A Talk On Mindfulness Of The Body

I'd like to share some from my journal.

I have sought to understand the textures and the manifestation of reality all the years I am aware of in this life.

The mystery of the experience of thoughts arising,

Emotions felt in the body with a proposed detachment from mind,

And the nature that connects us treated as a dream was disconcerting.

A concert awaiting to be informed by the fluidity of balance and the voicing of our interconnectivity.

Have we not all been affected by the play of the heart beating,

The resonance that touches all,

And the syncopation of love moving our fluids and igniting our truths?

I have been led by the stories of the mind,

Many helpful and others seemingly harmful,

But necessary.

Our structure softens in order to dissipate a reality that is but a teacher in this loving fabric of becoming.

In recognizing us,

I ask you,

Where have your rhythms become repetitive phrases in your life?

May we together pause and feel the rest as we move by the wisdom of the shared heart,

In balance,

Weaving one to another.

My talk today is on the first foundation of mindfulness,

The mindfulness of the body,

Our home,

Our refuge.

To start,

A quote from Vincent de Beauvoir,

To start a quote from Buddha,

Be mindful of the body within the body.

The wisdom of these words speaks to the important practices of bringing a loving and compassionate attention to our bodies,

To the thoughts that arise.

We take refuge in connecting lovingly in this way.

We hold a lifetime of experience and our own indwelling stories within.

Within our elaborate and intelligent physiology,

These reside.

Our bodies house the grand workings of nervous systems,

Muscles,

Fascial planes,

Organs and cells,

Which respond to the practices of mindfulness meditation.

Our practices,

There are many,

Invite us to bring a curious and kind attention to the sensations in our bodies and the arising of our thoughts.

There is no need for striving sensations of the body occur naturally.

Thoughts rise on their own.

Mindfulness can directly impact our degree of suffering.

We can sit or move with kind attention and identify sensations and thoughts as they arise.

We then,

In our relaxed and alert practice,

Become a non-attached witness.

You might have heard this before.

To practice it is one of ease.

It's a natural progression.

We then allow the thoughts and sensations to soften as we kindly approach them.

Little by little,

This practice brings healthy change.

It is in this moment of choosing to lovingly release a thought or soften a sensation where we begin to awaken.

We have a habit in history to grasp at pleasant feelings,

Avoid neutral ones,

Push away the unpleasant and embrace distractions.

We're moving backwards and re-experiencing pain,

Judgment,

Or forward,

Anticipating,

Doing,

Thinking,

Planning,

Embracing stress.

It's a nature.

Mindfulness meditation practices allow for this too.

All of it,

All of those experiences,

We can kindly approach.

Allow a softening,

Embracing it all in the field of loving awareness.

In the gentle refuge of our body and of our breath.

It's a natural practice.

This embracing is a sacred moment where we can pause,

Relax,

And open.

Moving beyond our history and reactivity,

We notice,

We might name what it is that we are approaching kindness and choose presence.

Trauma,

Large and small,

Awaits a compassionate touch of mindfulness to begin the healing journey.

Feeling tones and tension in the body are interrelated with our thoughts.

Understand the biologic nature will help us to change our relationship with them,

Embracing and noting.

Coming back,

Emotions are generated in the brain by certain physical stimuli which causes biochemical reactions.

These reactions occur by the carriage of our woven storybook and unknowing attachments to the indwelling stories.

We all get these signals of physiological changes and indicators of our health,

Such as a racing heart or sweaty palms.

We also know the feeling of expansiveness,

Of freedom,

Of love.

These experiences are of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system at work informing us.

Watching the arising sensation and thoughts,

We're able to make a choice.

Meditation does not seek to directly change,

Decrease,

Or let go of struggling.

Meditation is a practice of underdoing and relaxing into the intelligence within and surrounding our physiology.

All that share this breath,

This air on a larger earth body,

Are touched by our practices.

With mindful meditation,

We begin to feel and note experiences as they arise.

We rest in this natural presence.

This is who we truly are.

Healthy changes occur in time,

Restoring balance and bringing wholesome movement to our day to day.

The deepest states of consciousness are biologically driven.

A mindfulness practice is uncomplicated.

We need only to sit on a chair or cushion or move with an open and soft,

Non-striving or judging awareness to allow what is present to arise and be seen.

A quote from our teacher,

Thich Nhat Hanh on mindfulness.

Mindfulness helps you go home to the very present.

Every time you go there and recognize a condition of happiness that you have,

Happiness comes.

Breathing in,

I calm body and mind.

And breathing out,

I smile.

Dwelling in the present moment,

I know that this is the only moment.

In our practice today,

We will become familiar with the anchors of the body and the breath.

Our breath connects us to our body.

The body within steadies the heart and the mind brings balance to our nervous system.

We will practice noticing sensations within the body,

Nurturing our concentration as we develop our capacity to quiet and focus our minds.

Many find their anchor of breath in the warmth of air leaving the nostril.

Some of the breath,

One hand on the heart and one on the belly,

Feeling the rise and fall.

Others find their anchor in the sensations and come back home to the refuge of the body by noticing the pressure on their legs or feet.

Others quietly name the breath.

I am taking an in-breath.

I am releasing an out-breath.

Quietly naming the breath,

The in-breath and the out-breath.

Take some moments to find your anchor.

And this can change at times.

For today's practice,

Find is it the breath that you are finding in your body with ease or is it a sensation,

The pressure on your body.

Oh,

It could be one hand upon the other.

Pressure of one hand on the other.

I have a few interesting quotes to add.

My teacher Jack Kornfield calls the rising of the thoughts,

Rounding up the puppies.

As thoughts seek our attention,

We gently name them without attaching to the story.

Each return to the body and the breath and the here and now is a gift nurturing presence and wellness.

It's a natural process.

So again and again we return to your chosen anchor without judgment.

This is a natural process.

Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb in 1949 first used the phrase,

Neurons wire together,

That fire together.

This describes how the pathways in the brain are formed and reinforced by repetition.

As in our mindfulness practice.

Through neuroplasticity,

Your mindfulness practice brings change to the brain,

Nurturing peace and joy.

Another quote from Rick Hansen's book,

Buddha's Brain,

The practical neuroscience of happiness and wisdom.

Every time you take in the good,

You build neural structure.

Practicing mindfulness meditation a few times a day,

Even for short periods,

Will gradually change your brain.

How you think,

How you feel in far reaching ways.

In time with practice,

Our minds quiet,

We enliven resilience and there is an easing of sorrow.

For ourselves,

For others,

We are interconnected.

Be comfortable in our practice.

It's natural for thoughts to wander as we said,

This is the monkey mind.

Here and there,

Wandering,

We return again and again to our anchors.

There is not a striving or way to do this wrong.

Bring a kind and curious attention.

If difficult emotions arise,

Return to your anchor.

This is your refuge.

The return again and again will bring quiet to your system and into your life.

I will introduce to you a mindfulness of body scan and meditation in time.

Today we will begin our meditation with mindful movement.

One of the many practices of mindfulness.

Standing and moving meditations help release physical tensions and nurture the settling of the mind.

In our movement today,

We invite an under doing.

Slow and repetitive meditative movement may be matched with the breath.

Long in the inhale and the exhale.

This is a coherent breath.

It nurtures health by affecting the autonomic nervous system.

We will practice bringing awareness to the natural breath.

There is no direction during our sitting meditation and standing.

When we rest,

Watching the natural breath as an anchor.

No judgment and we notice the changing landscape of sensation and thought.

There is no need for direction of the breath.