Sensations, Thoughts and Emotions

These three elements are the key aspects to describe after your meditation audios. Try to identify how your body and mind react and track them in the Mindful Balance Journal.

Sensations are related to your body, for example: pain, pleasure, pulsations, itching, numbness, warmth, or coolness, etc. Some sensations can be present in a specific area of your body, and some others can be generalized. Try to narrow the zone where the sensation is present.

Thoughts are our mental cognitions and processes, they represent our ideas, opinions, and beliefs about ourselves and the environment. During our meditation practice we cannot unplug our minds and stop thinking, but we can learn from our minds more than you can imagine. When different thoughts appear like rumination or repeating conversations, worries, planning your agenda, etc. just acknowledge them without judgment and let them go, do not stitch to any of the.

Emotions, on the other side, are also mental reactions but subjectively experienced as feelings directed toward other people, objects, or situations, even reactions to our own selves. How you feel about your own actions, skills, body, relationships, or other people and situations generate also physiological and behavioral changes in your body, being aware of how you react to anger, sadness, or happiness is a big step in your awareness journey. Try to identify the basic emotions like joy, sadness, disgust, anger, and fear; and later you can acknowledge the combinations of them for example: if sadness and anger are present you can name it as frustration, if you feel fear with joy maybe call it amusement, sadness and disgust can be named remorse, etc.

Remember all sensations, thoughts and emotions are part of us, we don’t want to delete them or judge them just experience them, name them, and let them flow. Learning about these three elements will help us in our awereness process.