Resiliency Practices
MINDFULNESS, COMPASSION, GRATITUDE MEDITATIONS & MORE
This free online class is through Kaiser’s Microsoft Teams. It is available to any Kaiser staff. Send me a message through KP’s Outlook or Teams and I’ll send you the meeting link.
Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from difficulties. Right now, health care employees are feeling the stress of increasing and relentless professional demands while simultaneously experiencing personal stressors related to COVID19. This class will include a brief introduction to a practice that can create and/or support resiliency, including mindfulness and compassion practices.
Join in on Microsoft Teams with your mic muted. Come for all or part of the class and practice. Let this be an invitation to an opportunity, not another requirement in an already too busy schedule.
Do, Not Do, Can’t Do, Want to Do
One mindfulness tip that can help during times when it feels like there is nothing we can do (i.e. COVID19):
If you think of emotions as “action urges”, then whenever an emotion arises, we feel like we must DO something with it or about it. Part of the practice of mindfulness is noticing the arising and resisting the DOING. Or, more accurately, making the “doing” an effort toward observation and allowing rather than the typical “doing” of either acting on the motion or trying to get away from the emotion.
This is really helpful at times like this when we have one conversation after another where we can feel a lot of emotion and not be able to act on it or make it go away. It can help to engage in this practice:
Notice that the emotion is happening
Allow it to happen (make the “doing” in relation to the emotion actively “allowing” or “welcoming” or “embracing”)
Recognize that it comes and goes and sometimes it’s more intense, sometimes less intense
“Do” kindness and compassion in relation to the emotions arising and for the being experiencing the emotions (your client, family member, whomever – and most importantly – for YOU).
Compassion is a “doing” that allows you to stay close to an experience and the being having the experience. We all benefit from feeling more “connected”, especially at times like this.