This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Introduction to Mindfulness (2 of 4) ~ Body by Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Intro to Mindfulness Meditation (2 of 4) ~ Body - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Intro to Mindfulness Meditation (2 of 4) ~ Body

So I was saying that mindfulness is a noticing practice, and part of the premise of this is that we can choose what we are noticing. We can move our attention. In some ways, this means that anything, absolutely anything, can be the object of mindfulness. Sometimes when we come to a meditation center, we see a teacher who is sitting on a floor in a particular posture, and we're going to instruct you to do that. There's this way we might think, "Oh, well, mindfulness has to look a certain way or has to be done a certain way." But it doesn't have to be that way. It's something that definitely is portable, that we can bring to our daily life, to anything that we're doing.

Mindfulness of the breath is often where we start, and we often use this as the primary anchor. What I mean by anchor is just some place where we're placing our attention. So, just the breath. And then of course, the mind likes to wander, and then we just very simply come back to the breath. Some of the advantages of using the breath is that it's changing and moving, and there's something that's a little bit more interesting for the mind to be paying attention to—something that's moving. There's more I can say about the breath, but I'll stop there for now.

Last time we talked about the posture and how it can be really helpful to have an upright posture in a way that expresses some uprightness, our intention to meditate, our intention to be specific with where we're placing the mind, and have some alertness. This is a practice in itself, I would say, to have this sense of uprightness and ease. Sometimes we feel like first we have to be stiff, and if we come off of the backrest in a chair, there's a certain stiffness that can happen, and it feels maybe stilted or forced in some kind of way. I do know some people that from the beginning it was no problem to be in a meditation posture, but for many of us, that's not the case. To be in a meditation posture is difficult or a little bit uncomfortable. I just want to name that. I think I said this last time too, but for me, there was no way I could sit for more than 10 or 15 minutes. It's not that I set out intentionally to try to be better at my meditation posture; it just happened. I'm just meditating more and more, and it just got easier and easier. So I'll just offer that.

There are a few ways that we can teach mindfulness, so many different ways. Here at IMC, we tend to do it in a particular way. Other ways are perfectly legitimate, but this way is, if you can imagine, concentric circles that are going out. In the center is the breath. The reason the breath is in the center is because it's often the most stable and maybe the most reliable and accessible—not always and not for everybody, this is a generalization. Then we would say one ring outside is the body. Mindfulness of the body also has some stability, and in some ways, we can even merge the breath and the body. But for this one, I'll say the breath and the body. And then emotions. We get pushed around by our emotions, and often there's some instability, and we lose our presence of mind, so to speak, with emotions. So that's the outer ring. And then I would say even more so with thoughts, that we just get lost in our thoughts, in our planning, and in our fantasies, our memories, all these different things.

So we tend to focus and really draw on and refer to what's more in the center. This is the breath and the body. In the ensuing weeks, I'll talk about emotions and thoughts. We can be mindful of them as well, but it really helps to have this stability of the breath and the body. So this class, we start with breath and the body, then emotions and thoughts, kind of going from the most stable to the least stable. In this way, there's a certain progression. I could say, "Please don't have any emotions until next week," or "Don't think for two weeks or something like this until we talk about it." But of course, that's not going to happen. But I just want to put that in the mix, that's what's coming up. [Applause]

Mindfulness of the Body

To talk a little bit about mindfulness of the body, I mean, of course, our bodies are such an integral part of what it means to be a human being. We have these bodies. However, it's so easy to be completely disconnected from the embodied experience. The kind of society or culture that we've created just really supports this idea of, "Here, let's get lost in this. Let us entertain you so you get completely disconnected from your body." Or, "You have to think and make sure that everybody knows how smart you are, so make sure that you are always in your mind prepared to have the right response." Or, "It's so important to get the right grades." These are the kinds of messages that we've been receiving.

