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- • Introduction
- • What is Mindfulness?
- • .b Mindfulness for Children & Teenagers• paws b - Primary School Mindfulness Curriculum
- • Mindfulness for Children & Teenagers
- • Kindness and Self Compassion
- • Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
- • Drop-in Mindfulness
- • Day of Mindfulness
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Kindness and Self-Compassion
With self-compassion, we give ourselves the same kindness and care we'd give to a good friend.
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” ― Gautama Buddha
Self-compassion
Self-compassion entails being warm and
understanding toward
ourselves when we suffer,
fail, or feel
inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. Mindfulness and Self Compassion combines the skills of mindfulness and self-compassion to enhance our capacity for emotional wellbeing. Mindfulness is the first step—turning with loving awareness toward difficult experience (thoughts, emotions, and sensations). Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals. People cannot always be or get exactly what they want. When this reality is denied or fought against suffering increases in the form of stress, frustration and self-criticism. When this reality is accepted with sympathy and kindness, greater emotional equanimity is experienced
Studies show that people who have compassion for themselves are happier, more optimistic, and more grateful than those who are harder on themselves.
Loving Kindness?
While we all have the capacity to live from our hearts and to be a loving presence in the world, this capacity is often undermined by the creation of barriers we put up to protect ourselves from being hurt. Often, we erect these barriers against ourselves, and find that we struggle to love and be kind to ourselves. Busyness, too, distracts us from greater openness and connection to ourselves and with other people. The Loving Kindness meditation practice develops the ability to connect to your heart, by bringing a gentle, kindly awareness to your emotional responses to yourself and others. Restoring that connection to your heart allows a gentle appreciation and love for yourself to flower, and from that greater appreciation of yourself, an increasing generosity and compassion towards other people.
Over time we develop the ability to see ourselves more clearly and to respond, with care, to our needs quickly. So nourishing ourselves in this way gives us the resources to respond more effectively to others without feeling drained or overwhelmed.
The Buddha gave his followers the Loving Kindness meditation practice as an antidote to fear. With less fear, they could meditate more effectively and be more contented and peaceful
Gratitude And Generosity
While the main focus of this course is on self Compassion & Loving Kindness meditation practice, course participants will also be asked to engage in everyday exercises designed to develop positive qualities such as gratitude and generosity. We often have a tendency to focus on what we lack, what we don’t have, whereas these two qualities place our focus on abundance rather than deprivation, on what we already have rather than what we lack. Shifting focus in this way benefits our well-being and gives us greater insight into what really matters to us. The exercises are also designed to bring attention to the everyday, small things in life that we often ignore or overlook.
Your task is not to seek for love but to find within yourself all the barriers you have built against it - Rumi
For more details phone Pauline 086 3784747