This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Relaxing Thinking; Introduction to Mindfulness (17 of 25) Physicality of Thinking. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing Thinking; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (17 of 25) Physicality of Thinking - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 06, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing Thinking

I welcome you on this second day of our exploration of thinking. In a way, it could be very helpful if you also welcome yourself. Meditation is a welcoming. You are welcome here to yourself.

One of the themes for today is that the mind is not just a mind, and the body is not just a body; these are deeply connected to each other. One of the analogies the Buddha uses for this connection is that the thinking mind is a puppeteer, and it has all these strings in the body, pulling on the muscles, pulling on the limbs. This is a way of speaking to the connection between thinking and sensations in the body, tensions in the body, and movements in the body. We can think one kind of thought, and it tugs on the belly in a certain kind of way, or activates it. If it's fear, maybe there's a hollow kind of tension in the belly. If there is a sense of warmth and love, it might be a suffusing feeling, maybe a feeling of warmth or vibration in the chest.

What we think, of course, is very connected to the emotions we feel. But for today, I'd like to emphasize the physicality—the physical activation, the physical expression, the physical impact that thinking has, and the physical source from which thinking arises.

Sometimes it just feels that thinking is disembodied, pervasive, or just coterminous with the universe. But as we settle down in meditation, often we can feel or sense that there's a location for where thinking is occurring. It might be a different location if we think in words or if we think in images. Where is the projector projecting the images? Where is the voice or the speaker system that's coming up with the words? Some people think more somatically, so it's already deeply connected to the body.

I will guide you through this a little bit. Hopefully, you can see and value the deep connection between thinking and the body, and discover that through that connection you can have an influence on the thinking mind. By relaxing the body, quieting, and gentling the different parts of your body that are activated, by settling and holding, you are able to be in relationship to an aspect of thinking that is not the content of the thoughts—the ideas, the stories, the images—but rather the physicality of that process.

Assume an aligned posture that allows you to be, in some way or other, a bit alert, even if lying down. Create the conditions in the body that let you feel and sense your body more fully, more globally, in an aligned way. Gently closing your eyes and taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing as you exhale.

And then to breathe normally, and continue on the exhale to relax. Maybe relaxing some of the common places—maybe not for you, but generally for people—where the puppeteer creates tension in the body as it thinks. Activation maybe around the eyes and the forehead. On the exhale, softening, relaxing there.

And the jaws, a very common area that thinking influences. The shoulders; if you can feel your shoulders and it's easy enough to relax them, please do. But if you just feel the tension and they don't relax, see if you can soften around the tension.

Some thoughts reach down into the chest, the heart area. Maybe a pulling, maybe a contraction, tightening. Relaxing the chest. Sometimes the whole arms are ever so slightly tensing up. Relaxing the arms. And then the belly.

And then, if it's easy enough, can you find the place in your body from which thinking occurs? The projector, the speaker. It might be a wide area, but maybe it doesn't include your feet and your fingers. Maybe it's above the waist. Maybe it's generally above the neck. Maybe it's behind your forehead, or wherever the thinking mind, the thinking activity, seems to be centered. On the exhale, relax.

And then centering yourself on your breathing. Maybe remembering to relax by relaxing with every exhale, feeling every inhale. If you find yourself pulled into the world of thinking so you lose touch with your breathing, or if thinking seems quite strong even if you're aware of breathing, find where there might be some tension in the body connected to those thoughts. In a sense, take a three-breath journey. Every exhale, for three breaths, relax that part where the tension is, and then begin again with your breathing.

If you find yourself thinking, relax. Relax the whole body. If you find yourself thinking but cannot find some place in the body to relax, see if you can soften or open up beyond the edges of your thoughts.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, take three breaths. With the exhale, relax as widely in your body as is easy. Relax. Soften. And then take three more breaths relaxing the mind, the thinking mind. Perhaps imagining the thinking mind is spreading out beyond the edges of thought, beyond the edges of your body. A softening and opening, emptying.

