Hello dear friends, welcome to Radio Headspace and to Thursday. It's Eve here with you.

So I shared earlier in the week that I've been recovering from COVID and when I felt

well enough again to start my meditation practice I struggled to focus and connect with my

breath because I was still very congested. Trying to focus on the breath when you can't

breathe that easily is not a calming experience so it doesn't make sense to try and force it

and the same applies to anything else that might arise in our practice.

So for today's episode I want to focus on providing you with ways to adapt or modify your

practice if you ever feel you need to. I was really reminded of the importance of this

as I've been doing some training on trauma-sensitive mindfulness over the past few months.

We all have different lived experiences and if we have any unprocessed trauma or grief

or difficulty it can be so helpful to know how to work with that if it arises in a meditation

practice. My inspiration to share this with you today comes from the incredible work that

trauma educator David Trelevin and his team are doing in this area and of course if you

feel like you're struggling consistently I would encourage you to speak with a healthcare

professional or a therapist. When I first started meditating my anxiety was overwhelming

and I got a lot of benefits from working with a therapist at the same time as I started

my meditation practice. Meditation as a practice is there to help strengthen your attention

to help calm the nervous system and provide a space in which you can heal and restore.

So we want to make sure that you have the right tools at your disposal for that to happen.

And the following tools are called anchor points meaning a point or an object to focus

our attention on in our meditation practice. By focusing the attention like this it helps

to cultivate the qualities of mindfulness paying attention on purpose with a soft and open

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