Or maybe we've even received messages that there's something impure with having a body, or terribly wrong. Either we receive that from others or even with ourselves, we might be telling ourselves that there's something terribly wrong with our body, and it's best to just ignore it because it's uncomfortable to be with the bodily experience. Or we might have had some traumatic experiences that are associated with the body, and we don't want to be with the body because it's associated with those terrible things that happened, and it seems safer to just not be part of it, to kind of move away from the body.

Also, I would say that as a lead-up to what we'll talk about next week, emotions are actually partly a bodily experience, and often we don't want to feel our emotions, so we don't really want to be embodied. So I've just given a long list to kind of normalize why it feels like we want to be in our minds rather than feeling embodied in some kind of way, really connected with what the bodily experience is.

It can be a training. It certainly was for me. I thought I was embodied, but it turns out I wasn't so much. I remember hearing this Dharma teacher, this was years and years ago, saying that he experienced himself—now I don't remember exactly how he said it, but this was the visual that I had in my mind—it's like a lollipop, like a stick with a head on top. And just this head just kind of brings this stick around where it goes. The body had just been kind of some stick that I dragged around with me or something.

So to practice with this, and those of you who were on the retreat that I taught recently will recognize this, just bring your attention to your left hand. Just, what is the experience of having a hand? What does it feel like? We're not thinking about it so much, but feeling handedness. Maybe there's some tingling, some throbbing, maybe there's some pressure, whatever that is, what it's touching.

And then bring your attention to your right hand. How does that hand feel from the inside? The experience. Do you feel this—maybe we could even say—the hand experiencing itself? So with no words, just experiencing throbbing, tingling, maybe a sense of vitality or energy or something vague like that.

And then bring to mind some ideas, thoughts you have about the hand. Maybe it would be better if we had longer fingers so that we could play the piano better or play the guitar better. Or maybe your hands aren't very big, or too small, or too big. Or maybe they have veins on them, or maybe they have spots on them. What are some of the ideas about your hands? And maybe some of the judgments about your hands? Just noticing the thoughts we have about the hands. Maybe the hands should be different.

And then coming back to just the experience of the hand. Feeling the tingling or the pressure. Maybe there's some throbbing.

Q&A

So now I'd like to open it up. I'm going to end this little exercise and just to ask you, what was that like? Could you tell the difference, or what did it feel like between experiencing the hand versus thinking about the hand? And especially if we have judgments about our hands, what was that like? Anybody like to share?

(Participant): It was interesting to me that my experience of just feeling my hands was very different from thinking about them. Like, so different. And after starting with feeling the hand, then it was almost hard for me to get into thoughts about it because they seemed very just like two entirely different worlds going on with the really feeling the hand and then trying to think about it in an abstract way. It seemed silly. I don't know. It was interesting. I hadn't experienced that before.

(Diana): Do you want to say which one, was there a sense of which was more easeful?

(Participant): Oh yeah, feeling, being in the hand was definitely more... I mean, that just was nice. My hands were warm, they were relaxed, it felt good. And thinking about it just seemed complicated.

(Diana): Yeah, it's a little more busy and like trying to make something happen when you're thinking about the hands instead of feeling them. Great. Thank you, Liz. Anybody else have a comment, something they'd like to say? No? Okay, thank you.

Reflections

So there are a few things to say. First is, maybe you know this already, maybe it's obvious already, that we can be intentional. We can go from the left hand to the right hand. So we can direct the attention, especially when we are not lost in thought. We can just move the attention to wherever we'd like for it to go. That's maybe the first thing.

The second thing is there are two different ways to be with our experience. One is to actually be feeling it, and the second is to be thinking about it. But we think we're feeling it, or maybe it's clear that we're thinking about it. So these often can get conflated somehow. The thoughts about the experience are really different than the experience. And sometimes I like to emphasize that the experience doesn't need words. It's just, you know, if we were to use words, we would feel like, "Oh, it's kind of smooth," or "kind of cool." Those are the types of words that we would use, as opposed to often there are thoughts of, "Oh, was my hand in the right position?" or "Should I move it over here?" or "Should I do something like this?" We have some ideas about what is happening as opposed to just being in the experience.

