When we meet our emotional life with our thinking mind we tend towards escalation
Do you try to think yourself free of unpleasant emotions or feelings? What happens?
It is so deeply, poignantly human to try to get rid of emotions in ways that only make their hold on us stronger. When we meet our emotions by thinking about them we can become caught in our stories. The Self becomes very involved and often outraged or defensive or desperate.
As we build the story so the emotion builds, as we build the emotion, so the story builds. We become lost in a fast-paced swirl of emotion and thinking. A spiral of increasing intensity. An emotional storm.
So how can we meet our emotions in ways that help us to stay calm, grounded, and not swept away?
When we meet our emotional life with our sensate body we tend toward calm and moderation
Our body is by its very nature only in the present moment. It does not make stories about the future, it does not worry about what has already passed. When we bring our awareness in to bodily sensations we are grounding ourselves in the present moment. We are breaking the cycle of proliferation and escalation.
We will explore together through discussion, talks, and experiential exercises what happens when we turn toward the felt sense of our emotions in our body. We will look at what happens to the emotion when we begin to notice how emotions feel, their texture and tightness and energy. We will get more familiar with the felt sense of our emotions in the body with kind curiosity and friendliness. Together we will learn to see our own unique habitual patterns of reactivity and how to work skilfully with them.
By the end of the workshop you will have some simple practical tools and knowledge to help you to navigate your emotional life with more freedom, more grace, more choice, and more compassion. You will understand how using the practices from this workshop will free up your relationship with your emotional life so that you have more choice, more ease, and more time to respond rather than react to your life.
Larchwood Studio at Raquety Farm
The wonderful open space of Larchwood Studio.
Raquety Farm
Stay overnight in the campsite, have breakfast or lunch in the cafe, spend time in the beautiful space at Raquety Farm on the River Wye.
Accommodation and Activities at Raquety Farm
Raquety Farm is just outside Hay-on-Wye. There is canoe hire available next door, walking along the River Wye, and a host of other outdoor activities as well as Hay-on-Wye and its cosy old bookstores, castle, and tasty cafes on the doorstep. Come and enjoy a weekend of Mindfulness and relaxation in a glorious green setting!
Price for the two-day workshop is £90*.
*£80 if you book before the end of August!