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KNOWING EMOTIONAL ABUSE: WHAT IT REALLY IS AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
Where there are relationships, there are bound to be rough patches. However, sometimes, relationships slip into a rut or a negative pattern where one partner is continuously angry, blaming and hurtful…or is suspicious, mistrustful and doubting. Sometimes, unfortunately, both partners have some such behaviors that adversely affect the relationship. Patterns such as these, when severe and repetitive constitute ‘Emotional Abuse’ or ‘Psychological Abuse’.
FEELING STUCK? WHAT CAN YOU DO AS A FIRST STEP?
Sometimes, we feel stuck in a situation. We feel like nothing seems to be working and that we can’t think of solutions for ourselves. Then we feel like any attempt to try and solve the problem is a useless exercise and give it all up, feeling frustrated and hopeless within. I came across an article ‘The Creative Power of Thinking Outside Yourself’. This article reminded me of something I often use with my clients in therapy. According to this article:
“New research suggests we generate more creative ideas for other people than for ourselves”
THE DIWALI LAMP… 5 MINUTES OF SILENT MEDITATION WITH IT
Diwali is here-a time of the year for festivity and rejoicing and I love all of that. The sweets, the gifts, the general feeling of gaiety and energy in the air-its invigorating.
There is another image, a slightly different one that also stays with me which I want to share with you. It is the image of the lamps burning away into the night, much after all the noise and the gaiety subsides.
THE BURDEN: A STORY TO HELP YOU STOP WORRYING
“When walking, walk. When eating, eat”. This popular Zen proverb had me bewildered about it’s meaning at first sight, some months ago. In good time, I realized that most of us think while eating, walking, sleeping, and a whole lot of other things.
2 WAYS OF HANDLING A HEAVY WORKLOAD: WHAT CAN YOU DO?
Dread getting up in the morning to go to work? Is it the heavy workload that repels you? Many of you probably think of deadlines and workload when you think of work. It’s true that today, work pressures have mounted tremendously. You may have a lot to pack into each day. Though dealing with pressured deadlines and a heavy workload is stressful because it demands a lot out of you, there is little option you are left with. Maybe you cannot change the fact that you have a lot to do at work, today and on most days. Yes, this is tiring and demanding. However, is there something you can do to make this situation just a little easier on yourself? Even if it means worrying just a little lesser about how you will manage or being a little clearer about how much you can do? Often these little efforts help in cutting out from the stress and lending you some more energy to cope with the day.
HOW TO BE MINDFUL?: EXERCISE 7 – DEALING WITH EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS
Okay! So here we come to the end of the Mental Health Week with our last post, and all along we have made it a week of mindfulness for you and for us.
As promised in the last post, we are taking you into somewhat deeper levels of mindfulness since the last two days. In today’s post we will work on mindfulness with emotions and feelings. As in the last six days, we will do a small exercise to help you observe your emotions, mindfully. But before the exercise a little bit more on observing emotions:
How can emotions and feelings be observed?
You know when you are happy, sad, angry, disappointed and so on… Well how do you know? Maybe you will quickly answer “I just know”! But this is mindfulness week remember? We do everything with a pause…so I Invite you to try to not answer immediately! Take a moment and think on how you know what you feel. Think before you go on reading…
HOW TO BE MINDFUL?: EXERCISE 6 – LOOKING WITHOUT LABELING
We have already discussed in our first post for the mental health week, the exercise of creating present moment awareness through looking, through isolating one sense at a time and focusing on it in order to be mindful, or in the present.
Most of you who have been following the posts this week we are sure are already into the mindfulness groove. Hence for the last two posts for the week, we take you a little deeper into the mindfulness experience. Before I introduce you to today’s exercise, just a little background..
HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 5 – MUSCLE RELAXATION
Back with the mindfulness exercise of the day – muscle relaxation. We usually associate mindfulness with relaxation. The idea of serenely experiencing the present, just as it is, without judging or evaluating the moment is soothing and relaxing.
Today, we will take this understanding forward and explain a relaxation technique which is about mindfully watching your body and relaxing it. We’ll call it, Mindful Muscle Relaxation. When most of us say relaxation, we mean relaxation of the mind. Even so, mental relaxation and bodily relaxation are not mutually exclusive. But more on that in a couple of days. For now, in this technique we will exclusively focus on relaxing the body, mindfully. Often our muscles have tensed up even without our knowledge. Pain in the head, back, shoulders is becoming increasingly common. This tension is the body’s way of coping with the continuous onslaught of stress. The body seems to prep up to deal with stress but rarely gets a moment of deliberate intentional letting go. Here is where mindful muscle relaxation can greatly help.
HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 4 – MINDFULNESS WITH CHILDREN
You’ve been reading exercises on mindfulness since 3 days now. Hope you’ve tried some of the tips and techniques we suggested. If you have, you have surely felt some sense of peace while trying what we suggested. Today’s tip is based on mindfulness with children. Can children be trained to be mindful? Would they understand the concept and put it to practice? Yes, they can. If we introduce the concept of mindfulness to children in their way, using elements of their world, they will pick it up, gradually. In fact you’d be surprised to know how mindful children can be!!
HOW TO BE MINDFUL: EXERCISE 3 – MINDFUL EATING
Mindful eating is a mindfulness exercise that sounds too simple to be true. Just think about it, “How can eating be mindful? And how can mindful eating help me in any way?” Let’s try to figure out ways in which food can be helpful in being more than just nutritious.
HOW TO BE MINDFUL : EXERCISE 2 – BREATHING MEDITATION
Hi! Time for the next mindfulness technique – breathing meditation, or breath meditation.
This is an exercise that perhaps most of you may be familiar with. Typically it is called meditation through awareness of the breath. It’s the initial and simplest form of meditation.
HOW TO BE MINDFUL? – EXERCISE 1: AWARENESS OF THE PRESENT
The Mental Health week 2012 is here and just as last year (We highlighted 7 most effective Mental health tips during mental health week 2011), this year again we have a post a day lined up for you for all the seven days.
The theme we have decided to focus upon this time is mindfulness exercises, to help you understand how to be mindful. So every day, for a week starting from today, you will have one technique, one practice or exercise that you can reflect upon and attempt to enhance the joy of just living-mindfully.