It turns out that this way, to intentionally turn towards experience, is a way that we can interrupt some of the momentum that the mind might have about the experience. Because for example, I took piano lessons when I was young—I didn't last very long—but I remember sometimes when I think about my hands, I think, "Oh yeah, there was this thing that I was trying to reach different keys and they weren't quite long enough." But notice how when I tell that story, that was so long ago. That's not here. It's just words, completely imagination about something that happened decades ago. I'm still sitting here, I'm still having the experience in these hands, but I'm kind of thinking that I'm trying to stretch my fingers to get to wherever they were supposed to go on the piano keyboard.

So there's a way in which our thoughts can pull us out of the experience. Maybe that's obvious, but what is sometimes not so obvious is that often the thoughts that we have about particularly compelling, uncomfortable experiences, we don't notice them. And then there's a way that it kind of compounds the compelling experience, the difficult experience, or the uncomfortable experience. So often there'll be something uncomfortable and then, boom, "This shouldn't be happening," "My knee is going to fall off if this stays like this," or "Am I going to have to go to the doctor after this?" or "Will everybody hear if I change my posture?" Something like this. And then we're just no longer with our experience, and our life passes us by while we're lost in these thoughts.

So there's this way, can we stay with the simplicity and the immediacy of this moment? This moment, this moment. And noticing when the thought train has taken us elsewhere, 100% in our imagination. We don't go anywhere, we stay right here. And then we start to just feel embodied and live our life in a particular way. It does require a certain amount of trust because maybe for a lifetime, we have thought, "I have to think about things, I have to solve these problems." Thinking is useful and valuable, but we're doing meditation, which is a different activity.

Guided Meditation

So with that, let's do a guided meditation. If you want to stand up for a moment before we sit down, you're welcome to do that. If you'd like to shift your posture, go from the chair to the floor or the floor to the chair or something like that, you're welcome to do that.

Okay, so taking an alert posture, a posture that has some uprightness and some ease. Just notice that we're here, feeling the pressure against the body from where you're sitting, whether that's a chair or a cushion. Just noticing how that feels. The back, the backside, the back of the legs, and the feet in contact with the surface.

Then we'll do a little bit of a body scan. Checking in around the eyes. Sometimes there's tightness and tension there. We don't have to do anything about the tension. It might be that just simply noticing allows there to be some softening. Noticing if there's any tension around the jaw, the shoulders, allowing them to slide down the back, away from the ears. The upper back, lower back, the chest, the belly. We're just resting attention.

And then wherever in the body that the breath is felt, whether that's the movement of the belly, the stretching around the chest, or the feeling of air coming in and out of the nose. Just resting the attention on the sensations of breathing. Feeling the experience of the breath. We're going to hang out here for a little bit with the breath, tuning into the experience of breathing. And when the mind is lost in thought, we just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing.

And now, can you turn your attention to a compelling bodily experience? Maybe something that's uncomfortable, pressure against the body, maybe something that feels really nice. Letting go of the breath and turning towards this bodily experience. What does it feel like? What is the experience? What are the sensations? And when it's no longer compelling or you find yourself lost in thought, come back to the breath in a relaxed, easy manner.

Let's do that again. To a compelling bodily sensation, something that draws your attention. Feeling into it. And this time, notice if there are some thoughts around it, if there's a commentary around it. A sense of, "This shouldn't be there," or "I hope this lasts," or "I don't know what she's talking about," whatever it might be. We're just noticing, and then come back to the breath.

In this way, we can move back and forth between compelling sensations and the breath. Nothing in particular needs to be happening. We're just noticing. Can you keep it simple, just with the immediacy of the experience? And right now, we're emphasizing the breath and the body, maybe going back and forth if need be, and being sensitive to any commentary about the experience.

