Dear Friends,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the second recording<\/a> from the retreat I’m using for inspiration this month, DaRa Williams guides a meditation (Guided Meditation on Anchors, 17 minutes), inviting “appreciation and gratitude for the time and the wisdom to spend, coming to know oneself. Coming to understand this nervous system, body, breath.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of us are inspired to meditate to develop an embodied wisdom of how this being responds to whatever is arising, with the intention to respond in a kinder and more compassionate way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet when we sit down, we find out first how this busy mind gets carried away with thoughts, emotions – proliferating into the past, future, and present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So having a meditation anchor is useful to keep us more steady. In DaRa’s meditation, she suggests using the body or breath as an anchor, but you could also use sounds or phrases (like the lovingkindness phrases).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We set an intention to be steady with the anchor. A quote from St Francis de Sales:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the heart wanders or is distracted, bring it back to the point quite gently\u2026 And even if you did nothing during the whole of your hour but bring your heart back…, though it went away every time you brought it back, your hour would be very well employed.<\/p>Stahl, Bob, and Elisha Goldstein. A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook<\/em>. New Harbinger Publications, 2010, p. 43.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Eventually we will let go of the anchor, but for me, starting with that place of stability helps my busy mind settle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What meditation anchors do you use? How do you respond when you notice the attention gets distracted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wishing you steadiness, Dear Friends, In the second recording from the retreat I’m using for inspiration this month, DaRa Williams guides a meditation (Guided Meditation on Anchors, 17 minutes), inviting “appreciation and gratitude for the time and the wisdom to spend, coming to know oneself. Coming to understand this nervous system, body, breath.” Many of us are inspired to meditate to\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[302],"tags":[237,303],"class_list":["post-1255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jan-2022","tag-dara-williams","tag-st-francis-de-sales"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1256,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1255\/revisions\/1256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grzesina.net\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Something else arises – a thought, emotion, body sensation.
When we notice that we’re not with the anchor, we welcome the attention back with friendliness.
Then we start again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrea<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"