If you're reading this, chances are that your life, or the life of someone you know, is shaped by pain—and by the physical and emotional suffering that usually accompany it.
Mindfulness of breathing—how to “put out the welcome mat” for whatever arises in one's experience
What to do about pain—how to work with intense and unwanted sensations
Working with thoughts and emotions—how to avoid identifying with your experience of pain and instead see sensations and thoughts as sensations and thoughts
Resting in awareness—a three-minute mindful pause to restore balance, resilience, and self-compassion
Mindfulness in everyday life—allowing the nitty-gritty of one's daily life to be both the ultimate meditation teacher and the real meditation practice

Mindfulness Meditation For Pain Relief Sample by Jon Kabat-Zinn

We're often our own worst critics. The negative self-talk can be cruel, it gives depression power and eventually, we start to believe the things we tell ourselves.

We invited one of the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, Dr Kristin Neff, to teach us a thing, or two, about being kind to ourselves.

Some questions we ask:

Why is self-compassion important and what role does in play in our mental health?
Why do some people find it so hard to practice self-compassion?
How do we work through, and breakdown, the resistance we feel?

Want to learn more about Dr Kristin Neff? Here you go:

Kristin studied communications as an undergraduate at the University of California at Los Angeles (B.A., 1988). She did her graduate work at University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D., 1997), studying moral development with Dr. Elliot Turiel. Her dissertation research was conducted in Mysore, India, where she examined children’s moral reasoning. She then spent two years of post-doctoral study with Dr. Susan Harter at Denver University, studying issues of authenticity and self-concept development. Her current position at the University of Texas at Austin started in 1999, and she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006.

During Kristin’s last year of graduate school in 1997 she became interested in Buddhism, and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically.

In addition to her pioneering research into self-compassion, she has developed an 8-week program to teach self-compassion skills. The program, co-created with her colleague Chris Germer, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, is called Mindful Self-Compassion. Her book, Self-Compassion, was published by William Morrow in April, 2011.

Website: http://self-compassion.org/
Twitter: @self_compassion
Facebook: /selfcompassion

Episode 5: Dr Kristin Neff - Getting to Grips with Self-Compassion

Clip of speech by Dr. Jon Kabat zinn on Zen Center

Jon Kabat zinn on Self Compassion

This is a led meditation practice, as taught at the City Lit and the West London Buddhist Centre.

I encountered this meditation for the first time when I was finding life a little stressful, and there is no doubt that it has helped me immensely since 2007. I would heartily recommend anyone to have a go.

You could start right now, but you might like to read this introduction that Jinananda once wrote:

The first thing is to find a quality of stillness.  It is possible to move or walk with this quality of stillness, but in this practice, you can start to develop it by being physically still.  You can move during the practice, but the invitation of the practice is not to fidget. 

If you need to, you can lie down to do the practice, but if you can, you should sit up, in a chair or on the floor, either kneeling astride cushions, or if sitting cross-legged, sitting high enough on cushions so that the knees are lower than the hips. 

The aim of the practice is to cultivate a concentrated appreciative attention to our moment-by-moment experience of the breathing process. 

There are four stages, or approaches, to the practice.  Each of these stages represents a slightly different way of being aware of the breath, of being aware of in the breath.  Starting with the easiest, and working towards the stage requiring the most delicate focus of concentration. 

Mindfulness is not about closing down or cutting off our thinking, it is not an exercise in fixing or forcing the attention.  It simply provides our thinking with something to come back to when it becomes aware of what it is doing. 

We are being mindful at the very moment that we realize that our mind has been all over the place.  Coming home to the breath, we are coming home to ourselves.  Without trying to stop the mind doing what it wants to do, we are centring the mind, settling it.

You can find other meditations of Jinananda's on jonfrewin's soundcloud page.

A guided Mindfulness of Breathing meditation for beginners, by Jinananda

Mindfully Coping With Stress – Body Scan (30 mins)— Kovido

This is the Living in Awareness practice from Elisha Goldstein's 6-Month Online Mentorship Program - A Course in Mindful Living. Next course begins October 2, 2017.

A Course in Mindful Living

Living in Awareness Practice 15 Minutes

Three minutes breathing space

R.A.I.N. - Dealing With Difficulty (12 mins+) – Rene Frey-Jennings

Get the full audiobook: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Tree-Wisdom-Audiobook/1788174364

Trees are our constant companions. They stand tall above us, shading us from the sun. They breathe in and out, feeding us oxygen. They weather the storms, protecting us from danger. 

As children we intuitively understand the impact trees have on our lives. We sit beneath their branches, we collect their fallen leaves, we hug their trunks in thanks. But in the process of growing up, we forget these gentle giants. We move to cities, we commute through concrete jungles, and we switch off from nature. 

Opera singer and forester Vincent Karche knows the impact of disconnecting all too well. After years away from his forestry roots, and under the stress of an international singing career, burnout took its toll and he lost his voice. Vincent's healing journey took him to the forests of northern Canada, where he reconnected with trees and recovered not just his voice, but his joy for life.

In Tree Wisdom, Vincent teaches us what a year of healing among the trees can look like. Each lesson mirrors the wondrous way our tall timber friends have learned to thrive through the seasons. Each lesson is simple in nature, a push of the pause button, a chance to re-centre on what matters.

If you can hear the call of nature, willing you back to a simpler time, this audiobook will show you the way.

Tree Wisdom

Tree Wisdom: A Year of Healing Among the Trees by Vincent Karche

https://self-compassion.org/guided-self-compassion-meditations-mp3-2/

Kristin Neff – Soften, soothe, allow: Working with emotions in the body (guided meditation)

Have you ever said, "I'll be happier when...". The practice of well-being is in this moment, not some future moment. 

There are things we CAN do right now and in this talk, I'll share with some of my very favorite practices that warm the hearts and minds of thousands of people around the world. When you're done listening, share what you're going to do next...

A guided Mindfulness of Breathing meditation for beginners, by Jinananda

jonfrewin

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