This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation with Gil Fronsdal (5 of 5) Sitting Well and Doing Nothing. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation, Class 5-Sit Well and Do Nothing - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 13, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation, Class 5-Sit Well and Do Nothing

Good evening, everyone. I apologize that I came late. I went for a hike with my wife, had dinner with her, and then settled down on the couch for a quiet evening at home until Nina called me. I completely forgot. It is out of my habit to come down here, so I forgot. But what a gift to come down here and have you all sitting so quietly. I realized I wasn't needed. To be able to hear Nina offering the instructions was one of the best gifts of the day. What a great thing. I should come late more often.

It was really nice for me. You were sitting so quietly that I didn't know whether I should even ring the bell. I thought maybe we should just sit the whole time. Some of you probably haven't sat for a long time. I think the longest I ever sat and meditated without moving was six hours. Five hours, probably. That is likely a little too early for you guys.

Sit Well and Do Nothing

This is the last week of this five-week intro class, and I want to offer you, a little bit provocatively and a little bit seriously, the most profound way these instructions can be given. It is very simple. It can be said in five words: Sit well and do nothing.

"Sit well" means that whatever posture you are going to meditate in—it could be lying down if that is what you need to do, standing, or walking—go into that posture with some intention. What you don't want to do is take a meditation posture that is non-intentional, where the intention is just to be a "couch potato." It is a posture you want to inhabit so the whole posture somehow expresses attention. That is the main doing.

Then, do nothing. You have to wait for the fifth week to hear that. Do nothing with attention, with awareness. You don't have to say "being aware" because if you really know how to do nothing, you are left with being aware. Being aware is a natural capacity of the human mind.

If I got really serious here and told you, "What you have to do is stop being aware. Just cut it out," you would probably pull out your phone or something. What are you going to do? How are you going to stop being aware? Is there a button you can push to make it go off? Maybe some of you are smart and will figure out, "Well, I'll just get lost in thought. Then I am no longer present. Maybe that is not being aware."

The point is, it is hard to stop being aware. It is a natural capacity. You have to do something to override it. One of those things is spinning out with a lot of thinking. A lot of it is to react for and against, to fight what is going on, or to want more of what is going on in such a way that you get lost in the drama of it all.

But if you don't do anything—if you drop being for your experience, drop being against your experience, stop trying to accept what is happening at the same time as not rejecting what is happening—just be there and be aware. Just be there and do nothing. You will be aware, and that makes a world of difference.

Who you are when you are really aware, really present for what is happening with some clarity, is almost like a different person than when you are not aware. Your body, when you are aware of your body, is almost like a different body than when you are checked out. It is the same with your heart and your emotions. It is a world of difference between the two. Maybe that is not obvious in the beginning because, initially, meditators bring along a lot of their "doing"—a lot of their judgments, preoccupations, shoulds, and shouldn'ts. It is complex. It is not just being aware; it is not just doing nothing. We do a lot.

But in this teaching of doing nothing, it is an encouragement for you not to be reactive to what happens when you meditate. You have all kinds of things that happen to you when you meditate. Over a lifetime of meditation, you want to be able to meet all of your life, all of who you are. The point of meditation is not just to have a good experience, not just to be calm and stress-free. The bigger, wiser point is to know how to be present for anything that life gives you—to be present for anything that you give yourself.

There are always ups and downs in life. There is no way around that. But you don't have to avoid it, and you don't have to be fighting it. You don't have to despair around it and collapse under the weight of it. You can just learn to be present, and it makes a world of difference. So, what we are learning in this meditation practice is how to bring a very clear, clean awareness to the present moment for whatever it brings us, and to learn how little you need to do except to be aware.

It is kind of unusual. Most people are doing things. Most people who give instructions, like I did for the first four weeks of this course, are telling you what to do. It is very hard not to tell people what to do, or not to want to be told what to do. It seems like doing nothing doesn't do you any good. But it does a world of good. It brings us back.

