🔼: [[🕯️ Mindfulness]], [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘]] #### Mindfulness Meditation A category of [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘|Meditation]] practices which can help us become increasingly [[🕯️ Mindfulness|mindful]] over time. It has become so singularly popular in the West that we often conflate it with Meditation itself, but mindfulness is a small fraction of the meditation world. - [[🔑 Mindfulness is an unblending exercise]] ##### Mindfulness Meditation Practices - [[🧘 Yes Meditation]] - [[🧘 Samatha Meditation]] - [[🧘 Body Scan]] - [[🧘 Loving-Kindness (Metta) Meditation]] - [[🧘 Vipassana (Insight) Meditation]] - [[🧘 See, Hear, Feel In]] - [[🧘 See, Hear, Feel Out]] - [[🧘 See, Hear, Feel Rest]] - [[🧘 See, Hear, Feel]] - [[🛠 Mindful Walking]] - [[🕯️ Mindful Moments]] - [[🛠 Parts Log]] - [[👟 Asana Practice]] - [[🧘 Effortless Mindfulness]] ##### The Hazards of Mindfulness [[💡 Trauma|Trauma]] robs us of our ability to stay present, and [[🕯️ Mindfulness|mindfulness]] helps us come back to the present moment, making it a powerful and essential tool. But mindfulness is not the cure-all we're sometimes encouraged to believe it is – we can't heal with mindfulness alone. Particular problems arise when we open ourselves to our thoughts and [[⭐️ Emotions|emotions]]. [[🕯️ Mindfulness|Mindfulness]] teaches us to allow [[💡 Parts|Parts]] to come and go, and that is the opposite of what our [[💡 Protector Parts|Protectors]] do, so we run the risk of bypassing them. In Buddhist psychology, thoughts are our sixth sense, and many of us are conditioned to use the other senses to distract from them. As we stop paying attention to some senses, our [[💡 Parts|Parts]] arise. [[🧘 Mindfulness Meditation]] teaches us to drop into our inner-ecosystem, but it doesn't tell us anything about what to do when we come across something especially painful, which is common for those of us trying to [[🦮 How to Recover from Trauma|🦮 recover from trauma]]. When we experience a difficult [[⭐️ Emotions|emotion]] or recall a difficult memory, we're often advised to meet it with [[☀️ Compassion|☀️ kindness]], to stay with it, and to wait for it to pass. This is typically good advice, but when working with [[💡 Trauma|trauma]] it can be risky if we haven't learned to [[🕯️ Part-Tending|work with the Parts]] who actually need our help or are [[🔑 Exiles are capable of overwhelming us|🔑 capable of overwhelming us]]. We may have extreme [[💡 Protector Parts|Protectors]] (like a strong [[🛡️ Criticizing|🛡️ Inner-Critic]]) or extreme [[💡 Polarization|polarizations]] which hijack the practice. Thoughts and emotions are [[💡 Trailheads|trailheads]]. Many of them might be easy to not chase after, but others may have a reflexive magnetism powerful enough that we become immediately [[💡 Blending|blended]]. We may then find ourselves falling into [[💡 Emotional Dysregulation|overwhelm]], or even [[💡 Trigger|triggered]], [[🛡️ Dissociation|dissociated]], or retraumatized – and [[🔑 If bypassed, protectors can and often will retaliate]]. ###### Moving Beyond Mindfulness Many people, even some people with significant [[💡 Trauma|Trauma]], can practice Mindfulness Meditation without any issues. But those of us who do struggle with it don't necessarily need to avoid [[🕯️ Mindfulness|mindfulness]], we can modify and build onto it. Mindfulness is the foundation of both [[🧘 IFS Meditations]] and the [[🧘 RAIN Meditation]], and both expand mindfulness by teaching us to meet with our wounded and protective [[💡 Parts|Parts]] – through it takes time and practice to learn. There are also adjustments which are easy to learn and implement right away. See: [[🦮 How to Make Mindfulness Trauma-Sensitive]]. Mindfulness may also become easier as we make progress on our path to [[🦮 How to Recover from Trauma|🦮 trauma recovery]]. [[🧘 Practice With Me]] [[🦮 How to Find a Therapist]]