Tag Archives: spoonie life

Ensō Meditation

In case you need me to say it again, I am not in any way suggesting you can meditate, relax or breathe your way out of chronic illness symptoms. The tools on this website are a way to get through the moment, a distraction when intense emotions are threatening to overwhelm us, as well as providing a way to find a little bit of solace.

The Ensō Meditation below is adapted from a Zen Buddhism practice. It offers a slightly more abstract way of tapping into self care and can be a simple or as deep as you need it to be.

Fierce Compassion Follow up

Studies show having high self-esteem does not help counteract self-criticism as well as the ability to be self-reassuring. Therefore at times when our inner bully is particularly loud we can protect ourselves a little better from the negative impacts of self-criticism by focussing on compassion rather than building up our self-esteem. This is especially important for chronic illness sufferers as we don’t have the usual avenues to prop up our self-esteem.

Fierce Compassion

If only it was as easy to apply self compassion as it was to show compassion to the people around us.

Because we live in a society that rewards and reveres productivity and a “push through” mindset, we have to protect our health and well-being by applying a level of self-compassion that is kind and gentle yet courageous and fierce. To ease you into the duality of self-compassion I’ve added a new resource that uses a yin and yang approach.