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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
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A practice to cultivate acceptance and self-compassion towards our own pain.
So just beginning by settling into as comfortable a posture as possible. And you can either sit or lie down, if it's comfortable. Choose whichever posture for this meditation is going to give you the most sense of ease with your experience. And gently surrendering the weight of your body now into gravity, so that it really settles and rests on the bed or on the floor or on the chair. And can you sense how gravity gently draws your body down towards the ground and supports you and holds you? And gradually gathering your awareness now around the breath and the whole body.
And allowing the whole body to be rocked and cradled by the movement and the flow of the natural breath. So in this meditation, we're going to learn how to very, very gently turn towards our experience of pain and meet it with tenderness and with kindness and with compassion. So this is going to help to soften or dissolve any distress or resistance that we're layering on top of the emotion. And we also learn to bathe our difficult emotion or our pain in a tender and kindly breath, soothing it moment by moment and bringing ourselves comfort in a difficult time. And now with great tenderness and gently opening your awareness to include your pain or fatigue or the difficult emotion that you're experiencing, just including it in your awareness with the kind of attitude that you'd naturally have towards a loved one who was hurting or injured.
And softly breathing with this experience for a few moments. And if this feels frightening, or you feel some resistance, just breathing with the fear or the resistance, with gentleness and with patience. It's almost as if you could breathe a kindly and soothing awareness right into and out from where you're feeling the pain or discomfort. If at any time this feels too overwhelming or too uncomfortable, then you can shift the focus away from the pain and just bringing it to the breath in the belly. Or you might even like to take your focus to sounds for a few moments and just stabilizing there.
Before potentially coming back if that feels okay and just bringing the focus once again back to rest in the body and on the breath, bringing it to the pain or discomfort. Breathing a soothing, kindly and compassionate breath right into and out from the sensations. Just continuing to hold the sensations in a kindly awareness, breathing into and out from the sensations, moment by moment by moment. Just being patient and gentle with yourself. And as you breathe in now, seeing if you can get a sense of imagining a kind and compassionate breath flowing into your whole body, filling it up on the in breath, and as you breathe out, imagine kindness flowing out and saturating every cell of the body.
Breathing in, kindness and compassion flowing in and filling you up. As you breathe out, kindness spreading through the body into every cell, every sinew, and every fibre of your being. Allowing the whole body, including any pain, grief, stress, or discomfort that may be present to be saturated in this kindly, tender, and accepting awareness. And then begin to deepen and lengthen the breath a little. Taking a deep, slow, full breath in.
And a long, steady breath out. Again, breathing in. And letting it go. One more time. Breathing in.
And this time, as you breathe out, beginning to wriggle the fingers and the toes. And just take a moment to notice how you're feeling after taking this time out to cultivate kindness and presence. And when you're ready, you can open the eyes and seeing if it's possible to allow your awareness now to really stay deeply inside your body as you begin to transition into the rest of your day, taking this attitude of kindliness and care towards yourself with you. Thank you for your practice. Wishing you a great day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow.
Kindness Flowing In
A practice to cultivate acceptance and self-compassion towards our own pain.
Duration
Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.
So just beginning by settling into as comfortable a posture as possible. And you can either sit or lie down, if it's comfortable. Choose whichever posture for this meditation is going to give you the most sense of ease with your experience. And gently surrendering the weight of your body now into gravity, so that it really settles and rests on the bed or on the floor or on the chair. And can you sense how gravity gently draws your body down towards the ground and supports you and holds you? And gradually gathering your awareness now around the breath and the whole body.
And allowing the whole body to be rocked and cradled by the movement and the flow of the natural breath. So in this meditation, we're going to learn how to very, very gently turn towards our experience of pain and meet it with tenderness and with kindness and with compassion. So this is going to help to soften or dissolve any distress or resistance that we're layering on top of the emotion. And we also learn to bathe our difficult emotion or our pain in a tender and kindly breath, soothing it moment by moment and bringing ourselves comfort in a difficult time. And now with great tenderness and gently opening your awareness to include your pain or fatigue or the difficult emotion that you're experiencing, just including it in your awareness with the kind of attitude that you'd naturally have towards a loved one who was hurting or injured.
And softly breathing with this experience for a few moments. And if this feels frightening, or you feel some resistance, just breathing with the fear or the resistance, with gentleness and with patience. It's almost as if you could breathe a kindly and soothing awareness right into and out from where you're feeling the pain or discomfort. If at any time this feels too overwhelming or too uncomfortable, then you can shift the focus away from the pain and just bringing it to the breath in the belly. Or you might even like to take your focus to sounds for a few moments and just stabilizing there.
Before potentially coming back if that feels okay and just bringing the focus once again back to rest in the body and on the breath, bringing it to the pain or discomfort. Breathing a soothing, kindly and compassionate breath right into and out from the sensations. Just continuing to hold the sensations in a kindly awareness, breathing into and out from the sensations, moment by moment by moment. Just being patient and gentle with yourself. And as you breathe in now, seeing if you can get a sense of imagining a kind and compassionate breath flowing into your whole body, filling it up on the in breath, and as you breathe out, imagine kindness flowing out and saturating every cell of the body.
Breathing in, kindness and compassion flowing in and filling you up. As you breathe out, kindness spreading through the body into every cell, every sinew, and every fibre of your being. Allowing the whole body, including any pain, grief, stress, or discomfort that may be present to be saturated in this kindly, tender, and accepting awareness. And then begin to deepen and lengthen the breath a little. Taking a deep, slow, full breath in.
And a long, steady breath out. Again, breathing in. And letting it go. One more time. Breathing in.
And this time, as you breathe out, beginning to wriggle the fingers and the toes. And just take a moment to notice how you're feeling after taking this time out to cultivate kindness and presence. And when you're ready, you can open the eyes and seeing if it's possible to allow your awareness now to really stay deeply inside your body as you begin to transition into the rest of your day, taking this attitude of kindliness and care towards yourself with you. Thank you for your practice. Wishing you a great day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow.
Duration
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