I finally see a way out and forward from the depressive state I have been in for the past five months. I see a way to reconnecting to myself and that wonderful place of being open and loving. Thank you so much Tara. I know this will be something I can offer my clients.
I didn’t know I had to bring kindness to what I was experiencing during the video.
I was angry, and felt unworthy and undeserving, as no one had seen fit to make closed captions available for those of us who are hearing-disabled. Very, very disappointing. ??
I really enjoyed your video.
It helped me to reflect that I am rarely kind to myself. There is something in my mindset that blocks my ability to be kind to myself. I realize the unhealthy weight this places on my whole being and it’s contribution to how I often feel.
I noticed I was feeling angry and tearful..when I turned inward the tears came and I allowed them to come. I uttered loving words to the young frightened part of me. I had recently suffered a stroke.
I had feelings of heart ache and pain. I understand how the child inside longs to be loved unconditionally and how I tend to keep that love at arms length out of fear.
Listening to you led me to pause and think of communication.
Success in communication comes from identifying a realistic intention. Do I have the means to achieve the ambition of my intention? What are the probabilities of satisfaction with this experience? Am I able to validate the needs and reactions of my interlocutor and take them into consideration in my way of intervening? Will the intended effect be achieved? How can I reveal my aim and what means to take so as not to get lost and be listened to? Above all, our aim must be part of a larger plan, our more elaborate desire to know, define, explain and integrate our human activity.
A minute of silence and meditation, spent observing the vicissitudes of our human condition and our feelings, to sort out the overflow of more or less relevant information, to observe the basis of our sensations, it’s short and long at the same time. Short before our duty to reconnect. Long in front of our discomfort and that of our interlocutor. It is a place of consciousness in a matrix of relationships, where solutions lie in the imbalances of relationships.
The forgetting of events is followed by the indifference of forgetting, like a silent echo which prolongs the space of forgetting. It is to be hoped that our search for meaning will not stop with a single minute of silence, that the emotion generated by this act will not only be instantaneous but will be stimulated by the search for and the hope of an effective communication which can even resume and extend later. How to ensure the sustainability of this effective communication and avoid the indifference of oblivion?
We must hope that effective communication arrives safely after many solo meditations to observe the feeling and better understand it. Many times, emotion is only welcomed for a few moments, but precious moments in which we soften up.
The thing that always comes up with most of these exercises including this one is trouble getting past a deep pervasive feeling of “not doing it right” or “I’ll do it wrong”.
I felt relief, a calming of my soul. My mind immediately started questioning, so I brought my attention the questioning. I realized the I am fearful , that the calm won’t last; that somehow I can’t trust the experience. I asked the questions and allowed myself to be, that this feeling is okay and I could feel my body relax again. It will take practice.
I experienced anger at childhood caregivers who modeled feelings of worthlessness and shame. It was a good anger, though. It was the anger of acknowledging that the pain was there, and that I can visit it anytime I need or want to, and then put it back down to rest. I was surprised my feelings seemed to rest on a sense of blame at this moment. I will try again after a few hours and a cup of coffee. I’d like to see if other feelings, perhaps pointed in different directions, may arise. I’m SO grateful for the free content. Thank you.
Revisiting an incident with compassion, instead of anger brought me to a place of peace.
I instantly realized this was the real me. I questioned the origen of distrust and disagreement that had been my go to recently.
Thanks so much Tara for these wise words! I’ve realized that so far I’ve been offering loving-kindness to myself at the intellectual/analytical level and I have difficulties in opening my heart space. However, when doing the practice lately, I’ve found myself together with my 3-4 year old version, offering her loving-kindness. I was swept away by a huge wave of sadness and I could not continue because I was so overwhelmed.
I immediately can feel kindness and be with what is…quickly however my thoughts go to what about 5 minutes from now… worry about being back in the cycle…
What if you feel that you have done something, way back in time, that , wasn’t OK? Not criminal or anything like that. But you weren’t entirely truthful about something. If this “something” came out now other people’s lives would be devastated. So to be true to yourself and confess this secret could be catastrophic. How can this be responded to with kindness. It feels that it would be using kindness to cover up something that isn’t good. It is so complicated.
Thank you Tara for your encouragement. I invited Kindness to walk with me and there is a sense she is there for me, but it is early days and we need to get to know each other. x
I struggle with sadness at times, that is a fear that my mental acuity is slipping. So, “what’s happening?” sadness/fear. And, “Can I be with this with kindness?”, the pause is helpful, and then remembering that this feeling is temporary, I don’t feel like this all the time…mostly I am acutely aware of all my blessings. Feeling relief.
Lynne Gelzer, Another Field, Washington, DC, USAsays
I’m aware of a lot of fear I have that nothing is ever going to change that I’m always going to be a depressed person since that’s the way I’ve been since I was a child.
