Review of the Body, Thoughts and Emotions

You might consider taking this moment early on in the meditation period to reconnect with your intention for practice,

For being here.

Inevitably,

At the beginning of a sitting meditation period,

There is particular attention paid to the physical posture of sitting.

We've been here long enough now that some of the initial discomfort of reminding the body how to sit still in a posture that might not be the norm in your life,

Move through that initial period.

And we get to see a kind of chronic holding or unfolding ease is arising in the posture.

So checking to ensure that the posture,

Whether you're on a chair or a bench or a cushion,

Carries the elements of uprightness and ease.

When the posture of the body carries these elements,

It influences the posture of the mind to also exhibit these elements of uprightness and ease.

So as was suggested the first morning,

We can do a couple of specific checks,

Whether on a chair or on a cushion.

You can check to make sure that the pelvis is tilted slightly forward so that we're not resting back on the tailbone,

But actually up on the sits bones a little.

It supports a gentle curve in the low back.

It's very subtle.

It's not a big movement.

Some of us are noticing through the stillness and the ongoing sitting habits of slumping the shoulders forward or protecting the heart.

And so we can help with that by lifting the shoulders up and rolling them down the back body,

Creating space in the area of the heart center.

And some of us will choose to use a little cushion or a rolled up blanket in the lap so that the hands are supported a little more and they don't droop down the legs,

Which pulls the whole upper body forward.

So too in this world of many screens to observe in daily life,

I notice a habit in our community these days of jetting the chin forward.

And so we can tuck the chin in just enough so that we feel sensation where the bottom of the skull meets the top vertebrae of the neck.

Gentle tuck and softening the eyes.

There's nothing we need to look out for right now.

So softening all the muscles around the eyes and letting the jaw go again.

We can gently,

Being aware of the body sitting in this posture,

Just scan the attention down through the body.

Perhaps we take a breath and soften an area of the body that we notice is tight as we're scanning down the body.

We can check and make sure that the hips are open.

And then if we're sitting cross legged on the ground,

That both knees have enough support under them.

For many of us,

We need an extra cushion under one knee that sticks up a little.

Things like this.

Getting us into noticing quite distinctly the sensations in the body that indicate that the body is resting on the floor.

Not the idea of the body resting on the floor,

But what sensations tell you.

So feeling the feet,

The legs,

The sits bones,

And the sense of ground or contact.

That הà much less focusing on moving the arms and nose and the body.

Okay.

As the retreat progresses,

We will continue using the resource of a primary object.

So this is the direct experience that we return to over and over again.

When in doubt,

We come back to the primary object,

Whether it's the sensations of breath in a particular part of the body,

Whether it's sounds coming and going and being known,

Or any of the others that have been mentioned.

We're developing a relationship there.

And so if the breath,

As it is for many of us,

Is the primary object,

Continuing to be ardently precise about the particular sensations that you're tracking,

Not the idea of the breath,

The sensations that are the breath in the body.

And in addition to suggestions that have been made,

There might be times when it's helpful to do a little bit of counting of breaths,

Just to give you either a sense of where you're at with the subtleness of mind,

Or to help support subtleness of mind.

So there's an inhale,

And perhaps you're using a label in.

There's an exhale,

And perhaps you're using a label out.

And then very quietly,

You can count that one.

And then an inhale and an exhale and two.

And you start with that up to five.

When you notice you're more settled,

It could be up to ten,

And then begin again.

And then so too,

This technique of using the touch point of either feeling the hands,

Or if the hands are not so comfortable,

Perhaps feeling the feet in between breaths,

The sensations of hands and feet.

As a way to develop a continuity of mindfulness,

And as a way to settle any extra frenetic or activated energy in the system,

To settling practice,

To use a touch point between breaths.

And then we're also opening up into a whole world of direct experience of this humanness.

So we're already quite involved in naming and exploring body sensations other than the breath as a secondary object.

And because so many of you have named to me this simple truth of the discomfort of the body,

And sometimes the painfulness of the body through these rigorous trainings,

I just want to offer one or two suggestions for specifically when a sensation in the body moves to the foreground,

So that we're leaving the primary object at that point,

And it's painful.

Of course not all body sensations that call our attention are painful,

But when they are,

A few simple tools.

One is,

As was suggested,

To explore the quality of the sensation of the pain.

We so quickly label it pain,

But there's a lot there.