And then feeling or awakening inside of you, in your mind, your thoughts, your heart, your body, the kind of openness, the kind of softness through which kindness travels. Goodwill¹. Through which simple care, ordinary care of others, caring about them, caring for them, doing them a simple act of care like putting on a bandage or offering them some tea at a time when they're maybe a bit stressed. Imagining that that form of kindness or care can spread out in all directions from you to the people close to you, neighbors, people in your communities, out across the lands.

And wishing, maybe by repeating my words and relaxing into the meaning of the words, wishing: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may each of us, the 400-plus people who are here today, use our capacity for care and goodwill to care for at least two people today in small ways. Tea, a bandage, do something. So something doubles here today out of this community, goodness out into the world.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (17 of 25) Physicality of Thinking

Hello and welcome to this second day on instructions for mindfulness of thinking².

One of the invaluable ways of getting a handle on thinking so that it doesn't pull us, so we do not get swept away in the currents of thought, the river of thoughts, the train cars of thoughts—the image that's sometimes given of thinking is that we're standing at a train crossing watching a whole bunch of trains go by. At some point, we find ourselves on the train, and we've been on it for a long time and didn't know it. These thoughts will come, and the idea is just to let them go. Let them come and go. Don't get on the train. Don't get involved in the train.

One of the ways that can support this, while still clearly knowing that the trains are coming and going without getting on, is to feel the body. To be well connected to your body. The body is always in the present moment, and the body is itself not exactly a thought. However, the body is influenced by the thoughts that we have.

If the thoughts are very mild, soft, and wispy, maybe we don't feel any connection to the body too much or at all. At that point, we don't really need to, because it's easy to let go of the thoughts. It's easy to stay with the breathing and stay in the present moment. But if it's hard to stay in the present, if it's hard to stay riding the in-breath and out-breath over time because we get swept away in the trains of thought, then we need some help in practice.

One of the principles of mindfulness practice is that everything is food for mindfulness. Everything is something that we can turn to and be aware of. We want to learn how to be mindful of thinking so that we're standing on the ground watching the train go by, and clearly know we're on the ground. We feel the stability and the strength of that, and just kind of know, "That's the train, okay. We don't have to get involved. We can just let it be the train."

One of the ways to be present for thinking is to be aware that thinking is more than just the thoughts we have or the images we have. Those are often what we get entangled with. We want to feel the connection that thinking has with the body, and then you're part of the ecology of thoughts. Some thoughts clearly trigger tension in the body, a tightening in the body.

I find it fascinating to sit in meditation quietly and feel some modicum of a relaxed body and presence, and then some kind of really exciting or troubling thought arises in the mind, and immediately it triggers something in the body. It tightens it. The belly tightens, or there's a place that gets all hot, or the activated part of the body moves up into the head. We start feeling what is activated, whether it's tension, or what some people call energy, or what some people say is where the focus of attention really wants to go and be centered. You want to notice what the physical correlate is with thinking.

If there's tension that's connected, you could do one of two things. You could relax, just soften if possible. A more developed form of mindfulness is not to relax, but to bring your attention into the place of tension, into the place of activation, and feel your way to what wants to happen there. You can ask a question: "What does this tension want?" Or if it's an activated feeling of heat or agitation, "What does that want?"

You might feel with tension, "Oh, it wants to relax." Sometimes with an activated place, the feeling can be, "Oh, it wants space. It wants space to spread out into." If you feel those physical sensations and what they want, or the direction they're going, or the sense of where they would go if they were left alone and given room, give them that room. If they want to relax, make room for them to relax. If some fear in the heart is more like a vibrating, tingling agitation and you feel that what it most wants to do is become spread out and have room to be agitated, make room for it. Kind of relax around it, and you might discover that that helps it relax, that helps it dissipate. It's not so concentrated. Eventually, it might actually dissipate entirely by just kind of spreading outward.

