In her final video for Meditation Month, Spring Washam discusses what to do when you experience difficult emotions or other challenges during your practice.
“At times . . . we experience the heart opening. We experience love. We experience equanimity. We have a sense of letting it all go. We love those experiences. But often what people experience—in the beginning or after years of practice—is a lot of challenges. What happens when we meditate is that everything arises, all of our emotions and the unfinished business of the heart. My teacher, Jack Kornfield, used to say: ‘The heart, whatever you haven’t dealt with in your life—when you sit down to meditate, it all arises. It’s all in there,'” Spring says in the video. “While we’re sitting, we can experience fear, loneliness, sorrow, memories of trauma, difficult situations that might be happening in our life, anxiety, or restlessness. We work with that as we learn how to be mindful. We learn how to open to our emotions.”
Learn more from Spring about how to use the body to work through these challenges in her final video for Tricycle’s Meditation Month 2016:
There’s still one more Monday left in March. Tune in next week for a special surprise guest to wrap up Meditation Month!
Download a transcript of this retreat. It has been edited for clarity.
Access all Meditation Month content here
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