Themes

Affectionate Breathing

Soles of the feet

Practices

What is mindfulness and the wandering mind

Resistance and how we cause ourselves unnecessary suffering

Backdraft - the ups and downs of learning self-compassion

Home practice

Affectionate Breathing

Noticing resistance and exploring it. How does it show up, how might it serve you or not serve you, and what do you need in response?

Noticing Backdraft. Be gentle and slow if/when it shows up
Ways to work with backdraft include:
Naming it
Reducing what may have triggered it
Use attention regulation (Soles of the feet or here-and-now-stone) Behavioural compassion (anything you may need right now)

Self-Compassion in Daily Life

Mindfulness in Daily Life - a routine activity that you can savour with all your senses

If you are practising along with your MSC Workbook, the chapters that correspond to today's class material are chapters 6-8

Self Compassion Break

Poem

MY BALM

I close my eyes and sigh, and here I am lying in the hammock of my heart. Moving gently, with the soft air of my breath.

When I fall from my head past my words, I'm caught lovingly by the hammock of my heart and rocked to its rhythmic beat.

It is my peace, my rest, my quiet, cradled in the hammock of my heart. It is constant; it is safe to be held in the hammock of my heart. No place to go. Nothing to do. Nobody to please.

It is my altar, my blessing, my balm, here in the hammock of my heart.

by Jane O'Shea

If it's not easy, it's not self-compassion