Many people today are feeling the stress of the world. People are also experiencing the rise of “compassion fatigue,” known as secondary traumatic stress. 16%- 85% of health care workers suffer from burn-out, constant anxiety, and negative feelings associated to compassion fatigue. Being tuned into everything around you can weigh on your heart. It can be even harder to separate what is “yours” and what is someone else’s when it comes to experiencing challenging thoughts and emotions. Like a sponge, we absorb what’s happening in the airwaves.
When we’re faced with challenging situations, we may fight, flight or freeze. In our modern day life, this could show up as acting out, avoiding, denying or shutting down difficult emotions. When we don’t take the time to provide space to reflect and process our deeper inner-feelings from everyday life, those experiences get “trapped” in our body-mind. They become hardened energetic-emotional experiences of tension. This stress puts a strain on both our immunity and nervous system.
Meditation helps us to step back from the outside world and everything happening in it. It helps us turn our attention inward and become more settled within. This simple practice allows us to build resilience from the inside out. By focusing on cultivating peace in our inner world, we not only create a natural boundary to the external world, we send peaceful energy out into our environment.
In the following video, I share how meditation can help us with difficult thoughts and emotions. Sitting practice helps us raise our awareness for what we’re truly thinking and feeling. This includes deeper thoughts and feelings that may be blocked from our everyday conscious mind.
By cultivating centered awareness, we become more connected to our inner-self. Meditation helps us develop a non-judgmental attitude. It helps us to see ourselves with compassion when we struggle, and helps us to naturally release internal pain and conflict.
The simple act of paying attention can heal our body, mind and emotions. It takes courage to slow down and surrender to the present moment. But once you’re in the state of meditation, it’s the most blissful place to be. The more you practice, the easier it is to cultivate everyday.
