Reconnect: Mindfulness for Veterans: Recent Episodes
Nicola
Dr. Nicola De Paul provides an introduction to Mindfulness Meditation practice for Veterans. This audio guide is intended to provide an easy to access platform for beginner mindfulness practitioners. Mindfulness meditation may sound fancy or woo-woo, but in reality it is a powerful tool that helps us to anchor in the present moment with kindness and without judgment. Being present helps us to reconnect with ourselves, our loved ones, community, and our sense of mission and purpose. It is possible to feel like yourself again, even after experiencing loss, hardship, and war. It's time to care for yourself so that you can reconnect with the joys of work, parenting, partnering, and giving back to the community you love.
Use the breath to focus your attention on this present moment and let go of thoughts of the past or future.
Use mindfulness skills to bring kind awareness to your experience of physical or emotional pain. This practice will help you to acknowledge pain without being overwhelmed by it.
Bring a sense of curiosity and friendly wishes to this practice. As my Veterans say, "If you can't love yourself, you can't live anyone."
Bringing awareness to our experience of physical and emotional pain creates space for compassion. Sometimes looking at our pain allows it to dissipate our clarifies the actions we need to take to be well.
Use conscious attention to notice the physical sensations of the breath and become aware of what distracts you from the breath.
Begin your mindfulness practice by bringing a sense of curiosity and kindness to your attention. Notice what your body is experiencing. Notice any distraction or difficulty paying attention. Notice pain and discomfort. The awareness of noticing these challenges is the practice of mindfulness.
Learning to bring kindness to your sensory awareness is a helpful first step towards becoming mine to yourself.
It's common to become more aware of physical and emotional discomfort when we begin paying mindful attention to our experience. Mindfulness can help us soften around these experiences as opposed to fighting them, which can help reduce the intensity of discomfort and pain over time.
Bring friendly curiosity to your experience today. Use the breath as an anchor and focus on your breathing while letting go of self-judgments or the need to practice mindfulness perfectly.
Welcome to the VA Calm: introduction to mindfulness class.
The introduction to mindfulness class starts with attention to your body.
As you slow down and pay more attention to your physical sensations, you may notice more pain and physical discomfort. But as you continue to pay attention to the body, you'll notice that your sensations may calm or be easier to tolerate.
Be curious and approach your body with kindness.
Bring a kind awareness to your body. Use that kindness to connect with posts of the body that may be experiencing pain or discomfort.
Bring your attention to any distress or suffering you are experiencing in this moment. Then allow yourself to connect with self compassion. Remind yourself that your experience is shared by others. Offer yourself physical presence by choosing a supportive posture as you pay attention to the body.
Paying kind and calm attention to internal suffering and physical sensations is one strategy to move towards acceptance of pain. Acceptance can reduce our distress and reactivity and help us to calm the body in response to discomfort. This disrupts the pain escalation cycle that we can fall into.
The introduction to mindfulness class starts with attention to your body.
As you slow down and pay more attention to your physical sensations, you may notice more pain and physical discomfort. But as you continue to pay attention to the body, you'll notice that your sensations may calm or be easier to tolerate.
Be curious and approach your body with kindness.
Practice connecting with yourself and people in your life with a friendly attitude. What would be different if you were a bit kinder toward yourself, your loved ones, strangers, and even the folks you struggle with.
If you're body is struggling with pain or if you make choices that don't honor your body, you may appreciate the chance to offer extra kindness to yourself.
Practice being present with curiosity and kindness. Offer every body part friendly wishes to increase your experience of peace and ease.
Turning towards our body with kindness can change our relationship with pain and discomfort.
Breathe. Be kind to yourself. Breathe again.
I wish it was that easy to connect with the body and ourselves. Connecting with yourself takes a lot of practice but the steps are simple.
Breathe. Practice being kind. And repeat.
Our difficult emotions need attention too. By praying attention to intense and unpleasant experiences, we can calm ourselves down.
Learning to pay attention to pain without getting caught up in it can be a very helpful step towards managing pain and physical discomfort.
The holidays can be stressful. Take some time to honor yourself and practice compassion for yourself today.
Take a time out to nourish yourself today. Every breath offers us an opportunity to be present and offer kindness to ourselves.
Take some time to connect with yourself today. Connect with your physical sensations, then with your breath. And approach yourself with a sense of kindness and curiosity today. May you be well!
Take a moment to settle in to this moment and become aware of what your body is experiencing. Allow yourself to notice what is present and bring a spirit of kindness and curiosity to your aches and pains or other sensations.
When you take a moment to be present with your body and acknowledge your physical sensations, you create space to engage in self care and activities that are meaningful to you.
Taking time to attend to your physical sensations can help you notice when you need to take a moment to care for yourself.
Practicing self compassion allows us to shift how we respond to ourselves and others in the difficult moments of even the insignificant moments of life. Take a moment to notice where your mind has wandered in the last moment and gently invite it back into the present right now.
Join us for this mindfulness practice in which you will be guided to first pay attention to internal suffering and then invite in calming and internal peace through a visualization practice.
Use loving kindness to explore a deeper connection with yourself and your loved ones. This practice will guide you to offer friendly wishes to yourself, loved others, and challenging others. Experiencing loving kindness is a beautiful strategy to recharge your energy and connections with yourself and others.
The affectionate body scan invites you to pay attention to each part of the body with kindness and compassion.
What might it be like to offer loving kindness to your body? How might offering your body kindness change your relationship with illness, injury, or loss of ability over time? Explore this practice to find out.
