What Is Feeling Tone?

🌿 From Reaction to Response

### Working with Feeling Tone and the Klesha of Aversion (Dvesha)

👉 RSVP Reminder: Please RSVP if you plan to attend so we can size the room well for discussion. 🌿

Part of the Relational Capacities Series

Why do certain moments trigger such quick reactions in us — criticism, embarrassment, discomfort, tension? 🤔

Classical contemplative psychology offers a helpful model.

Every experience first arrives as a feeling tone.

Feeling tone is the mind’s immediate internal signal about an experience — usually one of three qualities:

• pleasant 🙂
• unpleasant 😬
• neutral 😐

This happens before thoughts, stories, or analysis begin.

In mindfulness training, learning to recognize this early signal is a foundational skill.

### 🧠 Mindfulness Skill:

### Noticing Feeling Tone

This practice involves gently recognizing the pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral quality of an experience as it arises. 🌱

When we are unaware of this moment, reactive mental patterns — known as Kleshas — quickly attach themselves to the feeling tone and drive our reactions.

One of the most common is:

Dvesha — Aversion

The instinct to push away what feels unpleasant.

The pattern often looks like this:

Stimulus → Feeling Tone → Klesha → Reaction

Example:
Criticism
→ unpleasant feeling tone
→ Dvesha (aversion)
→ defensiveness ⚡

Embarrassment
→ unpleasant tone
→ Dvesha
→ withdrawal 🚪

Mindfulness helps us interrupt this chain.

When we learn to notice the feeling tone early, the pattern begins to change:

Stimulus → Feeling Tone → Awareness → Response ✨

This small moment of awareness can soften automatic reactions and expand our capacity for non-reactivity, emotional regulation, and thoughtful response.

During tonight’s gathering we will:

• briefly review the five Kleshas
• focus on Dvesha (aversion) as a major driver of reactivity
• introduce the mindfulness skill Noticing Feeling Tone
• practice a short meditation to observe this process in real time 🧘
• discuss how this awareness applies to everyday interactions and relationships 💬

The goal is not to suppress emotions.

It is simply to see the moment of activation clearly enough that choice becomes possible.

***

🗓 Tonight
⏰ 6:00 PM EST
💻 Online on Zoom

👉 Please RSVP if you plan to attend so we can prepare the room appropriately for discussion.

Looking forward to a thoughtful exploration together. 🌿✨