We often seek out mindfulness practice as something to do when we’re overwhelmed. It is true that when you can notice and shift your attention intentionally, it feels possible to cope with the most challenging life experiences. Kindly or curiously noticing things as they arise in the moment lets you appreciate joyous moments even in the midst of pain. You savor joy naturally flowing into you and out of you (instead of holding on to it for dear life), much like the breath flows in and out. If you allow emotions to flow naturally in this way, you make room to wholly experience what comes up in the next moment and the next moment and so on. You know that joy is just passing through in the same way as sadness or guilt or worry does. And you know that joy and all of the other feelings will return again. This is something I teach in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction programs through Mindful Mare Wellness.
You might assume that you should always feel calm after mindfulness practice. In other words, you should be left feeling peaceful and relaxed or “you are not doing it right”. When you start to realize that, depending on your emotional wellbeing in the moment you may actually feel unsettled after practice, it can be disappointing or hard. People often wonder out loud if they’re “doing it wrong”.
I am here to reassure you that you are doing things completely right! The thing with emotions, especially distressing ones, is that they DO eventually pass. Yes, there may be days when you feel more anxious after a mindfulness practice instead of less. Some days you are easily distracted and more aware of the tension in your body or the worries going through your mind when you are sitting in mindful practice. And this may feel awful. But the other true thing is that when you repeatedly notice your present moments with intention, holding them as best you can without changing the experience in any way, spacious ease is created over time.
As you keep practicing, you become more skillful with noticing, naming and allowing experience to be as it is. You can even notice resistance and work with it, rather than let it overcome you or keep you stuck. If you allow yourself to be open to whatever the practice is like each time, you eventually become equipped to face all the feelings, even the hard ones.
Remember that mindfulness is about holding ALL your emotions with grace and curiosity. You have the ability to do this already and to feel the explosions in your heart without falling apart. This ability though needs to be deepened gradually. This is why it’s a practice; your tolerance of emotions expands each time you intentionally notice in this way.
The intent is NOT to throw yourself into the emotional inferno no matter how scared you are in the process. Baby steps! It is important to stay within the limits of what feels safe so you can grow with flow and honor just what you can handle right now. If you can hold emotions even a second longer than you usually might, it still creates shifts when you practice regularly.
Over time, you notice and feel (or *hold*) emotions with awareness longer than before you started to practice. The window of time in which you can hold emotions before it feels unbearable and necessary to shift attention away from them expands.
When we practice being mindfully present, we stay right there and feel everything *right now* (even for an instant longer). So you may not feel calm depending on the way your experience unfolds at that time.
Let yourself remember this the next time you are disappointed about the way a practice leaves you feeling. You are strengthening your gift of feeling everything you can as a human on this planet while still being okay. You can feel all the feelings and still survive. And in this way you learn a beautiful thing – mindfulness is really about HEART-FULLness. Your heart gets fuller with ongoing practice. And when you hold a full heart more of the time, everything changes!