That is what we do on vacation. People go and do nothing. Some people really do nothing; they lie on the beach and look at the waves coming and going. Something settles, something relaxes, something eases up. The stresses of daily life are forgotten, and it feels like you are coming back into homeostasis. You are not the doer of it so much. Some people go on vacation and really work hard at de-stressing; they do something exciting or difficult to forget their problems. But the people who do nothing sometimes come into homeostasis quicker than the people who are doing a lot of fun things. Some people have to recover from their vacation.

To do nothing is like having fallow time, having a Sabbath, having something that recharges you from the inside out, coming back into more of a natural state. Our whole system wants to settle into a state where it is not always active, not always doing, fighting, fantasizing, thinking, planning, remembering, or having arguments in the head. The whole system is designed to bring you into a calm, aware state so you can be in this world attentive and aware in a good way.

I think we were designed for this in ancient Africa, our original mother continent. We had to live outdoors. We had to hunt, gather, or pay attention. We had to have all our senses awake to be able to live in the natural world, kind of like an animal. There was no Instagram, Facebook, or Netflix. There was just the sunset, the grasslands, the lions, and the people that were there. To have a successful life, you had to be in homeostasis where your awareness was really awake. Your awareness cannot be awake and fully there if you are stressed, tense, anxious, or preoccupied.

We have a society where people are paid a tremendous amount of money to figure out ways to distract you, to get your attention, to pull your attention into advertisements, the news, politics, and arguments. We fall for it. But we are designed to be awake, and being awake doesn't require doing anything. Then we live in a different way.

So that is the radical and provocative instruction: Sit well and do nothing.

One Thing at a Time

Because that is hard to do sometimes, we say more. Another way of saying this in our mindfulness tradition—and the way I was taught when I started—was also very simple, but I misunderstood. I was told: Sit well and pay attention to everything.

I was in this anarchistic "dog patch" monastery outside of Bangkok where I was taught this. I was in a one-room meditation cabin with a little bed and a little deck on stilts because it was built on a swamp. I was told to go there and meditate all day long. Once a day, I had to go see the abbot to get more instructions.

I did this "pay attention to everything" for a few days, and then I went to the abbot and said, "You know, I got these instructions, and I'm smart enough to know that I shouldn't pay attention to everything. I can't pay attention to everything that is happening all at once. So, I narrowed it down and tried to listen to every sound in the noisy monastery. I was chasing all the sounds to catch them, to be there for them, and I just kept getting a headache."

The abbot said, "No, no, Gil, you don't understand. Yes, you pay attention to everything, but only one thing at a time."

"Oh," I thought, "that is why you are always so calm." He was a very calm man because whatever he was doing, whatever had his attention, he was just being there with that in a calm, open, and clear way. It was like, "I am with this, doing nothing but being aware." In that simple awareness, he could see what was happening more clearly, know himself more clearly, and know his relationship to what he had to do. There was a kind of grace in how he did things because he was so well attuned and present for what was going on.

That was a turning point for me: this idea of calmly paying attention to only one thing at a time. But I also loved that we were supposed to pay attention to everything.

I had already been a longtime Zen practitioner before I went to Thailand to learn this practice. In Zen, in terms of what you do with attention, a lot of it was just: "Stay with your breath." If your mind goes away, come back to the breath. If you are angry—we don't say don't do anything about your anger—just go back to your breath. Ignore it. "But I don't like it." Go back to your breath. Everything was the breath. So I didn't learn anything about how to be aware of my emotions. I didn't learn how to be aware of my thinking. I learned nothing about really being aware of my body in a wise way. Just like in Zen, you had to sit really still for a long time and not move. So there was a lot of physical pain, but you were supposed to ignore it. A lot of Zen students injured themselves that way because if you sit with pain too much, it is not so good.

When I came to Vipassana¹, there was this idea that, yes, pay attention to one thing at a time, but whatever is strong, whatever is compelling, whatever is important—let that be what you pay attention to.