For this last bit here, can you just hang in there with the sensations of breathing?

Reflections

So it turns out that at every moment, each moment, there are most often two things happening. One is an experience in the body or whatever the experience might be, and the second thing is the commentary about that experience. "I like it," "I don't like it," "I'm confused about it." Kind of, maybe that's one way, in a high-level summary, of what the commentary that we have is. And there's this way in which we kind of assume that the commentary is just part of... The commentary is often a judgment about whether it's good or bad, desirable or not. Or it might lead into a story or a judgment about what's happening. And we tend to think that this commentary is integral to the situation. It turns out it isn't.

This commentary is extra. And I would say that this extra bit that gets added on, which is just a habitual thing that human minds like to do, is often where, if we're going to have the inner critic show up, it's going to be something that's going to have a role in our life. It's this commentary about our experience. And sometimes it's so familiar that we don't even notice it. We just start to think, "Well, that's just the natural way of things." That if you notice, "Oh, I've been lost in thought for quite some time," then there might be a really quick, "Dang it, I'm just not a very good meditator. Everybody else can meditate, I can't. And will they notice if I slip out early?" or whatever it is, right? These types of things.

We can start to see how so often this shows up in our life, but we're not noticing it because we're, as I said, kind of conflating the commentary with the experience, especially if it's an uncomfortable experience or a new experience or something like this. And it turns out, of course, the body and the mind are talking to each other. They're integrated. They are not separate, of course, they aren't. And so there's this way in which the aversion, the anger, maybe even the hatred towards some uncomfortable experience, actually ends up turning up the volume of the uncomfortableness of that experience.

So our relationship to what's happening really has a big role in our life and our actual experiences. Our inner life, our psychology about how we think about ourselves, how we think about others, but also it impacts the magnitude of our experiences. The physiologists and neurologists will point to the same thing about how experiences, especially bodily or uncomfortable experiences, have more than one component. They're a complex of both what's happening in the mind, the story that the mind is making, whether it's pushing against it or whether it's pulling towards it, wants more of that experience, wants more or less, or maybe it's just feeling confused and just keeps on getting kicked off of that experience. That relationship we have to experience has an impact, as I said, to kind of increase the volume.

But there's a way that the impact is also, it takes us away. It kind of dilutes the actual lived experience. Instead, we're having a relationship with our thoughts about the experience. So we're like two degrees separated from what's actually happening. And as I said, this takes a little bit of trust to think that it's actually worthwhile to be with our experiences. Because I'll speak for myself, I certainly thought it was all about figuring things out. Like, "Okay, my life would just be better if I could just figure it out." And figuring it out happens here in the mind. But it turns out that always running towards the mind or getting lost in the mind or privileging the mental experiences is a way that we just start more and more to be disconnected from what's happening.

Mindfulness of the body, like really feeling the body, feeling the experiences, is a way that we can start to see how the mind likes to leave and go. And then we start to also notice where it likes to go, and we'll talk about that later in a few weeks. So there are experiences, and then there's our relationship to that experience. And the relationship is often a mental experience.

Q&A

I'd just like to open it up. Are there any comments about how that meditation was? Either like being with the breath and then moving towards something compelling and then coming back to the breath, and then being with the breath, moving towards something compelling, and then noticing what the mind is doing with it? Would anybody like to share how that meditation was?

(Participant): It's really just fatigue and immediately, almost instantaneously dreaming. It's like actually staying alert as opposed to... so it's kind of that thing of fighting the dreaming, but then giving into the dreaming, but then realize I'm losing myself in the dream, and then kind of coming away for a little bit and falling back into the dream.

(Diana): And has this happened to you before, other times when you meditate, or is it different this time?

(Participant): Yeah, sometimes, particularly when I'm well, tired, yes, it definitely does that. The dreaming is not the first time.

