Sitting with adversity

I’ve just completed a free, online 6 week course in Demystifying Mindfulness course via Future Learn (www.furturelearn.com).  The course covered the “science of mindfulness, how it works and why from a political, psychological and philosophical perspective”.  Throughout the course were a series of Mindfulness Labs, opportunities to practice a meditation technique. Something not so long ago I would have said was nonsense. One of the ones that resonated with me most was the one on Sitting with Adversity.

Usually throughout a meditation the participant is encouraged to let go of thoughts and feelings and concentrate on breath or sounds.  In this particular one though we were actively encouraged to invite a difficult situation, thought or feeling and to acknowledge its existence, to sit alongside it, before considering “each in breath a new beginning and each out breath a letting go”.

So many situations to choose from. I may well have to come back to this meditation several times to get through them all.  However, at the end of the 15 minutes or so, I felt much calmer about the situation I had been thinking about.  I chose to lessen its hold over me and consider what was within my personal means of being able to do about it.  In the end, I chose to let it be what it will be.

Even coming to terms with that simple statement of letting something be what it will be and making a conscious decision to not let it affect me in the way it had been, was enough to lighten to load.

I have done several short courses via Future Learn and would thoroughly recommend it as a way of broadening horizons and dipping into something before deciding whether or not its something you want to pursue further.