We have now almost completed our short MBSR program for Covid-19.
Of course, there will be situations coming up in our life that will catch us off guard.
For a little while, our old ways of reacting will want to reinitiate themselves in their usual auto-pilot mode. And we can be quite quick to retreat to our usual self-criticism in these moments. Such as: “I’ve practiced this program for several days now, and still I’m getting angry, sad, frustrated!” We are quick to assume despair and helplessness. We assume: “We failed!”
Maybe this chain of thoughts used to work for us at some point in our lives.
But none of this is true anymore today.
We have tools now that we didn’t have before.
The more we will start using these tools by bringing them successively into our everyday life, the more quickly we will reprogram our destructive patterns and establish new, more healing auto-piloted (re)actions to these situations.
We learned in this program:
Stress belongs to our life.
Suffering belongs to our life.
We fake a sense of control in these moments to compensate our natural fears – so that we can feel safe and secure.
But that doesn’t mean that we are indeed safe and secure.
Our life is transient. It’s our human nature. Like everything around us, our bodies come and pass.
The exercises we did together in this program taught us to recognize our need for control that emerges when we lose control. We learned that whatever we don’t have under our control threatens us – because we can’t control it anymore. Too much of that control, however, can quickly degenerate into self-punishment – because such control misses a sense of ease, happiness, and benevolence for our own well-being. Instead, we experience tension and hardness toward ourselves.
We learned in this program that we can now allow ourselves to experience a sense of control without having to force it or having to work so hard for it. For example, we can retreat to sensing how the Earth carries us, how our breath flows all by itself, just like it needs to, and how everything around us happens all on its own. Without us needing to do anything!
We learn to let go.
We learn that we can actually loosen our grip on ourselves.
Because:
It is like it is!
This acceptance will heal us.
We don’t have to meditate our problems away. We don’t have to dream or work hard for some “ideal life” in our future. Our life is happening right here and now – with all that it needs.
Therefore, we can allow things to be how they are. Maybe that current state is not a comfortable place to be in right now. But that’s not the point. Self-compassion means to stay here, particularly when it’s uncomfortable. We stay by our side. We don’t depart or abandon ourselves. We are here with unconditional kindness and loyalty for ourselves. Not to make things better, but just to be with us. We don’t need to say anything smart to fix the situation – we just remain here, to strengthen our back.
It’s like sitting with an angry dog to calm it down, instead of running away in fear.
We don’t need a pseudo-friendship with ourselves, a friendship that only functions when things are well. We need a true friendship with ourselves, a bond that serves our longing for being sufficient just like we are, no matter in what circumstances. We are sufficient for our own life. Our personal life wouldn’t fit anyone else, it’s our own! Each step we take in our life is our unique footprint.
We now choose where to place our footprints.
Walking our Footprints
On this concluding day of our MBSR-program, I will leave you with a final meditative practice that you can use from hereon, wherever you go: the Walking Meditation.
Once you have practiced this 10-minute meditation a few times, you can center yourself in the present moment anywhere – in any location and within very little time!
Even when you transition between tasks or patients, you can use this brief practice to quickly center yourself with mindful self-compassion.
Because I like this meditation so much (I personally have benefitted from it greatly), I recorded it myself for your use:
Your Craftsmanship
One of the key lesson, if not THE key lesson, of this program is our recognition that everything we need for living our life is already here.
The Earth carries us. The cells in our body are constantly busy with keeping us well. Our body breathes – all by itself, without our doing. Our body keeps us alive as long as it needs to.
And in the midst of this, there is so much around us that we can be grateful for!
Our mindfulness is our access to seeing those things. Our gratitude for these things has the power to open our heart and to let it become very wide – all the way to the point where we feel inherently connected with the entire world around us.
Especially when we feel isolated, empty, deficient, or tight in our hearts – then our gratitude has the power to cast a bridge from our felt deficiency to infinite abundance.