So if it is an emotion, emotions can be respected and honored; they are important. Really be present for those. If there is pain in the body, be present for it. What I learned in Vipassana that I didn't learn in Zen was that if I paid very careful attention to my pain, I could tell the difference between pain which was fine to have and pain which was injurious. In Vipassana, we are allowed to move. So if I was going to be injured, I would change my posture. If I didn't think I was going to be injured, then I would check my mind: "Is my morale good? Is my enthusiasm for sitting with pain good today? Yeah, today it is pretty good because I want to learn about my reactivity. I want to learn about how I hate my pain and all these second arrows I add to having pain. Today is a good day to learn that." Or, "Nope, I don't want to learn this at all. I better change my posture."

The Field of Practice

Everything is the field of practice. What I learned in Vipassana was systematically first to learn how to be with the breath, then learning to be with the body, emotions, and then thoughts. That is a sequence that we followed here until we came to the end, where the instructions are: "Now you are ready to begin being aware of everything."

These four areas encompass the ways that our senses pick up the primary aspects of our life:

• Body: All your senses—hearing, eyes, tactile senses, smell, taste.
• Emotions: All your moods, attitudes, and inner states of mind and heart.
• Thoughts: The whole cognitive world you have.

Everything that you experience in the world around you is through those doors—through the senses, your reactions, memories, thoughts, associations, and emotions. So, it is an all-encompassing way to be present for the ways in which we directly experience the world. We want to do that with a kind of intimacy—an aware intimacy.

It is very good to stay with the breathing. For most people, breathing is settling and calming. It gathers you together. It quiets a thinking mind. But then if something becomes more compelling, we leave the breath and calmly become aware of that one thing.

• If it is body sensations that are strong, we are calmly aware of that.
• If it is emotions, we are calmly aware of that.
• If it is the thinking mind which is strong, we learn how to calmly be aware of that.

By doing that, you begin learning the art of being aware of everything—or doing nothing. Doing nothing because you don't have to go chasing your experience like I did in that first experience in the monastery. Reality will come to you. You will have sensations. You will have thoughts. You will have feelings. Things will occur. You don't have to go looking for it. If you are sitting grounded in the present moment, different things come, and you get to learn about your reactivity and your judgments. You see what is going on for yourself more clearly and learn all the extra things you add that are not needed to be happy.

It is remarkable how happy we can become for no reason. How happy we can become if we come back to homeostasis, to a balanced state where we are just breathing and present in a very clear, full way, without dragging ourselves down with blame, shame, criticism, feelings of lack, or feeling wrong. If we don't overactivate ourselves with anger, hostility, restlessness, and desires, it is remarkable how, just sitting quietly, there can bubble up a sense of well-being that is there because we are sitting in balance. We are sitting without being in conflict with anything. We are sitting without being bored by anything, because boredom is a complicated activity of the mind.

Guided Meditation

So that was a long little talk. I apologize. Let's try it. I will guide you through this idea.

Assume a meditation posture that, for you, in your way, is a posture of attentiveness. A posture that you would have if you wanted to have a balanced, upright physical manifestation of being attentive, being here, being present. Sometimes by taking a careful and intentional posture, immediately the body begins to become more felt; you are more aware of the body—a place that many people are disconnected from with all the screen time.

Gently closing your eyes, and for a few moments, do nothing but be aware without any idea of what it is supposed to be like or what you are supposed to be aware of. Just trust for a few moments. Just take in your present moment experience.

And then, in the middle of it all, become aware of your breathing. Breathing is one of those things that just happens on its own often enough. Let yourself become connected to the body's experience of breathing. As you exhale, relax your body. As you exhale, maybe allow your thoughts to glide away, fall off.

Breathing can be your friend in meditation. The closer you can spend with the breathing, the less time you will spend wandering off in thought.

Then find the strongest sensation in your body that is comfortable enough to be aware of. It may be accompanied by the rhythm of breathing. Breathing with those sensations, breathing through them. Allow yourself to become calmly aware of the body sensation.

Maybe spending three more breaths with the sensations in your body. And then returning to just the breathing, centering yourself in the middle of where breathing is most clear for you.

