RISING STRONG LESSON 3: STRATEGIES FOR RECKONING WITH EMOTION

Permission Slips

This is a good time to revisit your permission slips.

Mindfulness

Definition from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley:

• Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-­by-­moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

• Mindfulness involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—­without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.

• When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.

“The research participants who taught me the most about breathing occupy what we would traditionally think of as opposite sides of the professional continuum: yoga teachers, meditation leaders, and mindfulness practitioners on one side and soldiers, firefighters, first responders, and elite athletes on the other.”

Brené Brown

List 2 or 3 examples.

Tactical Breathing

Breathing is used by a wide range of practitioners – from yoga teachers and meditation leaders to firefighters, elite athletes, and military professionals. Instead of offloading emotion, mindfulness and breathing give us the awareness and space we need to make choices that are aligned with our values.

Here’s how it’s done:

• Inhale deeply through your nose, expanding your stomach, for a count of four – one, two, three, four.
• Hold in that breath for a count of four – one, two, three, four.
• Slowly exhale all the air through your mouth, contracting your stomach, for a count of four – one, two, three, four.
• Hold the empty breath for a count of four – one, two, three, four.

You can think about the process as “box breathing.”