This is good stuff… I’m a therapist and have been teaching/practicing this for years but somehow, repeatedly, have such difficulty making it real in my every day life
When I first closed my eyes and breathed deeply to focus, I felt as if I was rushing forward like a train in a tunnel. When you suggested I bring kindness and compassion and to accept what I was feeling, the direction of the movement I was experiencing shifted to a horizontal motion, like gentle waves on the beach. I stayed with that a while, because it was so calming.
I felt like a child comforted by a loving mother; relief; a little tearful. Softness and positivity. I will pass this on to my students who already at an early age are so harsh on themselves…
Thank You for offering this program. It is in dealing / conducting myself with those I feel a lack of trust and fear of betrayal with that I notice the greatest sense of unworthiness. As a defence mechanism. Yet all the while I know they are suffering in their lives too. My hope is to remain open no matter what. And to know I can be with myself (with love and forgiveness) in moments of sadness instead of always being on guard or defensive with anger.
Somehow Tara’s kind and wise presentation for me mirrors how I can be kind and wise toward myself. That manifested today as a feeling that the suffering I contacted in the exercise is real and sometimes debilitating, but it is going to be all right. So interesting. I’m so certain most of the time things will get worse.
So grateful for this.
I experienced a degree of self attack and self hatred that I intuited was there, but its strength and vociferousness surprised me. No wonder I struggle so. I consider myself fortunate, mostly happy, and accomplished, but that fails to gratify the vicious voice. I was able to touch the pain of it a bit with my noticing and caring.
I heard music with more clarity. I felt sadness. I breathed more deeply. I felt my chest expanding. I asked myself, what would it feel like to be kind to myself?
Yes I can.
I have done this practice before, and as I always, I felt compassion for myself that even after 20 years of meditation there are many areas of my life I am ill equipped to deal with.
I am very interested in these conversations on the fog of unworthiness and self compassion. In my work as a therapist, it is always the deep self-hatred and shame that I meet under every severe depression in my clients. I try to help them remember the child in them that was either rejected or abandoned or abused and how that child blamed themselves for being unlovable rather than see what was being done to them. I ask them to embrace that child with compassion, to understand that their child was worthy of love and was/is lovable. This work is powerful and difficult to traverse.
I regularly find going inward for feelings difficult, I recognise my ‘avoidance’ as a protection. Doing this short exercise as I identified a numbness or unwillingness to feel, instead of searching deeper for a feeling (which is what I usually do because I must feel something- right?), I sat with the nothingness. Being with the nothingness, offering kindness to the nothingness and acceptance of not needing to feel anything, this is when feelings began to make themselves known. I will definitely return to this exercise when journaling, thank you Tara I truly feel that this has opened a door.
Thankyou for this video, coincidentally timely to inner work – reclaiming self & separation of outer ruthless condemnations.
My inner self felt as if smiling & thankful with connectivity & acceptance ?? Vunda
Thank you so much Tara for this deceptively simple and powerful video. When meditating on how I felt just now I realised I was feeling sad from not being able to connect as I would have liked with a woman I contacted today on a dating website. I was able to further acknowledge that we had both put our ‘best foot forward’ but our hopes and expectations were simply too different to find a way forward together. We were both OK but not right for each other.
Thank you so much Tara for this deceptively simple and powerful video. When meditating on how I felt just now I realised I was feeling sad from not being able to connect as I would have liked with a woman I contacted today on a dating website. I was able to further acknowledge that we had both put our ‘best foot forward’ but our hopes and expectations were simply too different to find a way forward together. We were both OK but not right for each other.
With your help I was able to notice my feelings, emotions, wich was somewhat painfull, but with looking at it with kindness, there was some relaxation, thank you 🙂
An unfamiliar calmness that wasn’t preceded by an endless merry go round of coaxing my mind back to the present moment.
It’s been interesting composing this sentence and throwing out the easily reached, more unforgiving words
Thank you :).
I became very aware of the hugeness of what my heart can feel. The wounds of my past restricting, however I am starting to release a little, with as you say Kindness & forgiveness. I glimpsed my true potential of self. I felt Love
I could not really imagine any strong feeling , quite empty today, but I imagined a small self in a ball, and then kindness was a bigger person hugging the smaller one, it felt nice 🙂
Tears – the pain of rejection and observing how hard I am on myself – the voice that says you are damaged and deserved this.
Margaret, Alberta, Canada
I finally see a way out and forward from the depressive state I have been in for the past five months. I see a way to reconnecting to myself and that wonderful place of being open and loving. Thank you so much Tara. I know this will be something I can offer my clients.
I didn’t know I had to bring kindness to what I was experiencing during the video.
I was angry, and felt unworthy and undeserving, as no one had seen fit to make closed captions available for those of us who are hearing-disabled. Very, very disappointing. ??
