Making Space

This morning I was sitting in the chair beside my bedroom window where I meditate. I had been checking emails on my phone before meditating with the Insight app and I looked up to see this view outside my window.

My first thoughts were, “Oh no!!! Say it isn’t so!” But then I got caught up in the beauty and wonder of it all and began smiling.

Nothing is all one way or another. We can feel many conflicting feelings about a simple event all at the same time. So today I decided it was a good day to talk about

Making Space

for everything you are feeling.

Here are several ways that I make space for all my feelings.

Noticing and Name

• First by noticing and naming — instead of saying “I am angry” or “I am sad,” I say, “There is sadness,” or “There is wonder,” or whatever the feeling is. And I allow that I might be feeling mixed feelings like sad and happy at the same time.

Acknowledging change

• Second by acknowledging that everything changes all the time — I just got up to look out the window and all the snow is gone, melted away and unless you were awake and aware that it was falling you would not know it even fell. Feelings come and go quickly.

“The healthiest way I know how to move through an emotion effectively is to surrender completely to that emotion when its loop of physiology comes over me. I simply resign to the loop and let it run its course for 90 seconds. Just like children, emotions heal when they are heard and validated. Over time, the intensity and frequency of these circuits usually abate. …Paying attention to which array of circuits we are concurrently running provides us with tremendous insight into how our minds are fundamentally wired…”
― Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

Practicing Self-compassion

•  Third by practicing self-compassion — instead of judging my feelings and thinking that I shouldn’t be feeling what I am feeling I simply allow and acknowledge my feelings

“To be compassionate is to move into the right here, right now with an open heart consciousness and a willingness to be supportive.”
― Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

Meditating regularly

• And finally by making time to meditate regularly I increase my ability to simply notice the thoughts and feelings that float like clouds through my mind.

“Unfortunately, as a society, we do not teach our children that they need to tend carefully the garden of their minds. Without structure, censorship, or discipline, our thoughts run rampant on automatic. Because we have not learned how to more carefully manage what goes on inside our brains, we remain vulnerable to not only what other people think about us, but also to advertising and/or political manipulation.”
― Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

How do you make space for everything you are feeling? Do you make space for everything you are feeling?

May you walk in beauty.

Note: Photos from yesterday’s walk in my neighborhood

A different view of the pond behind our house – you can see the back of our house on the right