THEME - On automatic pilot, it is easy to drift unawares into driven-doing mode and the reactivity that often maintains unhelpful patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Habitual driven-doing mode robs us of our potential for living life more fully, because our attention tends to be caught in thoughts about the past and the future. It can lock us into habitual ways of reacting that tend to be self-perpetuating.
Through mindfulness practice, we can develop a ‘metacognitive’ awareness of reactive thought and behavioural patterns. We begin to practise stepping out of such patterns by paying attention intentionally, mindfully, to our embodied experience in the present moment. Through experiential learning about reactivity and the possibility of allowing instead of reacting we come to recognise and develop a more conscious relationship with such patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving (the R and A of RAIN). But the first key step is to recognise reactivity with a stance of allowing our experience to be as it is. This session is largely experiential, introducing several foundational mindfulness practices.