With my kids, I practice a ritual where each evening before we go to sleep, each of us states three things we are grateful for, and then we pledge to keep our gratitude for these things alive in our senses for the entire night.
With the same spirit, I wish you all that you will be mindful and always compassionately bonded with yourself!
Do things to treat you well! Kindly and generously care for yourself. See what you need or long for, and then fill that void. All you need is already there. Center yourself, calm yourself, be kind to yourself.
A new life lies ahead of you!
What do you long for, in that life? What is your wish for that new life?
Only you can turn your life into what you want it to be like.
You are your creator – and it’s your lifetime now!
Your Toolbox
You have learned all the tools on this blog that you need for a life with mindful self-compassion.
You can access the meditations on this blog again in the future, or use the skills you learned in your own creative way from hereon.
You may also choose to attend a more extensive mindfulness program with one of the many MBSR-trainers you can find on the web or even in your hometown.
In a nutshell, here is what you learned in this blog:
Using the Body Scan will help you center yourself and observe your bodily sensations.
Using the Breathing Meditation will free you from destructive loops of thoughts.
Using the Self-Compassion breaks will help you reestablish your sense of security, simply by placing your hands on your heart and formulating a benevolent wish for yourself.
Using the Open Awareness meditation will refresh your awareness of your thoughts as fleeting phenomena, and it will guide you to relax yourself into the infinite width of your mind.
Using the meditation for Difficult Emotions will immediately dissolve destructive emotions that are taking a toll on you.
Using the Walking Meditation will quickly center you in calmness, connectedness and mindful self-compassion, wherever you are.
You can use all these resources for the respective situations, whenever you need them, for free on this blog!
The Healing Energy of Renunciation
I explicitly created this blog for the challenging times we are facing under the government of Covid-19.
Covid-19 fits very well with the practice of MBSR.
If there is anything Covid-19 teaches us, it is the healing power of renunciation!
Things have to be calm and quiet for us to be able to hear ourselves.
These calm moments have become rare pearls in our lives, which are overwhelmed with all kinds of noises and fast-paced stimulations all day long.
Covid-19 is giving us the gift of healing renunciation. I’m not talking about painful asceticism or renouncing joy. I mean this as a “gift” in terms of the opportunity to consciously decide what we want to take part in and what not. We now have the capacity to listen into ourselves, pay mindful attention to ourselves, and then consciously decide what is good for us and what isn’t. For example, if the rambling noise of the radio annoys us, then we simply turn it off. The lesson is about the realization that we have the capacity to make a wise and conscious choice to forgo what doesn’t facilitate us in the current moment. This also applies to nutrition, other people around us, activities, our ideals, or our life conditions: Covid-19 is giving us the break we need to calibrate our life – to change self-destructive into healing patterns. We can now flip the coin! Each of us, individually – but also all of us together, as a human kind. We create our human life on Earth, and we can heal it.
Next to my stroke last year, Covid-19 is the second best gift that I have received in my lifetime so far. It isn’t really new in content – but it reinforces what my stroke has already taught me. I am greatly humbled by this gift. I sincerely hope you can find a gift in this too.
Look outside the window. Allow your eyes to drift into the infinite width of the skies. Let your thoughts come and go like they want to, but don’t follow them. Let your emotions come up in you and leave again, like they want to, but don’t stick to them. Just sit here for a moment, alone with yourself. And allow yourself to just be. You don’t need to even focus on your breathing or anything else – just enjoy this gift of true leisure for yourself.
Then, ask yourself: What gift do you find in this Covid-19 situation for your own life?
Farewell – Or Stay in Touch!
If this program was helpful to you, I would be happy to hear from you.
This program was my gift to you.
If you feel like you would like to give a gift back in return, I would be grateful! I welcome any support with funding the cost of this website, so if you would like to contribute, please send me an email at hannawaa@usi.ch.
Be well, treat yourself kindly, and stay in touch!
— Annegret Hannawa