Healing Program - Module 7 - Working with Fears and Hope

Module 7 - Working with Fears and Hopes

Meditation – Bowl of Loving Kindness (12 min)
Sunday Morning Reflections (7 min)
Fears and Hopes Talk (24 min)
Home Program Part 1
Fears and Hopes Small Group Discussion (25 min)
Fears and Hopes Pearls (8 min)
Home Program Part 2
Qi Gong (20 min)
Homework


Follow the instructions fully in the first exercise. Close your eyes when asked to. Participate fully in this meditation.

Meditation – Bowl of Loving Kindness

In this visualization what we consider to be negative emotions are embraced with loving kindness, and transformed by wisdom.

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Sunday Morning Reflections

Participants comment on their experience of the previous day.

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Fears and Hopes Talk

This video teaches how by approaching our fears directly, we can find our own strength. Tim shares a poignant story about his father.

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Using the guide below, write down your greatest fears and how your priorities have changed since the diagnosis. Spend most of your time on the fears, looking at all angles of them.  Then, write your hopes and dreams for the future and for your precious life.  When you are done this, watch the video with your notes in hand so that you can write anything else that comes to mind.

Home Program Part 1

Excercise 1 - By yourself

Take 15 minutes to write down the answers to the three questions posed in the presentation, spending most of your time on your fears:

  1. Fears – Write as much as you can about your greatest fears. Be bold and honest with yourself, looking into all of the nooks and crannies inside your mind. There might be small fears as well as big fears. Bring them all out and on to the page.
  2. Priorities – Write for a few minutes about how your priorities have changed since the cancer diagnosis. You can also write here about how your priorities have changed since starting this program.
  3. Aspirations – Take a few minutes to imagine what you really want given the preciousness of life. What are your dreams, hopes and aspirations for the future?

Go back to the DVD and have your journal ready with the answers to these questions close at hand. While you watch the remaining sections of this DVD, jot down any further thoughts or insights you might have from listening to the others on the video.

After watching Fears and Hopes Pearls, move into the Home Program Part 2.

 

Fears and Hopes Small Group Discussion

The same six participants share what scares them most and their hopes for the future.

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Fears and Hopes Pearls

Members from other small groups share what they learned from the fears and hopes discussions.

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Home Program Part 2

Exercise 2

If you are alone:
Take a few minutes to slowly read back over what you wrote, thinking deeply about the meaning. Hold this thinking in your heart, just as we did with the bowl of loving kindness meditation at the beginning of this module. Make sure that you take some time later to share what you have written, and your feelings, with at least one other person.

If you are with others:
Have a discussion with the others in your group. Take the time to really listen to each person’s fears, holding them in your heart, as in the bowl of loving kindness meditation. While discussing ‘priorities’and ‘aspirations,’ be encouraging and supportive of one another, celebrating what is good.

Please move onto the next module to participate in the Qi Gong exercise.

Qi Gong

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Homework: Practice between the modules!

  1. Every day, practice a meditation by yourself without guidance. You can practice the body scan, a sitting meditation, or another technique. Practice Qi Gong as often as you like.
  2. Remember to be mindful in daily life. Be mindful of bodily sensations, thoughts and emotions.
  3. Having acknowledged your fears, you may notice that more emotions tend to come up. Each day be extra mindful of the emotions that come and go. Notice the tendency to either suppress them or to act them out. Instead of trying to get rid of this emotional energy, see if you can gradually learn to hold it in your heart with mindfulness and loving kindness, allowing the emotions to transform naturally, and at their own pace.
  4. Continue to write in your journal and reflect on what you are learning. Reflect on the way that you experience and deal with the energy of your emotions.