And then becoming aware of whatever emotion, mood, or attitude there might be for you. To be calmly aware of it, maybe where it is in the body, so you feel the emotional expression. If you like, you can bring your breathing along, so it is a little bit easier to stay present for your emotional state. Breathe with it, through it, knowing it simply without having to do anything about it.

And then returning to just breathing, centering yourself, steadying yourself on just breathing.

And then becoming aware of your thinking. Calmly be aware as if there is nothing wrong about thinking, nothing you have to do about it except be aware of it clearly. Maybe breathing with it or through it. The rhythm of breathing keeps you from participating in your thoughts. Instead of participating, just be aware.

And then coming back to breathing. This time, as you stay with the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out just for a few minutes here, see if all the rest of it can just be on the periphery. But in the middle of it all, breathing—an awareness that holds it all. Calmly aware of one thing at a time with no idea that any one thing is the right place to be aware. Everything is allowed. Maybe it is the loudest, strongest.

We will continue for just another two minutes.

(Silence)

And then to end the meditation, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, feeling your body. And when you are ready, you can open your eyes.

At first, it might seem like sitting well and doing nothing is nothing and has no value. But as you go through your life, you might discover how often this is useful. How often it is useful to take time to really be present and find out what is there, feel oneself, know oneself, and recognize what is going on. How wise it is not to be reactive. How wise it is not to jump to conclusions. How wise it is to really get under the surface of your life in some deeper way and to be able to experience your life without reactivity, fear, or upset.

Over time, you are able to do that in all kinds of different parts of your life. One of the reasons why it is very useful to meditate every day is to have a light commitment to sitting every day so you remove meditation from your preferences. Some people only meditate when they feel good. Some people only meditate when they feel lousy. But the idea is not to sit only when you are one way, but to sit in all the ways you are over the months and years. So you learn to see it all. All of who you are gets to be processed. It gets to be seen in this way that we learn how to see things in meditation and mindfulness, and it changes our relationship to so many different things in our world.

We discover a freedom in the middle of our life—a freedom with what is happening rather than needing anything to be different. That is kind of a superpower: to learn to be happy with a happiness that is not dependent on what is happening in the world. To learn how to be peaceful with a peace that can't be taken away by what is happening in the world, so that you are not at the beck and call or just reacting to the world all the time. You are finding a whole different source of what inspires you in your life that flows from within.

Questions and Answers

Student: The prompt to "do nothing" made me change a little bit of my usual practice, which is to kind of structure my meditation. I've come up with a way to do that in sitting, using some kind of an internal chant or a mantra. When I do that, I can keep awake. [Laughter] Because when I just did nothing, I actually started falling asleep. I was trying to figure out how to do nothing without succumbing to that. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Gil: That's a great question. sometimes if we are really tired or sleepy, sometimes we need to sleep. I think a lot of people in this country need sleep more than meditation. So, be sure to get enough sleep. But sleepiness and dullness is a normal part of what meditators have to work with sooner or later.

There are a few things you can do. You can sit up straighter; sometimes just that can be enough to get some energy. Some people open their eyes; just opening the eyes is enough to get just enough energy to stay awake.

Some people will use a technique like you said—you use the mantra, which was a little bit extra. What we do in mindfulness practice is we use what is called mental labeling or mental noting. It is using a single word to identify and recognize what is actually happening in the moment. So if I am breathing in, I would say "In." Breathing out, "Out." Hearing a sound, I'd say "Hearing." If there is an itch, "Itching." It is not so calming in the way that a mantra is calming, but it is a way of giving energy just to keep you alert and awake.

Generally, in our tradition, it is fine for you to do a mantra if it keeps you awake and keeps you going. But we usually don't teach mantras in our system here because a mantra is used more as a soothing, concentrating thing rather than developing more clear awareness. We rely more on that clear awareness, and so mental noting could get closer to that. Is this understandable?