Occasionally it might feel like the whole body is activated. An interesting way of practicing with this is not to spend a lot of time being mindful of some kind of thinking that's captivated you. Find where there's some tension in your body, find where the activation in the body is. Relax it, make room for it, or just feel it for a while. But experiment with doing this for just three breaths, kind of like a three-breath journey. You might even count as you go along. There's something about the limited span of three breaths, knowing that's as long as you're going to do it. It's not open-ended, so it's easier for the mind to get focused. This is what you're doing. If it's open-ended, the mind is not quite committed.

It might be long enough to do three breaths of being mindful of the thinking that way. Anything more has the danger of making us somehow interested, fascinated, engaged, or reactive to the thinking, like we're trying to get rid of it. The odd thing about thoughts is that even being bothered by them, even wanting to get rid of them, is fueling them. It gives them more energy. Being bothered by thoughts is food for more thinking. So just do three breaths, and then settle yourself back on the breathing again. It's like you've done your task to be mindful of thinking, to see what's going on, and maybe that's enough to acknowledge it with three breaths, relaxing for three breaths, and then begin again with your breathing.

If the same kind of thinking arises again or seems to be predominant again, then do the same process, but maybe don't spend more than three breaths with it. If you have really stable mindfulness, then maybe you can stay with the experience longer. But see if three breaths is long enough to acknowledge it well enough that it takes away some of the fuel for that kind of thinking, some of the fascination with it or interest in it.

Part of this physical mindfulness of thinking is to feel the location where thinking is arising. It might be somewhere behind the eyes or somewhere in the middle of the head. I've had different places at different times, but often it's the upper half of the head for me if I'm caught up in thoughts. Sometimes in the back of the head, sometimes in the middle, sometimes near the front between the ears. Sometimes it's not so clear exactly where it is, but it's kind of a vague, generalized area someplace in the head. Some people might feel it in their heart, in their chest. Some people might feel it someplace else. If it's images we have, where's the projector? Where's the energy that's fueling the images appearing?

Find the location, and if it's not easy to find that, you don't have to keep trying. Maybe you have to wait for really first-class, high-powered anxious thoughts or angry thoughts before you can really feel, "Oh, that's where the center of gravity is. That's where I'm constricted or tight, and that seems to be projecting the thoughts."

Find the location of thinking and then do the three-breath relaxation there as well, or a three-breath opening. Sometimes just making lots of space for thoughts, making room around them, makes them dissipate, spread out, and get quiet. Sometimes I emphasize relaxing, but sometimes if we relax with aversion or as an engineering feat—like we have to do it right—there are all kinds of ways in which we actually are feeding the thoughts and giving them more energy. Sometimes just make space for the thinking and feel the physicality of the location. Maybe what it feels like it wants to do is just kind of spread out.

What happens with thinking is it doesn't disappear, but slowly it dissolves, it softens. As we settle and get quieter, the thinking becomes more wispy and softer. There's a classic teaching that I first heard in Zen, but I think it's in a lot of places in Buddhism, which refers to thoughts like a cloud in an endless sky. A drifting cloud has no more substance than a cloud; it's very light and floating. It might be easy just in that softness to softly rest the attention on the breathing and get absorbed in the sensations of breathing.

So the task for today, if you're interested, is to see how your body is activated by the kind of thinking you have throughout the day. There might be something that occurs as you go through the day that evokes a particular way of thinking. You're driving and someone cuts you off, and now you're activated by that. You have all these angry thoughts: "How could they?" And, "Oh, I'm now thinking furiously about that." Rather than continuing without paying attention, notice what's happened to your body with those thoughts. You get an email and there are new thoughts; notice what's happening to your body with that thinking and where you're tense. Make it a kind of a specialty: what is the connection between thinking and your body?

Thank you very much, and I look forward to continuing talking about thinking tomorrow.