(Diana): So I have a few things to say. One is, we can have this be the object of our mindfulness. It can be fascinating to just notice the mind getting tired and getting like where the hypnagogic images, you know, kind of this wavy thing, and then you fall asleep and then you wake up like, "Oh yeah, oh wait, I'm supposed to be meditating." But just to kind of bring mindfulness, and sometimes that investigation of heading towards dream, and then maybe you get lost in dream, and then maybe there's coming out, sometimes that investigation can bring up the energy just a little bit. So I'll just offer that.

Another thing is to pay attention to the posture. Like sometimes we have to just sit up a little bit straighter when we're tired, like putting a little bit more energy in that. And then another one can be, instead of just the breath or a compelling sensation, to give the mind something to do that requires a little bit more energy. So sometimes it can be doing something like maybe spending on sensations... the hands, what the hands are touching, and then pressure against the body, probably on the buttocks, and then maybe the feet on the ground, and then maybe the eyes. So if we go from the top to the bottom, it's like around the eyes for maybe one second, hands for one second, pressure against the buttocks for one second, and then the feet for one second. And just this kind of relaxed way going stepwise through these different experiences can be just enough energy. It keeps the mind alert but also has the same kind of calming and settling experience. So that's an alternative, something to do. And then maybe the last thing I'll say is one can open their eyes too. Maybe that goes without saying, and maybe you knew all those things, but I just offer them in case it's helpful.

Anybody else have a comment or anything they'd like to say? I feel like I want to apologize if I've said some of these things last week. As it happened, I taught mindfulness, just like intro, in a number of different situations quite a few times the last few weeks, and I'm having a hard time keeping straight now, did I say that to this group or that group? So apologies if you've heard a lot of this before. How was it when I said, "What are the thoughts about the compelling experience?" Did anybody notice that? Okay, so maybe I'll move on a little bit.

This idea about the commentary is also, you know, recently there's been this idea of the growth mindset. This is the idea of things are possible and one can grow and learn, as opposed to—I forget now what the not-growth mindset is—but you know, they just feel like, "Nope, this is the way I am and this is the way I'm going to be for the rest of my life." And kind of this certain stubbornness in terms of not... I'm saying stubbornness, but maybe that's not the right word, but this feeling like we have these beliefs about, "Nope, this is just the way I am," and "That's just the way things are." This idea of a growth mindset turns out to be so beneficial in our lives. It keeps us engaged with our lives, this idea like, "Oh yeah, things can be different. I can learn new things." This growth mindset also shows up in this relationship that we have to our experience, this commentary.

One way that I like to think about it is, yesterday I visited my mom, and we were watching some of the Olympic trials. I love to do this, as does my mom. And so we were watching these amazing women gymnasts. And I noticed getting really involved with what was happening and feeling emotions, you know, when a gymnast did what they were expected to or didn't. It was like, wow, it was so thrilling. And I was kind of feeling into, "Well, why is there all this emotion?" Because if you think about it, these are just amazing athletes doing amazing things. But part of it was the commentary. The commentators are saying, they're getting all excited with their energy, and "Okay, if she makes it now, she'll be able to get to this, but will she do it?" You know, there's this kind of thinking. And then I just noticed, "Oh, I have to pay attention."

In the same way, we have this internal commentator that's happening, and it's influencing our experience. We may not even notice it. But it's sometimes obvious, you know, if one were to turn off some athletic event or something like that and turn off the commentators, right? All of a sudden, that event is really different. So that's just something to think about, the role that recognizing what the commentator is doing. Or, some of you may know this movie Jaws, right? And it has that music, duh-nuh, duh-nuh... right? It's the same type of thing, just setting a tone or something. People who do movies and stuff like this know that.

