Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session we're going to talk about a different way to be with emotions. Now people often have a fear around being with emotions, especially when they're first getting into mindfulness practice. There's this invitation to make space for whatever experience you're having without immediately pushing away or trying to think positive. There's a resting and relaxing into this experience.

And as a teacher, one of the things I've found for people is this fear of becoming consumed by the emotion or almost feeling like I don't want to be that emotion. I want to be something else. And so, one thing I want to make clear is that feeling and emotion is very different than becoming an emotion. Feeling an emotion is very different than becoming an emotion. And so one of the things that we're connecting to in mindfulness practice is this ability to know what is happening without being caught in what is happening, without being consumed by what is happening.

So here's a simple way to, to think about it cognitively or a different way you can phrase your experience. I'm sure you've said something along the lines of, I am sad or I am angry or I am mad right now. Well that's one way you could phrase it, but I am sad could also be phrased as I feel sad or sadness has arisen. There is sadness. And do you see the difference? The first has a strong identification.

I am sad. But the next is it makes it something not separate from you, but it makes you bigger. I feel sad. There's you but then there's this feeling that is arising in your awareness. And you can take it a step further, as I said, and, and say, you know, there is sadness.

You could do this with anger. I am angry to I feel angry or there is anger. And what this does is it connects us more to that part of our brain that can witness what is happening, can know what is happening without identifying so strongly with what is happening. And you can even do this with a positive emotion. Although you may feel some resistance like, oh, this works nicely for the negative stuff.

Like, Oh, I am sadness. There is sadness, feels good. But the positive stuff, I want to be the positive emotion. I get that. And so you might feel like it takes some juice out of it.

But what we'll probably do instead is create a little bit more space for you to really feel the goodness when it's there without clinging so hard onto it. And that clinging can take a positive experience and turn it into a negative experience because now we're, we're holding onto it for dear life, anticipating in the moment that it's going to fall away and then we'll be sad when that happens. And so this can work with both negative emotions and positive emotions. So remember feeling an experience and emotion is very different than becoming it. And see if you can play with the language that you use when describing how you are feeling in any given moment.

Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.