And I got there on time! Actually I was so paranoid about being late that I got there half an hour early and I sat in my car for twenty minutes. But I was first there so I win. It was, again, very interesting. We talked about Mindfulness and emotions. The four big emotions that neuro folk can agree are Fear, Anger, Sadness and Happiness, and how we process these can get hard wired through family conditioning and life experience. We talked about suppressing certain emotions and how this can cause other ones to flare out, and the difference between ignoring or distancing oneself from an emotion and actually processing through it. We talked about acknowledging an emotion without judgement of whether feeling it was right or wrong. It was good.

I have failed at my two minutes of mindfulness a day last week, and now have a new mission to try to process troubling or niggling emotions using the steps we talked about (while still trying to have 2 mins of mindfulness a day). I feel optimistic. Or at least – I reckon I can experiment on my deaning cohort with some of these exercises and I’m interested in that! (mwaahaha evil scientist laugh)

Things I am mindful of right now;

• The warmth of the bed and the snoring GD next to me.
• The ache behind my eyes because I have been awake so long.
• My scabby and sore face.
• Dear friends who are hurting and not being able to do anything practical to help them through it.
• Feeling full from a nourishing meal.
• The faint whiff of kitten shit on the breeze.
• The fact that I can’t hear the kitten anymore.
• Hmmmm. That’s not good.

I had better find the carpet cleaner….