Melissa Bowling, Mental Health counselor for Citrus County Schools, presents Mindful Mondays!

This podcast is for Week 10. Suffering does not have to be inevitable. Acronyms to remember useful mindfulness skills.

Transcript of podcast:

Hi. I’m Melissa Bowling and welcome to week 10 of Mindful Mondays.

Last week we talked further about mindfulness, compassion, and allowing ourselves room to respond.

This week we will begin tying it all together to create the best mindfulness practice for ourselves.

Over the past 9 weeks we have discussed self-care, mindfulness, compassion, gratitude, emotions, and thoughts. We have talked about how practicing mindfulness in all its various components increases our happiness and ability to respond rather than react.

Consider this: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

It is a fact that there will be difficult moments in our lives. They will happen to us with no anticipation at all. However, this does not mean that we must suffer when they happen. As mentioned in previous weeks, we can lessen our suffering in a variety of ways. Practicing mindfulness is the number one best thing you can do for yourself to lessen your suffering.

Some easy ways to practice being in the moment and decreasing reactivity, or mindfulness, can be remembered using several different acronyms.

• TAP refers to Take a breath, Acknowledge, and Proceed. With this process you are taking a moment to breathe and recognize and label what is going on inside you, before you proceed with an action.
• RAIN is Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Non-identification. With the RAIN process you are using acceptance and gentle curiosity to see what you have going on during any given moment (most especially a difficult one). However, with non-identification, you do not become the thought or feeling you are experiencing.
• SIFT: Sensations, Images, Feelings, Thoughts. This is simply a practice in labeling while in the moment. We recognize any of the abovementioned things, label them, and then let them be.

This week I challenge you to put together your own mindful practice that will serve you better in your everyday experiences with life.

**If you’re in a school, you can get a subscription to the wonderful app Calm for FREE! Just fill out the linked Calm Teacher Form

Thank you for listening to week 10 of Mindful Mondays. Have a wonderful week!