Student: Yeah. The mantra for me has developed as a way to train... it is a way of actually associating a state of being... I feel like over time I've learned how to use that mantra. It is my own structure, but it helps me regulate better. If I have that kind of mantra... but I am actually more interested in learning that part of awareness that is not using a structure. I want to try to get away from that.

Gil: I started with a mantra, and it was hard to do this practice here without the mantra kicking in. It took a while to learn to do it. But I also learned that once I didn't need it anymore, I found it was useful to use it sometimes to keep me present, to get me going. It was like getting the engine going, and then once I got going, I could just drop it.

Student: I have two questions. The first one is very simple. Do you have to close your eyes, or is opening them okay? I heard you say maybe momentarily, but what if you kept them open the whole time? And number two, my house is loud sometimes. I have small kids, and so it is kind of hard to meditate when there are noises downstairs. Is there anything wrong with listening to something?

Gil: Good questions. In some schools of Buddhist meditation, they meditate with the eyes open. In the insight tradition that we are in, the encouragement is to do it with the eyes closed, but there are some teachers who teach with the eyes open. You are allowed to do either one. It is kind of what works for you and what helps you be present. Some people find that if they close their eyes, their mind wanders off in thought all too easily. Some people, if the eyes are open, see what needs to be done in the house and get distracted. So you kind of experiment and see. But as I said, if you are sleepy, sometimes that is a good thing to do. Both are fine.

In terms of a noisy house, you have two options: the pragmatic thing to do and the "pure" thing to do. It is best not to be a purist, but I want to give you both. The pragmatic thing is doing something like you said: earplugs, white noise. Do something so you don't get pulled in, especially at home if you have kids; you are so oriented towards them, it is hard not to get pulled into the sound.

The "pure" thing to do—our suggestion—is to not have any preferences. It is hard sitting there with all the noises in the house and the associations, the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts"—"Are they hurting themselves? Should I call an ambulance?" [Laughter] "Or the police?" But the idea is to really be present for that. Do nothing and see what is going on. It might be just doing sound meditation. It might be doing emotion meditation. Whatever seems to be the salient aspect of it, just learn to practice with what is.

That is the direction we are going in mindfulness: to learn how to practice with what is, not practice what we want it to be. Whether you are ready for that with the difficulties of the home life, you might need to work towards that. So in the meantime, use earplugs. But at some point, you want to... this practice here is not to shut out anything. We don't want to turn away from anything. It is just more things to be aware of and find our peace with whatever is happening in our life. That is the superpower.

Student: I was expecting when you suggested we listen to or notice the strongest sensation... I was expecting something different than what I felt, but I just felt really calm. So that was a strong sensation. I was pleasantly surprised. But I had a question for you. You said that boredom is a complicated activity of the mind.

Gil: Yes. Boredom is something the mind makes. Nothing in the universe is inherently boring. It is an interpretation of your mind.

Student: Could you say a little bit more about that?

Gil: Well, it involves an evaluation of the situation. It involves a certain level of aversion to something. We don't want it. We are deciding that this is not exciting for me. "I want to be excited. I want to be entertained. I want to get something out of this." There is all this other stuff we are adding into the evaluation. So boredom is something we add because the mind is actually active when it is bored. To the degree to which you are bored, to that degree, there is room in your mind to calm down. If you calm that part of the mind that is making up the boredom, you won't be bored.

Student: That's a lot to think about.

Gil: It is kind of like if you start scratching yourself and it is irritating. It kind of hurts. You know that this should go away, this should stop, I should go to the doctor. But it doesn't occur to me to stop doing it because it is so natural. So the boredom is a scratch. You are scratching something in your mind. You think that something is boring. You blame the reality. It is all in your mind. [Laughter]

Student: I like to be in pure darkness during meditation, and that is why I put my shirt as a blindfold. However, I am also kind of afraid of the darkness within my own heart and within other people, and it is causing distress even during meditation. I'm wondering, even despite working towards that meditation and working towards that awareness, is there a way not to be afraid of those fears?