There's also this attitude, having a certain flavor of this commentary to our bodily experiences, not only does it take us away from the experience, but it colors it. Maybe it makes it a certain way that's helpful, and maybe it's not helpful. We would have talked about this, and maybe some of you are familiar with this simile: the simile of the two arrows. So the Buddha asks the people who are listening to him, "Is it painful to be shot with an arrow?" This is not a trick question. "Yes, it is painful." And then he asks, "Is it more painful to be shot by a second arrow?" "Yes, two arrows is worse than one arrow."

So the Buddha is pointing out, the first arrow is what life brings us. Difficult things happen in our lives. That's just the human experience. There's no denying this. It doesn't matter how much we wish it were otherwise. The truth is, hard things happen, painful things happen. The second arrow is kind of like the one that we pick up and stab ourselves with. And that often is the commentary that's speeding us up, comparing ourselves to others. Because even if we are comparing and we think that we're so much better than everybody else, then we have to make sure that they see how much we're better and make sure that they don't see how we sometimes aren't better. And we have to protect and show off, and it's exhausting trying to do that. And if we feel like we aren't better, then that's a terrible feeling too. And if we feel like we're the same, then we always have to be comparing, "Well, I think I'm the same, but are they getting ahead? Or am I getting ahead?" There's this way in which just comparing, it doesn't matter what the result of the comparing is, comparing is extra and not helpful. And it turns out to always be painful and uncomfortable. The painful and uncomfortable may be subtle at first. We might think, "Oh, look at me, I'm the best," but then we always have to be looking the best and we have to make sure that people don't see us.

So there's this way in which the commentary adds so much to our experience that we're not noticing often. And so mindfulness of the body is a way that we can just be with whatever the experience is. I'll talk more explicitly about compelling experiences. Very often, compelling bodily experiences, especially in meditation, there can be discomfort in the body. The knee can hurt, the back can hurt, whatever it might be. And so there's a way in which, as I've been saying, we can notice it's often the commentary that is the loudest with the most uncomfortable experiences. And so is there a way that we can soften the commentary around really uncomfortable things? Just notice, "Oh yeah, that's a lot of anger."

For some people, they feel like there's something wrong if they're uncomfortable, and they want to blame the institutions, blame other people, blame themselves. It doesn't matter, they just want to blame, kind of deflect any responsibility for the uncomfortable situation because they feel like they're failing in some kind of way. Or maybe there's this kind of hatred towards uncomfortable things like, "Dang it, go away! When are you going to go away?" And this feeling like it's going to be like this forever and I'm never going to be free from this.

This way that we can be with difficult, uncomfortable bodily experiences is to, one way, is to notice the story that we have around it, but also to notice if there is a way that we can be with it in a way that might expand our capacity. Like, "Yes, this is uncomfortable. Yes, this is not what I want to be happening. And yes, this is actually what is happening right now, this moment. It feels like this." And if we can do this, turning towards the uncomfortable experience, that movement from, "Oh, make it go away," and trying to separate ourselves from what's actually happening, but instead to turn towards, that's a shift in our relationship. And that shift in our relationship to what's happening starts to create the conditions in which something else can unfold.

It can be that, maybe if you have some meditation practice, you've already experienced this, that something is really uncomfortable. Maybe you could start with something like an itch. It's like, "Oh my gosh, I have to scratch. I have to scratch this on my face. I'm not going to scratch. I'm not going to scratch. Oh, I need to scratch." And then if you just be with this itchy itchiness, and then maybe it kind of comes up and then it just resolves. It turns out so much of our life is experienced like this, but we don't notice. We think it's persistent, and partly the way is because our relationship to what's happening, we're pushing it or pulling. And there's this way the act of pushing and pulling, hating, blaming, holding on to, kind of perpetuates it, fuels it. But if we can allow it to be there, it can just run its natural course. And its natural course will not be super extreme and it won't be the longest. And again, this takes some trust. And I would say that trust comes from experience, maybe this willingness to like, "I think I'll try this for a little bit." I'm not asking you to believe things or something like this, but encouraging you to just investigate, is this true? Can I soften my relationship, kind of dampen the anger that I'm having?

