Compassionate Communication

Communicating can be hard. One step we can take to make it easier is clarifying our feelings and our needs. We can take time to ourselves and meditation to gain clarity when we're feeling overwhelmed or confused. The needs we have as human beings range from physical like food, water, and movement to social and spiritual like connection, meaning, and belonging. In today's practice, we'll take some time to clarify your feelings and needs so that you're more prepared to communicate them with others. Taking time to clarify your feelings and needs allows the emotion to settle a bit so that you can feel more confident about communicating difficult emotions and thoughts without feeling regret. So let's take a few moments right now just to get comfortable and still in our meditation posture. If you'd like, you can slowly gently close your eyes or you can just rest your gaze on a spot in front of you and take a moment just to adjust your posture bringing length into your spine and just allowing the posture to be comfortable but inspire a feeling of alertness. And we're gonna take a few moments just to bring our attention to the points of contact between our bodies and the surfaces that it's making contact with. So starting with sensations in your feet just feeling your feet supported by the floor and then notice your hands. Notice where they're resting on your legs or maybe on the chair, and then feel the support of the surface that you're sitting on. Just feel the chair or whatever you're sitting on underneath you. And now we'll just take a slow deep breath in and out of your nose. Just feeling your abdomen expand and contract with your next breath. And now slowly just allow your breathing to find its own natural, easy rhythm, letting go of any effort and just greeting your natural breath as it is. You can think of the words in and out as you breathe, just as a way to center you on your breath. And then we'll just bring our awareness into our shoulders inviting the shoulders to relax down away from your ears and then invite the delicate area around your eyes and forehead to also relax and let go and invite your jaw to relax allowing your teeth to separate, just allowing all of your facial muscles to let go and release. And at any time in our practice today you can bring your attention back to the natural rhythm and sensations of your breath. So now we're just gonna bring to mind a moment that was difficult lately, and it doesn't have to be the most challenging experience that you can think of, but just whatever's coming to mind, what's been challenging lately. And as you reflect on this experience, see if you can remember details about it. If there was a person or people involved, who were they? What brought about this experience? Now notice what...