This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Medt'n: Being Embodied; Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose (2/5): Embodying Transitions. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Medt'n: Being Embodied; Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose (2/5): Embodying Transitions

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 28, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good evening, good day. Hello. Nice to be with you all. Here we are again. Another day. And even those people in the future who are listening to this might even be some of you here now listening to it again. So, welcome, welcome, welcome everybody.

It's nice to be together, to be joining. It's fantastic, right? People around the planet coming together. I also want to say greetings or welcome to those people who aren't in the chat. Sometimes, you know, of course, the attention gets drawn to what's being written in the chat, but there's a lot of people who are just quietly sitting waiting for this to begin. So, greetings to you all as well.

So we will get started. Good morning, good afternoon, good day, good evening, whatever time it is where you are, wherever you are, welcome.

Today I'm continuing this series of practicing off the cushion on purpose as a way to support our meditation practice, support all these beautiful, wonderful teachings that have been happening on the 7 a.m. Here's some way we can bring it off the cushion and into our daily lives.

Guided Meditation: Being Embodied (link)

We'll start a guided meditation with arriving. Just arriving in this moment. Maybe there's a large exhale. You're here.

And is there a way that the body can let you know that you're here? Now let the mind take a rest. Here we're feeling into the bodily experience, bringing a sense of aliveness, a sense of presence to having a human body. And for all the cats and dogs out there that are listening with their companion humans, whatever body you find yourself in, just being inhabited.

Feeling points of contact with the sitting surface. Sit bones, feet, back.

For this meditation, we'll just set a simple intention of remaining embodied as best we can, gently and steadily.

Is there a way to notice how the weight of the body bears down on the sitting surface and there's a support we could say is bearing us up? Bearing down and being supported up. If that feels too cute or too complicated, just let it go.

Letting the parts of the body that are holding the body up be soft. Not too rigid, not too stiff, just enough to hold us up. Or if you're lying down, allowing some elongation in the spine and feeling that support through the whole back side of the body.

Maybe feeling the width across the collar bones. Allowing the shoulders to move back just a tiny bit, allowing the chest to be just a tiny bit more open. Shoulder blades are down the back. Allow the head to balance on the shoulders. Back of the neck long, not rigid, easy.

Letting the face be neutral, the jaw soft, the eyes soft.

And feel how the breath moves the body. A subtle lift with the in-breath and the settling on the out-breath.

Inhabiting the bodily experience of breathing.

When the mind wanders, we just very simply, gently begin again with the bodily experience of breathing.

Keeping the attention on being embodied, inhabiting the body with presence.

Maybe you would like to make a small adjustment in the posture. And you feel the new posture, the adjusted posture settle. Noticing what's present now. Experiencing the small.

The mind will try to convince you that thoughts are very important for this meditation. Can we stay embodied, letting the thoughts be in the background, the bodily experience in the foreground?

Okay, thank you. Thank you for this practice. Maybe staying embodied. If you do a bow, that experience of bowing. Maybe bringing a little bit of movement into the body, just feeling how that feels. Just because we stopped meditating doesn't mean we have to stop the embodiment.

Dharmette; Practicing Off the Cushion, On Purpose (2/5): Embodying Transitions (link)

Okay. So, welcome, welcome to those of you I didn't say welcome to during or before the guided meditation.

I'm continuing the series on practicing off the cushion on purpose with this intention of recognizing that practice, of course, isn't only about taking a meditation posture or following items in a list or something like this. It's about our relationship to experience. And it just happens that we can really discover and explore and experiment and play with our relationship to experience most easily when we're quiet and in a meditation posture. So we could say that mindfulness and concentration is really about just helping us to be embodied so that then we can notice our relationship to experience. Is there clinging? Is there aversion? Etc., etc. And instead, can we just be with the experience, the reality of the moment, if you will.

