Day 4: Branching Out!

  

                                Emily, Jack, and Liam showing off their yoga skills in the park!
 On the fourth day of the Get Grounded by Training the Brain A-term, we started off with getting a journal that contained writing prompts and picked which ones we wanted to fill out. These prompts got us thinking about ourselves and allowed us to write about different things, whether it was what is your favorite place or what do you get out of a relationship with someone that you really value.

We then had a nice breathing practice where we touched all of our fingers to our thumb in time to our breathing. After this, we listed to our daily talk from the basics course in the app Ten Percent Happier and practiced the meditation that followed the talk. The meditation and the talk were focused on looking at what you are feeling and thinking and just taking note of them, but not being carried away and being controlled by them, which allows for more calculated reactions. 

After this practice, we had a fruitful conversation regarding handling emotions and how you can be mindful of not making decisions while you are caught up in your emotions. This conversation was helpful to bring awareness to just be more mindful of what your emotions make you want to do and again, to just notice them, but to not be carried away by them.

Once we were done, a few balls were brought out. We then stood in a circle and started off by throwing one thing at a classmate and having them throw it at someone else, but slowly more items were added and a little chaos ensued. This activity showed us not only that it is difficult to manage multiple things that are going on in your life at once, but that when you do drop something, you just pick it back up. The point of this activity was so that we could    see in a simple way, what equanimity is, an acceptance of the situation, maintaining calmness, and picking back up what we dropped, but not getting too carried away with the fact that we dropped it. We did another, similar activity, that described the same principle, where we partnered up and passed a ball to each other with our feet, slowly adding more items.

Then, Dr. Beth Reese shared a guided meditation with us that went over RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) and showed us through each of the four steps. This meditation helps with noticing certain emotions, feelings, or challenges and dealing with them in a way that not only aligns with reality but with what’s right for us. After the guided meditation was finished, we journaled about the experience, and how we felt about it and talked about it with the class.

Before we were dismissed for lunch, we discussed 3 articles that we had read the night before about acceptance of hindrances (like stress, desire, or laziness) and noticing them and making them seen instead of trying to push them away which is interesting because it seems almost counter-intuitive to accept these negative emotions.

In the afternoon, we were informed of the details for our final project, where we have to create our own, original meditation practice that revolves around a certain topic of choice. We worked on our outlines for these projects, asking Dr. Beth Reese for approval of certain topics or questions about the topics.

Then, we went to Bell Park (distance learning students went outside of their house) to look for natural objects such as leaves rocks, and flowers so that we could make nature mandalas. We made as many as we wanted until we were content with our creation, which we posted on the community Padlet.

Next, we were able to choose any meditation we wanted to do from the app Ten Percent Happier. This also helped us brainstorm ideas for the final project.

The final activity of the day was just closing out by doing any work you wanted or needed to do, such as the final project outline or course talk and meditation.