So if there's somewhere that's less than comfortable in your body right now,

You can experiment with this just now.

As you feel that spot,

You can notice whether it's warm or cold,

And whether it's vibrating,

Pulsing,

Throbbing,

Tingling,

Numb.

What's going on in that area that has so much charge that we keep getting sucked into,

But we wish we could avoid this painful spot?

So we can explore it that way for a little while.

At some point,

If it's very painful,

The system will get tired,

And we need another tool.

We can come back to the breath,

Or sounds.

We can also practice something that I call a three breaths model,

Where we take three breaths,

Being very aware of the area that's painful.

And then we choose another area in the body which is not painful.

It's either neutral or even pleasant sensations.

And we explore that area for much longer,

Maybe a minute or two.

This reminds the body that there's more than the pain.

And then we go back to the place which perhaps is still hurting,

And we take three more breaths there,

And then we pendulate to an area that is not painful.

And we move back and forth that way.

It gives the process some space.

And then eventually we come back to the primary object.

It's just time.

We use our intuition.

So the area that we're going to add this morning is this incredible world of thoughts and emotions.

And it's not as if we haven't already been going there.

But we're being more intentional,

More specific now that we have that ground of settledness and simplicity of the last days.

We can really begin to engage the energy of the stories and the underlying emotions in a rich way.

There are times when we're hanging out,

Paying attention to the primary object,

Minding our own business,

And there it comes,

A story line,

An emotional quality,

Just roars into the foreground,

Sweeps the whole system away,

And off we go.

Through the continuity of mindfulness,

We can catch this process of being swept away much sooner.

It's important to know that the moment of awareness of,

Oh,

Lost in thought,

Oh,

That's a big story,

Oh,

Lots of emotions,

That's a magical moment.

In that moment,

We have choice.

Without the awareness of what's happening,

It's habitual.

There's not so much choice.

So it's not a moment when we need to beat ourselves up for getting lost in another story.

It's a moment of celebration.

Ah,

There's that planning again.

We can label it.

We can notice how we get caught on these trains of association,

And they just move off far,

Far along.

We can start to label our top five story lines of the retreat and give them a name.

Maybe give them a name that makes you smile.

So there's a lightening of the process of this endless,

Exhausting storytelling that's so compelling.

That way we can mark when they return,

Ah,

The visitor of remembering that incident again.

Here it is.

And then we can choose to dive under the choppiness of that wave of story line and just check and see under the surface chop of those waves,

Certain underlying emotion.

Oh,

Yes.

When I think of them,

There's tremendous longing feeling that story that I'm telling.

And we can dive even deeper and go,

Oh,

There's longing,

There's longing.

What is that like in the body?

And maybe you check the core of the body,

Kind of the trunk,

See if there's anything particular there connected with the longing.

You can check the face,

The hands,

Anywhere really.

Take some time to explore the sensation level of this conglomerate of thoughts and emotions.

This is quite different than trying to figure the whole thing out and get it resolved.

What if there was a different way to complete the cycle?

Then I must figure it out.

Then I must think it through for the next two hours.

What if it unwinds itself in a different way?

That's what we're here to explore.

There will be other times where it's as if we're sitting by a river.

And we're sitting by a river,

Just sitting still,

Quiet,

Breathing body.

And we can notice how the thoughts or the emotions just flow on by like a river.

Sometimes there's discernible logs or there's an eddy.

And we just have that space of sitting by the river.

And there's that story,

There it goes,

There's all the details.

It's all being held in awareness in this still,

Alive,

Breathing body.

But we're not jumping in the river.

We're not getting wet.

Just relaxing and observing what's so,

Without judgment,

Without ideas about what it means.

Just this story held in awareness.

When in doubt or with the primary object,

When an experience of body,

Of emotion,

Of thoughts nudges or pushes itself to the foreground of attention,

We attend there.

When it feels complete,

We rest back into the primary object.

It's just a dance.

We couldn't do it wrong because our intention is sincere.

We couldn't do it right.

How would we do it right?

So we're just recognizing what's happening,

Allowing what's happening without struggle.

Turning again and again to investigate it in the body,

Especially those thoughts and emotions.

What is the echo in the body?

And we don't have to have the pain of so much drama or that it's so personal.

It's actually happening to every one of us here.

So we'll sit in the center or we'll sit by the stream and we'll see what happens next.

Enjoy your practice.