So the theme this week is about just the ordinary places, the ordinary experiences that fill our lives. Small tasks, ordinary activities, our relationships with others. And is there a way that we can be present for them, for those experiences that are happening off the cushion, so that we don't end up kind of like separating on the cushion is the real practice and off the cushion, oh, that doesn't matter. We can do whatever we want. There's this way that maybe we aren't making that distinct separation, but we feel like, oh, I don't have time to meditate, therefore I can't practice.

And partly this series is about, no, you can practice any time with no extra time. None, zero extra time. Also to have a support for if you are having a meditation practice, a sitting meditation practice. So yesterday I talked about curating our attention. This idea about being intentional about the sense inputs we have throughout the day and choosing those sense inputs, choosing our attention that support mindfulness, support concentration, support the life we would like to have. And today I'd like to continue this idea of practicing off the cushion on purpose with a suggestion, an encouragement, an invitation to be mindful, have these moments of mindfulness that are sprinkled throughout the day, no matter what we're doing.

And that is, it can be helpful to place reminders in the day where we check in with experience. And what I mean by that, check in with experience, is to be embodied. So to come out of the thought world, interrupt the thought world and be present for the bodily direct experience, the sensations right now. Not thinking about experience, feeling, inhabiting experience. Keeping it sensory, in factual sensations in the body, pressure on the bottom of the feet, on the buttocks if one is sitting. The posture, what does it feel like? The posture, are the shoulders up or are they down? The experience of moving, what does the body feel like as it moves?

So this idea of the sprinkling throughout the day of just becoming embodied, because there's this way what we do on the cushion, we can do off the cushion as well. When we're meditating on the cushion in a meditation posture, maybe we might think of this as more formal practice. When we discover we are lost in thought, we just simply bring attention back to the anchor. This is what we're doing on the cushion. And then I'd like to suggest that off the cushion we can do the same thing. When we discover that we are lost in thought, completely in a different time and place, we just bring attention back to the anchor. And in this case, I'm saying that the anchor can be the bodily experience.

So we might say we're going to sprinkle mindfulness bells, so to speak, throughout the day in which we interrupt our story-making mind and the fantasies and the distractions. It's amazing, right, what our minds can do. Beautiful, helpful, the minds are amazing things, but we also can, they are the source of suffering and also they can be a source of just becoming more present.

So with mindfulness bells throughout the day, we can interrupt some of the unhelpful thinking that's happening and return to our direct experience. So what are these mindfulness bells? I would like to suggest changing posture, changing positions, going from sitting to standing, going from standing to sitting. How often do we do this throughout the day?

At the end of this meditation session, going from sitting to standing, feeling as the weight rolls forward and the pressure on the buttocks and the back of the legs shifts and the weight goes to the bottom of the feet as we stand. And maybe there's a stretching of the legs as they lengthen out. Just taking no extra time, just feeling this transition. Or the transition from standing to sitting, the knees bending and the weight is transferred from the feet to the chair.

So this mindful changing of posture that's repeated throughout the day, that stitches the day together with mindfulness, sprinkles the day with mindfulness. And the more and more the mind gets accustomed to coming back to the anchor, the mind gets accustomed to prioritizing embodiment, and we're more present for our lives. We're able to be here with what's actually happening instead of being, you know, lost in thought.

And I have to say that in just in general, it's a training to learn how to be present in the body, right? You know, I was trained as a scientist. Being in the body was not anything that I thought was important. In fact, I probably spent, you know, all of my time never doing this. And it has been a definitely a training.

So there's this way in which we can think that meditation practice is about like disconnecting from the body and instead having these, you know, wonderful, fantastic meditation experiences which are, you know, maybe I don't know, some weird, you know, different experiences. But it turns out we're actually not trying to have some exotic mental experience. This is what gets talked about because this is what's fun maybe or what sounds, you know, intriguing or something like this. But your life will unfold differently with more ease and spaciousness the more that we are embodied, the more we feel connected, rooted, and present. And the less some of the craziness that ends up in our minds ends up impacting the way that we're showing up in the world.

