How to Ride the Wild Horse

GUIDELINES FOR LEARNING AND PRACTICING THE MINDFULNESS MEDITATION

The need to balance overwhelming stress and emotions is universal

Everyone experiences stress at various points in life and we all experience the pain of losing people and things we love and value. The longer you live, the more this becomes true. If you are resilient and have the ability to repair yourself at such times of stress or loss, the better equipped you’ll be to avoid or overcome serious health challenges. Ideally, most of us will learn this resilience in infancy and early childhood. However, because the brain remains capable of changing throughout life, adults of any age can still learn the skills that make you resilient.

The skills that produce resiliency include the ability to manage stress and avoid becoming emotionally overwhelmed–the skills taught in this toolkit. The purpose of the Ride the Wild Horse mindfulness meditation is to prepare you to successfully resolve emotionally challenging situations that occur both during the meditation and throughout your everyday life.

Prepare before you begin practicing the meditation

Mindfulness requires you to focus your complete attention on your present experience, to how you are feeling on a moment-to-moment basis. Practicing mindfulness can help with many of life’s challenges, including stress, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, sleep problems, and relationship difficulties. However, like many good practices, when we're stressed, tired, and emotionally overwhelmed, we often forget to use them. To ensure that the mindfulness skills you’ll learn from this meditation become a practice you remember when you most need it, the process includes training to help you integrate the skills into your daily life and tips to overcoming emotional challenges that can block mindfulness.

1. Learn to quickly relieve stress in the moment with quick stress relief

As you’re learning to experience a wide range of emotions, you may touch on feelings that are painful, frightening, or uncomfortable. To ensure that you remain safely in control if this happens, you will need to be familiar with quick stress relief and have sensory props on hand to quickly calm and soothe yourself. Just as you wouldn't drive a car without knowing how to use the brakes, you shouldn’t tackle difficult emotions without first knowing how to apply the brakes of quick stress relief. The articles Quick Stress Relief and Be a Stress Busting Detective will prepare you for this.

2. Identify the person you will talk to about your meditating experience

It’s important to find a person you can talk to about your experiences with the Ride the Wild Horse mindfulness meditation. Speaking to someone will help your brain integrate your experience. After about 36 hours, short-term memory tends to dull, so it’s best to speak to someone about your experience within a day and a half of completing the Ride the Wild Horse mindfulness meditation.

Ride the Wild Horse: A beginning and advanced mindfulness meditation

Both the beginning and advanced sections of the Ride the Wild Horse mindfulness meditation begin with introductions that summarize key points of the toolkit. These introductions – that you may want to skip after the first or second listening – are followed by meditations in two parts:

• A first part that combines progressive relaxation with deep breathing and focus on the feeling sensations triggered by deep relaxation.
• A second part that uses mindfulness to focus on the moment-to-moment physical and emotional sensations that continually flow through your body.

There are beginning and advanced sections of the meditation practice and you may choose between listening to a female voice or a male voice. A written transcript of the beginning and advanced meditations is also available. The difference between the beginning meditation and the advanced meditation is one of intensity. The nonverbal portion of the advanced meditation is approximately twice as long as that in the beginning meditation. Some people find that they prefer to stay with the lower intensity of the beginning meditation. This is a matter of personal preference and there is no harm in doing so.

Begin Ride the Wild Horse mindfulness meditation by creating a safe space

• Take off your shoes and loosen your belt or any tight clothing.
• Take the phone off the hook, and close the door.
• Find a comfortable chair that supports your back or lie down (but only if you're sure you won't drift off to sleep).
• Don't smoke, drink alcohol, or eat during this process.
• Surround yourself with sensory props that instantly make you feel more calm and alert.

Maintain slow relaxed breathing throughout the meditation

Many of us numb ourselves and learn to ignore our emotions by squeezing our muscles tight and holding our breath. Consequently, it is only by learning to relax your body and breathe deeply that you will become emotionally aware.

• Close your eyes and take several slow, deep breaths, releasing your thoughts each time you exhale.
• Exhale as much air as you inhaled.
• For a deeper sensation, try repeating the phrases "soft belly" and "soft chest" as you breathe in and out.

Explore increasingly intense emotional sensations by focusing on physical sensations

There are two ways to trigger emotional exploration: The first is to explore the physical sensations related to an existing emotion. The second is to briefly recall something disturbing and direct your focus to the physical sensation triggered by that memory.

• Use the beginning meditation practice to explore mildly disturbing emotions
• Use the advanced meditation practice to explore more disturbing emotions

Pivot back and forth between a focus on strong emotional sensations and, if needed, the use of quick stress relief to bring your nervous system back into balance.

