In this segment, Shamir discusses how to build emotional resilience when experiencing the effects of a past traumatic event. The key is to be able to cycle between feeling the emotional pain and experiencing regenerating emotions.
Measure Your Capacity to Love
Most of us know what it feels like to love someone or something. Most individuals struggle with the concept of loving themselves even though expanding this ability is critical to love others. In this segment, Shamir discusses how to measure your capacity to love others by prescribing a simple test.
Centering: A Resilience Building Hack
If you or someone you know is prone to 'snap' and be triggered, it is likely due to their inability to center themselves so they can stay in the mid-range of the extremes of emotional capacity (i.e., range between anger and joy). Building resilience capacity requires a few minutes of daily mindful practice such as the one presented in this segment.
Uplifting Others by Holding Space
In this segment Shamir discusses how to apply a powerful technique to break out of low-energy mode such as sadness, depression etc. The key is to find someone to 'hold space'; in other words, this someone needs to be able to shift into a coherent state before s/he can 'hold space' for others.
The Gift of Unwanted Emotions
When experiencing unwanted emotions, there is an opportunity to bolster our resilience and grow as individuals. Unwanted emotions such as anger, sadness, anxiety etc., are your body's way of signalling when you are out of alignment with your personality. Sometimes you want to keep this personality in tact and therefore avoid individuals or situations that trigger you. There are times however, when you realize you need to change your personality in order to improve or better yourself. In this segment, Shamir discusses the gift of unwanted emotions and how these can allow you to transform your personality.
Balance in Motion
Many of us feel "out-of-sorts" when we face adversity. We can learn a lot about ourselves when faced with a challenge. In this segment, I use the metaphor of a see-saw to explore the concept of overcoming adversity and building resilience.
Use it or Lose it
Your body is extremely efficient. Those who have had a cast know that once the cast comes off after a few months, the muscles in the area atrophy or shrink. This is because the muscle has been dormant and the body reduces its capacity in that area to match the level of activity (if you don't use it, you lose it). With proper care and attention, one can re-build those muscles again. This is also true for our capacity to empathize with others or to hold compassion in our hearts. We can grow our ability to hold compassion with simple practices and by doing so improve our overall health and well-being. The good news is that even if our ability to hold compassion shrinks over time (perhaps due to life changing situations, etc.), we can regain it by practicing the techniques provided in this program.