Take a few moments to connect with the body while practicing self compassion. This opportunity for grounding as you offer kindness to yourself and can help you return to a challenging situation and keep you focused on what you can control - how you care for yourself.
Take a moment to use tyke body as the anchor for your attention. Practicing awareness of our internal experience helps us to become more attuned to our emotional and physical states. This can help us train ourselves to be calmer even in times of stress.
This episode provides an opportunity to connect with sound in the external environment. Sound can be a unique anchor for our attention.
This mindfulness practice guides you to take a moment to notice the impacts of life stressors and then offer yourself a moment of kindness and support. Using supportive postures, or supportive touch, allows you to benefit from your own presence in a difficult moment. You may choose to offer yourself a hug, a hand to hold, or share your presence with a hand on your heart. All of these gestures can make a difference!
Use mindfulness to build awareness of your body's experience. Paying attention with kindness helps us to befriend the body and stay connected to the present.
Breathing with Spaciousness allows you to use your imagination to expand your awareness. You learn to focus outside of yourself and can create a container for pain, distraction, or suffering. This practice teaches you to dilute intense experiences by allowing them to be present in a vast space, like the ocean, instead of the finite space of your own body.
Practicing self compassion provides a powerful connection with the universal human experience and allows us to reframe challenging things happening to us. It's not personal, sometimes life just happens!
Regular self compassion practice lowers rates of depression and anxiety, and helps us reconnect with our community.
Just like the breath, our body is always with us. When feeling stressed or isolated, it can be calming to take a few minutes to connect with the body. Placing a hand on the heart, the stomach, the head, or simply giving ourselves a hug can create a sensation of being supported and help us feel less alone or overwhelmed.
Paying kind attention to pain can have surprising impacts. Our attention can allow us to create spaciousness to dilute the intensity of pain. This opens us up to feeling more ease and less reactivity in the midst of pain.
If you are struggling to identify your emotions, paying attention to the breath is a great starting place. Bringing attention to the breath can help you to gain self awareness and insight into how you are responding to everyday stressful situations.
Practicing awareness of our physical bodies and the sensations we experience in the body can help us to stay in the present moment. Our bodies experience many things that are pleasant and unpleasant. This practice allows us to gain experience noticing sensations with kindness and less judgement than we may typically bring to our day to day life.
Breathing with Spaciousness offers you the opportunity to build on the core skill of paying attention to the breath. You will have the opportunity to do a brief body scan, attend to the breath, then expand your attention widely to dilute experiences that feel intense or difficult to tolerate.
This episode challenges you to approach life's pain points with a little more kindness and have than might feel natural. Practicing compassion towards ourselves can be one of the most difficult practices initially. Sometimes pain or anger appear out of nowhere and leave us feeling raw. Keep practicing. Over time, self compassion practice will transform how you relate to your own difficulties, your past choices, and physical or emotional distress.
This exercise includes guided attention to physical or emotional pain. It then guides you to transition your attention to the breath and includes a brief self compassion practice.
Paying attention to the physical sensations of the breath can have a calming and centering impact on the body. The breath is always with you and is accessible as an anchor for your attention.
Being present with the body is a powerful way to connect with yourself and build your focus and concentration. When we concentrate on our present experience, pain and distress tend to calm on their own.
Coming to terms with difficult memories and emotions is painful. Anxiety is a particularly challenging emotion during times of uncertainty. Managing covid, family and relationship challenges, health concerns, and life transitions has been exhausting for all of us. Slowing down allows us to acknowledge and make room for the impacts of these struggles. This practice guides us in connecting to our physical sensations and helps us ground ourselves in the body. You will be invited to connect to the breath as you learn to create a calm container for anxiety that allows you to live life without being overwhelmed by worry.
When you are having a difficult moment and feel that you might get pulled under by panic or anger, it can be very helpful to have a lifeline to hold onto. Taking a few minutes to connect your physical body with your surroundings, what we call grounding, can be this lifeline. Connecting with a physical support can stabilize you enough so that you can begin to calm down and re-enage the brain as you grapple with your challenging situation.
When we are dealing with intense emotions like anger, we can become overwhelmed or frustrated by efforts to control our experience. Mindfulness allows us to create more mental space so that we can tolerate our experience without being controlled by it. Anger feels like a dangerous emotion but does not have to lead to harmful actions towards ourselves or others.
This episode invites you to explore feelings of kindness, compassion, and care for a loved other and yourself.
This guided meditation teaches you to offer yourself physical encouragement and support to get through life's challenging moments. You will be directed to position your hands on your heart, belly, face, and each other, experiencing the sense of support you offer yourself in these positions. You will then be invited to connect to your painful experiences as you connect to the common humanity of pain and discomfort. Self-compassion practices allow you to strengthen your connection to yourself and others and are helpful to draw on anytime you notice suffering, challenge, or loneliness.
This guided meditation invites you first to notice physical discomfort or emotional stress, then imagine nourishing yourself through your breath. You will practice breathing compassion and kindness in for yourself and offering it to others with ease as you breathe out. Connecting with a sense of compassion for yourself and others strengthens your inner resilience and ability to cope with painful or stressful life experiences.
This guided meditation invites you to use sound to anchor your attention to what is happening at this moment. Bring an attitude of curiosity and kindness to this practice. Listening to sound can be a joyful way to practice mindfulness.
This guided meditation invites you to pay attention to difficult internal experiences and then asks you to expand your field of awareness. The practice can help to shift your relationship with difficult emotions through a shift in perspective. This practice is particularly beneficial when external events are overwhelming or you find yourself with sticky emotional states.