A guided meditation on the compassionate breath as a way to cultivate  kindliness towards oneself and others

Compassionate Breath

A meditation on a mountain to develop a sense of acceptance, stability and equanimity. Based on a meditation by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Image by Samantha Weerasinghe on Unsplash
www.padraigomorain.com

Mindfulness

The Mountain

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

An exercise to learn to notice our own thoughts and see them as just that - only thoughts. We can also notice that we don't need to take thoughts so seriously, hook into them or be be pushed around by them. 

thought watching (defusion)

Brief mindfulness practices. My website  is www.padraigomorain.com

Body Scan

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

Meditation teacher and voice actor Elaine Smookler leads a mindfulness practice that consists of laying down and placing attention on each area of your body, from head to toe. 

30-Minute Body Scan for Beginners

A Body Scan from Breathworks meditation retreat, December 2016

Three Diaphragm Body Scan - Vidyamala.MP3

The more you try to force sleep, the less likely you are to achieve it. Explore this guided meditation to let go of stubborn thoughts and get a full night's rest.

www.developmentaldoctor.com

A Meditation for Easing Into Sleep

M2.0 Week 1 – Meditation on Breath and Open Awareness (21 mns) – Lea Godfrey

Christine Grace McMulkin is a Certified Mindful Self Compassion Teacher. She teaches Live Online MSC and is also a faculty member of the Centre for Mindfulness Studies.

https://christinegraceandcommunity.com

The Mountain

PadraigOMorain

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