Mindfulness of feelings practice can help us to be aware and connected with our feelings in a way that allows us to be grounded and not overwhelmed. Feeling tones of experience are either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
Much has been written about how we tend to cling to pleasant experience and crave more, which creates suffering, and experience aversion toward unpleasant experiences, which also creates suffering. The mind tends to gloss over the experiences that it judges as neutral, yet many of our experiences are neutral.
If you’d like to expand your mindfulness practice in an interesting way, try mindfully noticing experiences of neutral feeling tone. Bring the awareness to the feeling tone of neutral and notice what happens in the body in response to experience a feeling tone of neutrality toward an experience. Does the mind immediately shift to boredom and crave stimulation? Does equanimity arise? Simply notice whatever arises and see if you can practice being still and allowing it to pass.
When we engage with mindfulness of feelings practice, we notice the feeling and name it silently to ourselves. Naming a feeling brings us back into present moment awareness and begins to calm us. Then we notice where we feel the feeling in the body. We notice the sensations — where are they located? What are the sensations? And then we rest our attention on the wave of sensations, noticing the sensations as they rise, swell, crest, and fall like a wave.
Mindfulness should be maintained throughout the short duration of a specific feeling, down to its cessation. –Nyanaponika Mahathera
Jen Johnson is a mindfulness coach and therapist offering an integrative approach to healing from loss and difficult times. Learn more about Jen Johnson’s mindfulness coaching services.