Accepting Your Vulnerabilities - Including from Early Childhood with Rick Hanson

Sometimes we try to open up or soften, but we don’t feel safe enough inside to do it. Our nervous system holds armor — bracing against vulnerability, against the truth that life includes aging, illness, loss, and uncertainty.

I explore how to resource yourself first — to feel steady enough to lower your guard — and how vulnerability itself can become a doorway into peace, love, and freedom. When we stop compensating for old wounds and instead welcome our vulnerability with compassion, we discover something deeper that was never wounded at all.

00:00 – Why we must resource ourselves before softening
01:16 – Impermanence and the passing nature of every moment
03:10 – Steadying and quieting the mind
05:51 – Shifting identity from thinking to spacious awareness
09:14 – The four heavenly messengers: aging, illness, death, and practice
11:47 – Vulnerability as a fundamental truth of being human
17:26 – The “primal wound” and compensatory patterns
27:26 – Practicing acceptance and compassion for vulnerability
31:12 – Discovering what is not vulnerable
33:33 – Honoring the courage of continuing to live and practice

You can see the meditation that went along with this talk https://rickhanson.com/talk-meditation-accepting-your-vulnerabilities-including-from-early-childhood/

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