PTSD – A Way Out.com A mindful way to heal

Joachim Patinir (Flemish, ca. 1484-1520)
.
.
.
“One place where ideas of gaining typically come in, where people get obsessive about the practice, is in the task of staying with the breathing.
.
.
We take a simple instruction and create a drama of success and failure around it: we’re succeeding when we’re with the breath, failing when we’re not.
.
.
Actually, the whole process is meditation: being with the breathing, drifting away, seeing that we’ve drifted away, gently coming back.
.
.
It is extremely important to come back without blame, without judgment, without a feeling of failure.
.
.
If you have to come back a thousand times in a five-minute period of sitting, just do it.
.
.
It’s not a problem unless you make it into one.
.
.
Each instance of seeing that you’ve been away is, after all, a moment of mindfulness, as well as a seed that increases the likelihood of such moments in the future.
.
.
Best of all is to go beyond the whole mentality of success and failure, to understand that our lives are a series of alternations between various states.”
.
.
.