, “Just as I wish to, may you live with ease, happiness, and good health”**

*** Finish with a deep belly - breath in and out.**

*** Take a moment to notice how you feel after this short meditation, in your body and your mind.**

*** Open your eyes.**

Your Toolbox 2

Extract from: Owning our Struggles by Minaa B. 2023

Meditation practices:

Meditation and deep breathing exercises are great for managing stress, anxiety and trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze and fawning.

-Guided meditation

-Rainbow meditation

-Visualization

-Loving- kindness meditation

-Body scan

Grounding practices:

5-4-3-2-1 Method

-Cold shower or ice bath

-Calm music

-Sound awareness

-Self-compassion affirmations

-Tune in to nature

Journaling Prompts and practices

-Free-flow journaling

-Gratitude journaling

-Affirmation journaling

-Goal-setting journaling

SMART:

-Specific

-Measurable

-Actionable

-Relevant

-Time -based

Dear self letters:

Dear Self, Iam forgiving myself for ……

Dear self, I am making space in my life for …….

Dear self, I am committed to giving myself more …….

Dear self, I will stop worrying about ………

Writing with reflections

Your choices to heal will leave a legacy.

What legacy do you want to leave behind?

In what ways have you harmed others as a result of living in trauma?

What are you doing to hold yourself accountable moving forward?

In your opinion, what does maturity look like?

Do you see yourself embodying these traits daily?

What can you improve upon if not?

Podcast & Youtube Links

Podcast: Nueroscientist Dr Tara Swart Power of Journalling www.drchatterjee.com/58 www.drchatterjee.com/journalling

Podcast: Breathwork www.drchatterjee/breathwork www.drchatterjee.com/breathing

Self transformation

How to be less anxious

Author's Opinion 1

Book: Why has nobody told me this before? By Dr Julie Smith 2022 On Fear

24. How to calm anxiety right now - Meditation Topic

Summary:

When anxious our breathing becomes faster and each breath is more shallow.

To calm the body, tackle slower, deeper breaths.

Try to make the out breath longer and more vigorous than the inbreath.

Give it some time and the anxiety response will begin to drop.

**25. What to do with anxious thoughts **

Summary:

Get some distance from anxious thoughts by labeling the biases when you spot them.

Remember that, when anxious thoughts demand constant attention, you can control the spotlight of your attention.

Kindness turns the dial down on our threat response, whether that kindness comes from someone else or inside your own head.

Reframing a threat as a challenge invites us to be more courageous.

Act in line with your values so that you are basing your decisions on what matters most, not on fear.

26. Fear of the inevitable Go To: Death Topic

Author's Opinion 2

Extract from: Owning our Struggles by Minaa B. 2023

To thrive as healthy adults, we need to nurture our inner child.

There are things you might have needed as a child that you did not receive, but when you get back to your “window of tolerance”, you will learn to give these things to yourself as an adult.

When we experience trauma or stress the sympathetic nervous system gets activated and sometimes gets stuck in a state of hyperarousal (anxiety, panic attacks, sweating, anger, etc) or hypoarousal (shutting down, freezing, dissociation, numbing, depression, fatigue etc.)

Your window of tolerance is the window when your nervous system is in a state of healthy arousal.

*To calm your nervous system:

-Move your body: cardio, walk, yoga etc.

-Relax: watch a movie or do some distraction

-Box breathing:

-Co-regulating: doing above with someone else who is calm

Author's Opinion 3

Handouts: Home Improvement: Men in Relationship Jan 2024

Self-compassion

Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings - after all, who ever said you are supposed to be perfect?

Self-compassion involves acting the same way towards yourself when you are having a difficult time, fail, or notice something you dont like about yourself. Instead of just by ignoring your pain with a “stiff upper lip” mentality, you stop to tell yourself “this is really difficult right now, “how can I comfort and care for myself in this moment?

Three elements of self-compassion:

Self- kindness vs self- judgment

Self- compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing , and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than get angry when life falls short of their ideals.

Common humanity vs isolation

Self- compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacies is part of the shared human experience - something that we all go through rather than being something that happens to “me” alone.

Mindfulness vs over- identification

Mindfulness is a non judgemental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them.

We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. At the same time, mindfulness requires that we not be “over- identified” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negative reactivity.

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Updated: November 2023

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