And one way that we can do that, dampen the anger, cool the hatred towards, particularly... I'm pointing to my knee because my knee is a little uncomfortable... to the uncomfortable experiences is to actually feel either the uncomfortable experiences itself or the anger, the hatred. And this is what we'll talk about next week. It's really hard to do that, but just to give you a preview, our emotions have a bodily experience and a mental experience. The bodily experience is moving so much slower. The mental experience is slippery and going anywhere and everywhere. So we could tune into either the pain, the uncomfortable experience, or we can tune into the bodily experience of anger or aversion, whatever it might be, and that disrupts some of the momentum in the mind. Does anybody have any comments or questions?

(Participant): Thank you for that. You kind of mirrored what I'm learning through coming here on Sundays. And I was telling my friend, I had to do an oral presentation yesterday. I do not like...

(Diana): Can you move that mic just a little bit closer?

(Participant): Is it on? Oh, maybe it's not on. There we go. So since I've been meditating here on Sundays and being with you last week, I'm doing exactly what you said. And I named it today: being comfortable with the uncomfortableness. And I learned yesterday by doing that, you're fine, and you gain more confidence because you overcame sweating, the anxiety, all the uncomfortable feelings are still there, and you're bringing yourself, and it's absolutely beautiful. So thank you so much and thank you to Insight Meditation for helping me with that.

(Diana): Yeah, that's it exactly. So the same experience is there, but some of the problem kind of drains out. It's less of a problem. It's just what's being experienced.

(Participant): Less reactivity and just presence and more humanness, right? Because I'm showing up with the anxiety and uncomfortableness, and it's so human.

(Diana): It's so human. And thank you for mirroring that. And maybe I'll build on what you said, that it's so human because it connects us with other humans too. We notice, "Oh yeah, this is... other people, maybe they are having these experiences too." We can maybe notice that they don't want to be uncomfortable and see how they react or something like that. And it's brave to speak with your voice quivering or whatever it is, because you showed up.

(Participant): Thank you. That's beautiful. Thank you.

(Diana): Anybody else have a comment?

(Participant): Just extending on that a little bit, in terms of being comfortable with discomfort, there's the other side. And I know you used to do yoga, I remember, and I was curious just in your historical situation, what made you move... I don't know if you still do yoga. And I'm curious, or you moved fully over to Vipassanā? The reason I'm asking, the context is, I do yoga as well, and there you move the energy, you know, it's a different framework and it's got its own validity as well. So I'm wondering how you hold those two, if you do yoga still.

(Diana): Yeah, I should say I do yoga, but it's more to support my sitting practice. Is that true? Uh, it's primarily, but sometimes I use it just to like move the body, you know, as exercise or something like that. But that's the way that I use it. So not so much intentionally to, I don't know, I'm just like doing asana practice, I would say, not like all of yoga. Does that make sense?

(Participant): Yeah, but what made you switch over completely?

(Diana): What made me switch over? It's hard for me to remember exactly. I think that... it's funny that I don't remember what made me switch over. I think they're both beautiful practices and complementary. I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly why that happened.

(Participant): I'm wondering, does it evolve to a point where a path opens up?

(Diana): I don't think your microphone was on. So you were saying that you do a number of different practices and you're asking, does the path open up and it becomes clear?

(Participant): Yeah, you know, evolve over time where eventually, "Okay, oh no, this is the way I should go," that sort of clears up. I'm curious because I'm not mentally able to fully commit to any practice, you know, and each one has its benefits.

(Diana): Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll say that retreat practice for me was a game-changer. It really made a big difference. To spend days in silence meditating, the heart and the mind open and settle in a way that I didn't even know was possible. And many of the meditation centers have yoga rooms where people go to practice yoga as a way to complement their sitting meditation. But yeah, I would say maybe it was retreat practice that was the having that experience. Does anybody else have a comment or question?