This is a process to learn how to become embodied, to be actually here for our life, including the unpleasant experiences. And there's a way in which we are so often distracting ourselves, right? We've created a society that really is all about how to distract ourselves. But this doesn't lead to more freedom. This doesn't lead to more ease. We think it's going to, to distract ourselves from whatever is uncomfortable or not what we wish. Does it match our preferences?

But with this being embodied, our transitions in posture is a way that supports this continuity of body awareness through all activities. These humble movements carry the practice, support the practice, support our being present here for our lives. These mundane, simple activities that we do again and again turn out to be a portal to tremendous freedom.

There are many people who don't have the opportunity to have a regular sitting practice. They don't have the time. Maybe they have kids that need to be taken care of, or maybe they have elder parents and kids that they're taking care of. Or maybe their life is just really full and they don't feel like they can carve out some time for meditation.

So just being embodied while we are transitioning from sitting to standing, standing to sitting. This simple practice, I promise you, can make a difference. I know a number of beautiful people have this really deep practice with a lot of freedom in their lives, and this has been their primary practice simply because they were busy raising a family, having jobs, and instead of feeling bad about, they couldn't have a regular meditation posture, they just folded embodiment into their lives. And this has made a tremendous difference in a way of being present with what is.

But it's not only about people that Diana knows. Of course, the Buddha encouraged this. Many of you will be familiar with this passage in the Satipatthana Sutta¹ where the instructions are, when walking, one knows I am walking. When standing, one knows I am standing. When sitting, one knows I am sitting. And then here's this last line that often gets glossed over, ignored. However one's body is disposed, one knows it.

So the Buddha is talking about these four postures, but he's also talking about whatever is happening. So I'm interpreting this as the movement that transitions between these postures. However one's body is disposed, one knows that. This is in the Satipatthana Sutta.

So not only is being embodied supportive for being here, there's also this subtle uplift that happens when we're just embodied for our present. When we're being embodied for the present, for our experience, whatever, whether, sorry, that experience is pleasant or unpleasant, there's this way that being present, being embodied helps to dismantle the self's obsession with, you know, bolstering itself and separating itself for us versus them. But instead, there's this space that gets opened up that allows for acceptance and joy. Or maybe joy is too strong of a word. Acceptance, allowing some well-being, some contentment in the unfolding of each moment just as it is.

So practice, bring embodiment to this transitioning from postures, from sitting to standing, from standing to sitting, and stay with the simplicity and the immediacy of the experience. Just get to know the shifting of the weight, the stretching out and the folding up or bending of the legs. Something simple. The mind will protest, and maybe it's protesting right now, saying that, oh no, we have to get to the next thing. I have to figure things out. I have to solve problems. I have to do all this kind of thing. The mind is beautiful. It does do these things. But this is a practice that we can just incorporate, sprinkled throughout the day, into our daily lives without anything extra.

So I'd like to offer one other way we can just do this transitioning, embodying while transitioning postures. We can also do it transitioning from one space to another, one physical space to another while walking from one room to another room. As you cross the threshold of the door, just notice, feel the feeling of the clothing moving against the body, the pressure on the bottom of the feet, the arms moving, just for what is that one second as you go through the threshold of a doorway or go in the car. Just this experience of sitting in the car and then getting out of the car, something like this.

So staying with the body as life moves steadies the day and it reduces reactivity. It interrupts all the mind stories we can be making and lets the next moment unfold with more presence and ease. And our day, our life unfolds with more spaciousness and ease.

So embodying transitions from sitting to standing, standing to sitting, sitting to lying down, lying down to sitting up, transitioning from one room to the next, outside the car into the car. Just sprinkle this into your day as a way to practice off the cushion on purpose.

Thank you. Thank you. Wishing you all a wonderful day of practicing off the cushion on purpose.