This month, I’m excited to share one of my favorite meditation talks called Befriending Our Beautiful Monsters: A Guided Practice to Work with Difficult Emotions with Tsoknyi Rinpoche and Daniel Goleman.
For the uninitiated, Tsoknyi Rinpoche is a well known meditation teacher and a joy to listen to because of his brilliant mind and his engaging, playful style. And Daniel Goleman,Ph.D., is a science journalist and psychologist, who first introduced the idea of understanding and managing emotions to the workplace in the 1990’s with his New York Times bestseller Emotional Intelligence.
And even if you’re not a meditator, the Befriending Our Beautiful Monsters practice can help you show up with a clear mind and sense of okay–ness – that is calm, present, compassionate, and kind toward yourself and others – in all situations, especially challenging ones.
Key Themes: Learn ….
- How to drop the thinking mind for a while (don’t worry you will bring it back!) and find the stillness within movement
- How to be with and shake hands with the beautiful monster: that is strong, raw emotions like anger, anxiety, unease, turbulence, aloneness, grief, loss, unworthiness, sadness, shame, hollowness, etc.
- Why suppressing, ignoring, indulging, and fixing does not work and how to appreciate, accept, respect, and be with difficult emotions
- How to create enough space in your mind to see strong emotions as left-over residue and even blockages resulting from old experiences/memories so that you don’t personally identify with them. The power move here is to understand you are not your emotions (don’t identify with them); allow them to be seen, metabolized, and released, when ready.
- How to cultivate a clear, lucid mind, open heart, and an embodied (grounded) presence
Click here to hear Befriending Our “Beautiful Monsters”: A Guided Practice to Work with Difficult Emotions (51 minutes – see below for sections)
- Intro: Goleman introduces Rinpoche, beginning thru minute 12
- Meditation: Led by Rinpoche, minute 12 thru 27
- More conversation: Rinpoche and Goleman, minute 27 thru 46
- Q&A: minute 41 thru 51
- Recommendation: practice Befriending Our Beautiful Monsters meditation (minute 12 thru 27) once/day for a week and notice what shifts for yourself and with your relationships. Note, it’s always a good idea to practice before you need it.