I really enjoyed your video.
It helped me to reflect that I am rarely kind to myself. There is something in my mindset that blocks my ability to be kind to myself. I realize the unhealthy weight this places on my whole being and it’s contribution to how I often feel.
I feel freedom.
I noticed I was feeling angry and tearful..when I turned inward the tears came and I allowed them to come. I uttered loving words to the young frightened part of me. I had recently suffered a stroke.
tears flowed
Trying to bring kindness to my experience at the moment made me feel peacefull. “This is what it is”, came to my mind. Thanks, always!
I had feelings of heart ache and pain. I understand how the child inside longs to be loved unconditionally and how I tend to keep that love at arms length out of fear.
I experienced a physiological sense of becoming lighter! Tara, you change my life!!
Listening to you led me to pause and think of communication.
Success in communication comes from identifying a realistic intention. Do I have the means to achieve the ambition of my intention? What are the probabilities of satisfaction with this experience? Am I able to validate the needs and reactions of my interlocutor and take them into consideration in my way of intervening? Will the intended effect be achieved? How can I reveal my aim and what means to take so as not to get lost and be listened to? Above all, our aim must be part of a larger plan, our more elaborate desire to know, define, explain and integrate our human activity.
A minute of silence and meditation, spent observing the vicissitudes of our human condition and our feelings, to sort out the overflow of more or less relevant information, to observe the basis of our sensations, it’s short and long at the same time. Short before our duty to reconnect. Long in front of our discomfort and that of our interlocutor. It is a place of consciousness in a matrix of relationships, where solutions lie in the imbalances of relationships.
The forgetting of events is followed by the indifference of forgetting, like a silent echo which prolongs the space of forgetting. It is to be hoped that our search for meaning will not stop with a single minute of silence, that the emotion generated by this act will not only be instantaneous but will be stimulated by the search for and the hope of an effective communication which can even resume and extend later. How to ensure the sustainability of this effective communication and avoid the indifference of oblivion?
We must hope that effective communication arrives safely after many solo meditations to observe the feeling and better understand it. Many times, emotion is only welcomed for a few moments, but precious moments in which we soften up.
Grief.
I feel I havent understand your question.I avoid answering.
The thing that always comes up with most of these exercises including this one is trouble getting past a deep pervasive feeling of “not doing it right” or “I’ll do it wrong”.
I felt relief, a calming of my soul. My mind immediately started questioning, so I brought my attention the questioning. I realized the I am fearful , that the calm won’t last; that somehow I can’t trust the experience. I asked the questions and allowed myself to be, that this feeling is okay and I could feel my body relax again. It will take practice.
I experienced anger at childhood caregivers who modeled feelings of worthlessness and shame. It was a good anger, though. It was the anger of acknowledging that the pain was there, and that I can visit it anytime I need or want to, and then put it back down to rest. I was surprised my feelings seemed to rest on a sense of blame at this moment. I will try again after a few hours and a cup of coffee. I’d like to see if other feelings, perhaps pointed in different directions, may arise. I’m SO grateful for the free content. Thank you.
Revisiting an incident with compassion, instead of anger brought me to a place of peace.
I instantly realized this was the real me. I questioned the origen of distrust and disagreement that had been my go to recently.
Thanks so much Tara for these wise words! I’ve realized that so far I’ve been offering loving-kindness to myself at the intellectual/analytical level and I have difficulties in opening my heart space. However, when doing the practice lately, I’ve found myself together with my 3-4 year old version, offering her loving-kindness. I was swept away by a huge wave of sadness and I could not continue because I was so overwhelmed.
I immediately can feel kindness and be with what is…quickly however my thoughts go to what about 5 minutes from now… worry about being back in the cycle…
What if you feel that you have done something, way back in time, that , wasn’t OK? Not criminal or anything like that. But you weren’t entirely truthful about something. If this “something” came out now other people’s lives would be devastated. So to be true to yourself and confess this secret could be catastrophic. How can this be responded to with kindness. It feels that it would be using kindness to cover up something that isn’t good. It is so complicated.
Thank you Tara for your encouragement. I invited Kindness to walk with me and there is a sense she is there for me, but it is early days and we need to get to know each other. x
I struggle with sadness at times, that is a fear that my mental acuity is slipping. So, “what’s happening?” sadness/fear. And, “Can I be with this with kindness?”, the pause is helpful, and then remembering that this feeling is temporary, I don’t feel like this all the time…mostly I am acutely aware of all my blessings. Feeling relief.
I’m aware of a lot of fear I have that nothing is ever going to change that I’m always going to be a depressed person since that’s the way I’ve been since I was a child.