Every time you correctly practice the mindfulness meditation, you should feel a little more energy and a little more comfortable with your emotional experience.

It's important to end the meditation by shifting your focus in a timely way

It's important to shift your attention from the internal focus of the meditation to an external focus that includes work, plans, or other people. The purpose of doing this is to integrate the process into your everyday life and to give you a greater sense of control over your emotions.

Tips for integrating emotional awareness into your life

• Don't rush the meditative process. Your brain will absorb more if you move slowly. A slow gradual exploration will be more penetrating and more comfortable. Take time to notice the small changes that add up to life change.
• Build up a tolerance. Wait until you are comfortable with moderately intense emotions before you try to connect to stronger feelings. Once you are confident in your ability to handle moderately intense emotions, you can move on to the advanced audio meditation and add five or ten more minutes to the meditative process.

Honing your skills

• Practice, practice, practice. The more you repeat the meditations, the more comfortable you will feel with your emotional experiences and the greater change you’ll experience in your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Like building muscles in a gym, the more you flex emotions, the more “emotional muscle” you will build.
• Set up predictable challenges. Try practicing your emotional health work at predictable times of stress, when the stakes are low. For example, tune into your body while doing household chores or commuting through heavy traffic.

Staying on track

• Expect setbacks. Don’t lose hope if you backslide into old habits now and then. It happens. Instead of giving up after a setback, vow to start afresh next time and learn from your mistakes.
• When in doubt, return to your body. If you’re struggling to manage your mood in a tough situation, take a deep breath, and apply quick stress relief.

Frequently asked questions about Ride the Wild Horse

Q: How soon after I complete the process should I talk with someone who is a good listener about my experiences?
A: Share within a day or two if possible. If more than two days pass, your memory of the experience is likely to fade.

Q: Would writing in a journal be similar to talking to someone?
A: No! Writing engages different parts of the brain than speaking face to face.

Q: What should I do if I initially feel something in one part of my body, and a stronger sensation occurs somewhere else?
A: Always follow the intensity. Focus on the strongest sensation you feel.

Q: What if I don’t feel anything or I just feel empty?
A: That’s normal. Pay attention to the feeling of no feeling or of being numb or empty.

Q: How long should these sessions last?
A: Start with 5 or 10 minutes and work up to 20 or 30 minutes. More than 40 minutes is unnecessary and may even be counter-productive.

Q: What if even 7 minutes continues to feel like too much time?
A: Practice in very short segments of from three to five minutes a couple of times a day. If after numerous attempts, you still feel uncomfortable, you might consider seeking the support of a trauma specialist.

Q: Do people really have to learn to experience joy?
A: Some do. There are those for whom any kind of emotional intensity feels intimidating because they fear a loss of control.

Q: How long does it take to integrate the exercise and make it part of my life?
A: It depends. If you do the process correctly and often, you’ll experience daily benefits. You will get out of it what you put into it. Everybody grows at a different rate.

Additional rewards for integrating emotional awareness into your life

As you bring stress and emotions into balance, you’ll find you develop additional skills for healing and enriching your life. These include:

• Greater ability to read other people's feelings and behavior. When you develop your capacity to recognize and understand your own emotions, you'll automatically find it easier to read nonverbal messages conveyed by others. This ability to read wordless emotional messages is an enormous social, emotional, and intellectual advantage.
• Greater happiness. Studies show that we can surmount pain and adversity provided we also have pleasurable experiences. Life's imperfections, including your own, will become more amusing and less threatening. Moreover, because you can decipher nonverbal cues, you will also be able to tell if what you find amusing is equally amusing to the other person you’re interacting with.
• Greater confidence in your ability to face and successfully resolve conflict. Once you know how to remain emotionally present and manage stress, you can avoid over- or under-reacting in emotionally charged situations. You’ll also be able to separate the painful past from the present, making conflict less threatening and even an opportunity to improve your relationship and strengthen your bonds with the other person.

Change: it’s up to you

The ability of the brain to continually change and evolve means that it’s possible for us to repair the past and change our lives for the better. Emotional health and well-being don't come easy, though. Any behavioral change takes practice, patience, and commitment. But learning to regulate stress and emotion is within your reach. Video 7 outlines exactly what's needed in order to make important and permanent changes to your life.

Next Step...

Listen & Practice: Ride the Wild Horse Mindfulness Meditation. The process includes both Beginning & Advanced Meditations, each with provisions for either listening on-line or downloading MP3 files for listening offline.