(Participant): It's a little mundane, but...

(Diana): Mundane is good.

(Participant): I ate dinner and I have food stuck in my teeth, and I just can't wait to go home and brush my teeth. And so I had that commentary really loud this entire night. It was, "I can't wait to go home and brush my teeth and floss." And it was just to kind of calm it down and sit with the discomfort of having food stuck in my teeth. That was my practice this evening.

(Diana): And what was the tone of this idea, "Oh, I want to go"? Was it like, "Okay, as soon as I'm done here, I'm going to go home and brush my teeth," or "My gosh, I can't wait to get home"?

(Participant): Yeah, there was a lot of tension within me, and it wasn't a very calm, "Okay, well this will be over soon and then we'll calmly go home and brush our teeth." No, it was like I was kind of restless in a way.

(Diana): And do you have a sense of, this wish to want to go home and brush your teeth, how did that feel in the body, that wish to go home?

(Participant): I guess the most I can comment on that is just, I felt like getting up, the urge to get up and... not necessarily leave, I think I had enough self-possession to still sit down, but there did feel a little bit of a wanting to just get up and... "Let's, maybe there's something in the bathroom there, in the meditation hall."

(Diana): Excellent. I love it. I love that when I asked you this question, you knew. And so this turns out, you know, earlier I said that we could just notice anything. And so if what's happening is, "I can't wait to get out of here," we can just notice that. And often this kind of restlessness does show up in our arms or in our legs. And there's a sense of, "I want to move." And we can feel it in the body. It's fantastic that when I asked you, you had that sense, tuned into that. Thank you. Anybody else have a comment or question?

(Participant): This is a little bit off-topic, but I too watched the Olympic trials. Fabulous. Those girls, they're just amazing. But I was watching them, and they were totally concentrating on what they were doing. They didn't care about the commentary that was going on. I don't even know if they could hear the commentary, but they were just really concentrating on just doing that bar routine or that, you know, doing it correctly. And I love that.

(Diana): They couldn't have heard the commentary. That was for us as spectators, as television watchers.

(Participant): I don't know, it just struck a chord.

(Diana): And I would say this is partly why we like to watch athletics or dance or performance, is because we can tell when somebody is really in the zone, so to speak. And there's something about watching other humans do that that is pleasant or, I don't know what it is exactly, but I think what you're pointing to is something that's integral to being a world-class athlete. And also part of what makes it enjoyable to watch.

(Participant): I just had something I noticed, which I don't know if it's significant or not, but I noticed I was speaking in the plural sometimes when I had my commentary, like, "Let's get back to our breath," as if there are two different entities. And I just wasn't sure if that's common or significant in any way, as opposed to being somehow integrated.

(Diana): Well, I'll just ask you. So, was there a sense of more than one person, or sometimes there's kind of the royal we, where an individual will use the plural as a more formal or elevated way of speech?

(Participant): I'm not really sure, actually. It was something I noticed.

(Diana): And what was the tone? Was it like, "Come on, sweetheart, let's get back to our breath," or was it like, "Get back to the breath!"?

(Participant): More... not quite the whipping, but in that direction.

(Diana): Yeah. So, I don't know if I've had this plural thing, but you know, all of us are so different in how our minds are. I certainly wouldn't be concerned about it or worried about it or something like that. So yeah, just have some curiosity about it.

Okay, so next week we'll talk about emotions and how to bring mindfulness to them. They're an integral, important part of the human experience, but there's also something that can kind of hijack us and we feel like we're at the mercy of them. So next week, we'll talk about how can we bring some stability to our emotional life while also honoring and respecting our emotions. So we don't want to repress them, we don't want to pretend that they're not there, but how can we experience them without getting overwhelmed by them?

So thank you all for coming, and I'll see you next week. And if you'd like, you're welcome to come up here and ask me some questions. Thank you.