Gil: It is fine to cover your eyes with something. Some people wear these beanie hats that they pull down over their eyes to make it darker. I think they find it a little less distracting.

But mindfulness practice is designed to help us encounter the fears we have—to encounter our inner darkness, our challenges. But it needs to be done with a lot of care, love, and patience. So one way we begin in our mindfulness tradition is: don't be in a hurry to go into the difficult places. Rather, maybe first start at the edges. At the outer edges is your fear of it.

This "doing nothing" can be said in many different ways. One way to say the same thing, but in a way that addresses fear, is: our job in meditation is to help our fear feel safe. Most people think they have to fix their fear, or it shouldn't be there. But fear is actually something that needs care and love. This ability to do nothing but be aware is a kind of love and care so the fear can relax and settle.

If the outer fear that you have quiets, then you can decide: "Now that I'm not afraid of the darkness, do I want to go closer to it? Or do I want to stand at a distance and just look at it? Or do I want to go talk to a friend about it?" You can decide what the wise thing might be to do with it.

I hope your fear feels safe in you. It is quite a powerful thing to help fear feel safe. The way many people treat their own fear, the fear doesn't feel welcomed. It feels like it is not wanted. But the fear is part of you. For part of you to feel it is not wanted by the other part of you sets up a kind of war. This idea of doing nothing starts becoming pretty radical because you are beginning to allow these things to all coexist. All of who you are starts feeling safe with you because you are not going to attack, you are not going to fix. You are just going to let it be there. It is kind of like you are becoming your best friend.

Hopefully, you have had a chance of being with a friend who was troubled and didn't want you to do anything. Occasionally friends have to tell each other, "Don't try to fix me. Don't tell me what to do. Just listen. Just be with me." It is profound to have someone who is just there to listen and do nothing but create a friendly, safe space. Mindfulness is learning to do that for yourself.

Student: Along the same line... sometimes I find myself, when I'm working with some difficult emotions—fear or something else—I find myself talking to myself during meditation. Is that okay to do?

Gil: You are the only one who is supposed to answer that question. The approach in our school of Buddhism is: do what is useful for you, what is helpful.

I don't know what the difficulties are. It could be that talking to yourself is better than the alternative. It could be that if you just try to use the awareness practice, the results are not so good. So it might be good for you to experiment. It might be that you are doing it too much and it is interfering with your ability to really see what is happening more deeply. The better thing to do might be to stop talking to yourself—maybe you are soothing yourself or reassuring yourself—so you can really be present for how things really are. Maybe they are more difficult than you thought. But then learn the art of being present for that and not react, not add second arrows, not judge, not try to fix. Everything in the inner life wants to feel safe in us. What is it that can feel safe in you? What can you offer there so something can settle and unfold or relax?

Student: Yes, it's very helpful because my sense is that it can be used as a bridge to help the difficult emotion to settle, and then it'll be easier to be aware.

Gil: Yeah. So if it is a bridge, it is great. Also, it is very interesting to talk to yourself because talking to yourself is usually different than just thinking. One thing I suggest sometimes—and I do it sometimes if I'm having some real challenge in my life—is I'll actually talk to myself out loud because I think that talking uses a different part of the brain than just thinking. I have more clarity sometimes if I'm talking about it. If I'm thinking about it, I just kind of spin in circles and think the same thing over and over.

Student: I wanted to ask whether there's a difference between allowing a fear to take residence inside you and welcoming a fear.

Gil: That's a really good question, and my preferred answer is for you to answer that for yourself. Again, what we are learning here is to learn how to be aware. This "doing nothing" is not so passive actually; you are learning to be present. In being present, you start seeing the difference—if there is a difference—between those two. You might discover that in certain circumstances, welcoming is the better thing to do, and other times it is better just to allow. Maybe for some people welcoming is too active; allowing is more peaceful. Or maybe sometimes welcoming is what is most needed because "I really hate this part of myself," and so I need to not just be allowing, I need to say, "Come closer, let me see you, let me find out what is going on."

