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VIDEO: Facing Difficult Emotions
Tara Brach on the Power of Deliberate Practice
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Our brain has hundreds of strategies for resisting emotional pain. But according to psychologist and renowned Buddhist Tara Brach, resisting pain only increases our suffering.
She advocates another solution: actually engaging what’s emotionally painful. It's a process she calls cultivating deliberate practice. Here, she talks about the personal and professional benefits this practice yields.
"Our survival-oriented brain makes it hard for us to stay with the places that are difficult inside us," Tara writes in her Networker article. "We don’t want to be with unpleasantness. We have all sorts of clever strategies to resist emotional pain. The practice of self-compassion means training ourselves to quiet our minds, stay with our experience, and remind ourselves to come into the body and heart."