This is good stuff… I’m a therapist and have been teaching/practicing this for years but somehow, repeatedly, have such difficulty making it real in my every day life
When I first closed my eyes and breathed deeply to focus, I felt as if I was rushing forward like a train in a tunnel. When you suggested I bring kindness and compassion and to accept what I was feeling, the direction of the movement I was experiencing shifted to a horizontal motion, like gentle waves on the beach. I stayed with that a while, because it was so calming.
I felt like a child comforted by a loving mother; relief; a little tearful. Softness and positivity. I will pass this on to my students who already at an early age are so harsh on themselves…
I felt like a child comforted by a loving mother; relief; a little tearful.
Thank You for offering this program. It is in dealing / conducting myself with those I feel a lack of trust and fear of betrayal with that I notice the greatest sense of unworthiness. As a defence mechanism. Yet all the while I know they are suffering in their lives too. My hope is to remain open no matter what. And to know I can be with myself (with love and forgiveness) in moments of sadness instead of always being on guard or defensive with anger.
Somehow Tara’s kind and wise presentation for me mirrors how I can be kind and wise toward myself. That manifested today as a feeling that the suffering I contacted in the exercise is real and sometimes debilitating, but it is going to be all right. So interesting. I’m so certain most of the time things will get worse.
So grateful for this.
I have been working on being kind to myself and dropping my “storylines”. Your video reinforced for me these ideals.
Thank you
These are amazing quick tools and so well explained on how and why to use mindful self compassion. Thank you.
I was anxious (palpitations) and try to get rid of it:(((((
Very sadly.
I experienced a degree of self attack and self hatred that I intuited was there, but its strength and vociferousness surprised me. No wonder I struggle so. I consider myself fortunate, mostly happy, and accomplished, but that fails to gratify the vicious voice. I was able to touch the pain of it a bit with my noticing and caring.
I heard music with more clarity. I felt sadness. I breathed more deeply. I felt my chest expanding. I asked myself, what would it feel like to be kind to myself?
Yes I can.
a wave of sadness
I have done this practice before, and as I always, I felt compassion for myself that even after 20 years of meditation there are many areas of my life I am ill equipped to deal with.
My focus went to my heart and throat area.
I am very interested in these conversations on the fog of unworthiness and self compassion. In my work as a therapist, it is always the deep self-hatred and shame that I meet under every severe depression in my clients. I try to help them remember the child in them that was either rejected or abandoned or abused and how that child blamed themselves for being unlovable rather than see what was being done to them. I ask them to embrace that child with compassion, to understand that their child was worthy of love and was/is lovable. This work is powerful and difficult to traverse.
I regularly find going inward for feelings difficult, I recognise my ‘avoidance’ as a protection. Doing this short exercise as I identified a numbness or unwillingness to feel, instead of searching deeper for a feeling (which is what I usually do because I must feel something- right?), I sat with the nothingness. Being with the nothingness, offering kindness to the nothingness and acceptance of not needing to feel anything, this is when feelings began to make themselves known. I will definitely return to this exercise when journaling, thank you Tara I truly feel that this has opened a door.
Thankyou for this video, coincidentally timely to inner work – reclaiming self & separation of outer ruthless condemnations.
My inner self felt as if smiling & thankful with connectivity & acceptance ?? Vunda
Trying to do that!
Thank you so much Tara for this deceptively simple and powerful video. When meditating on how I felt just now I realised I was feeling sad from not being able to connect as I would have liked with a woman I contacted today on a dating website. I was able to further acknowledge that we had both put our ‘best foot forward’ but our hopes and expectations were simply too different to find a way forward together. We were both OK but not right for each other.
Thank you so much Tara for this deceptively simple and powerful video. When meditating on how I felt just now I realised I was feeling sad from not being able to connect as I would have liked with a woman I contacted today on a dating website. I was able to further acknowledge that we had both put our ‘best foot forward’ but our hopes and expectations were simply too different to find a way forward together. We were both OK but not right for each other.
With your help I was able to notice my feelings, emotions, wich was somewhat painfull, but with looking at it with kindness, there was some relaxation, thank you 🙂
An unfamiliar calmness that wasn’t preceded by an endless merry go round of coaxing my mind back to the present moment.
It’s been interesting composing this sentence and throwing out the easily reached, more unforgiving words
Thank you :).
I became very aware of the hugeness of what my heart can feel. The wounds of my past restricting, however I am starting to release a little, with as you say Kindness & forgiveness. I glimpsed my true potential of self. I felt Love
I could not really imagine any strong feeling , quite empty today, but I imagined a small self in a ball, and then kindness was a bigger person hugging the smaller one, it felt nice 🙂
Softened my uneasiness and calmed my spirit thank you. Blessings with love – Georgette
Felt tension in my face decrease,brought a smile.
The second I connected to my deep emotion, a flow of tears came out. I’m happy to join you today as I feel so lonely.
Tank you.