Student: I came the first night in person, and then I listened via Zoom for the others. Tonight I had it all planned to come, but I knew I was going to have to listen via Zoom for part of my journey... I turned on Zoom at 7 o'clock and there was nothing for 15 or 20 minutes. I kept thinking, "What should I do?" [Laughter] And then I decided I was just going to stop clinging to the expectation that there was going to be a class right on time and to just go with the flow. I confess, Gil, that at one point I thought you might be doing this on purpose... in a sort of Zen way. [Laughter]

Gil: Retrospectively, I think it would have been good to have done it on purpose. [Laughter] But I didn't have that foresight.

Student: Anyway, I also had to let go of my own expectation of myself that it's not okay to be late. But one of the reasons I wanted to be sure to come is I did want to ask you... what comes up for me with all this practice is that I'm a very physically active person—athletic, biking, dance. When I'm sitting that long, I start feeling like this isn't good for me. I've taught in the health field. So, how did you resolve that kind of thing?

Gil: I don't think I ever had the challenge with it, but maybe because I first sat in Zen, and it is actually a yogic posture. It is a posture that lets your whole system come into balance, into kind of homeostasis. It kind of frees the energy in the body, and it all just flows and moves. There is so much freedom in the inner sensations, freedom in the flow of energy in the body that comes from meditation if you sit well and really get settled and present. I think it is really healthy. You feel the health coursing through your body.

But since you are an athlete, you might be really careful and get yourself into a really good posture—a yogic posture, even full lotus [Laughter]. Really upright, with your chest open, and it will be good.

Student: But when you talked earlier about how you started to learn how to distinguish between bad pain and "okay" pain... I guess I'm still learning that.

Gil: So if you are unsure, then change your posture. Err on the side of being careful.

What happens with people who do a lot of exercise and physical movement is that they get used to the serotonins, the chemicals. The idea of being alive is kind of like the caffeine of the soul—the caffeine of exercise and doing. For some people, these things keep us feeling engaged and give us a sense of purpose. When we sit down and do nothing, all that is challenged. Sometimes it screams inside, "I have to do something! This doesn't count! I won't feel alive!"

It is possible that you continue with your physical work and exercise, but you might have a whole other layer of learning to come from really sitting still. But you might have to go through a withdrawal period.

Student: I'm a wannabe ballerina... movement was extremely important and sitting all the time is very difficult. So what about walking meditation?

Gil: Walking meditation is very good. There are two primary postures we use for meditation in our tradition: sitting meditation and walking meditation. When we are on retreats, we alternate between the two of them. Walking meditation is a powerful practice. For some people, it works better than sitting meditation. I would try it.

But I still think it is very important to learn how to sit still. There is a whole level of freedom that can come from that. If you have been a dancer, see sitting still as the dance, and see if you approach it that way, that maybe something inside of you comes alive in that posture.

Student: I find it very fascinating and beautiful how we have this progression that was taught... to start with the breath, then learn about the body, and then include emotions and the thinking. I've been meditating with this for a while every day. But what I find is that I can't stay with the breath very long. Typically after like two or three breaths, I forget about the breathing. The breath works as a home base, but I can't really stay with it. How important is it to kind of develop the concentration on the breath?

Gil: For you, it is very important to stay with the breath for two or three breaths... and then do it again. [Laughter] But don't be more ambitious in that. Don't try to hang on there. Do it your way so that you relax and something settles. Your way is good. Two or three breaths is enough. Just keep doing it, coming back and repeating it over and over again.

Thank you all. Insight Meditation Center is set up to be a relaxed place, hopefully, to come and go as you wish. We don't lock the doors when we start a program. So if people come late, it is fine to come late. It is fine to leave early. We realize that in an urban setting like this, it is hard to get here. We have full lives, and so we just want to make it easy to come and go.

We can do that in our tradition because, in one of the principles of this mindfulness practice of doing nothing and just being aware, there are no distractions. It is just something else to be aware of. So it is okay if people are late and they are making noise because we fold it into our meditation. Everything gets folded in.

Thank you.