Learning to discern pleasant, unpleasant, neutral in sense experience. Developing awareness of our habitual reactivity to each, which is unnecessary and stressful.
When strong experiences such as fear, grief, shame or desire become predominate in our awareness, we can meet them with mindfulness and interest. Asking “what is happening?” rather than “why is it happening?”. With mindfulness we can feel emotions as ripples of sensations within the body that arise, peak and fade when we dont feed the story in the mind. At times we need to fortify mindfulness by turning to other parts of the body such as feet or hands to allow for more space around intense sensations. This helps us not get caught in aversive tightening in response to the emotion.
