This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Naming Emotions; Introduction to Mindfulness (11 of 25) Recognizing Emotions. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Naming Emotions; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (11 of 25) Recognizing Emotions - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 29, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Naming Emotions

Hello everyone and welcome to this meditation session. The session is connected to the five-week Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation series I am doing. With that in mind, the theme for this week will be mindfulness of emotions.

For the first meditation related to this, I would like to keep it really simple and start with an analogy. If you are going to cross a field—which I did recently—that is muddy, marshy, and easy to get deeply stuck in, it is slow going. You get sucked into the mud and have to pull your feet out over and over again. It is hard going.

But then you discover that right there in the field, there are stepping stones. If you just step from one stepping stone to another, there is no getting stuck in the mud, and it is easy going. The mud is still there; in fact, now the field looks more beautiful and has its own dignity and value. You are not getting stuck in it, so it is nice to walk, observe, and be with it, stepping from one stone to another where you are free of the mud.

In the same way, emotions are very important for mindfulness meditation. From the point of view of mindfulness, there is no wrong emotion to have, and there is no condemning of an emotion. What we are trying to do is not have judgment about an emotion, but trying not to "get stuck in the mud." It is possible to get stuck in both pleasant and unpleasant emotions. With the pleasant ones, we often don't recognize that we are stuck because it is so nice. The idea in mindfulness meditation is to learn how to respect the dignity, value, and circumstances of every emotion we have while walking on the stepping stones—walking in a place where we don't get stuck, where it is firm, dry, and supportive.

I would like to offer one way that you can experiment with this. In this meditation, if it works for you, let breathing be the center, riding the inhales and exhales and staying close to them. But when there is an emotion present, the stepping stone is to clearly label or note the emotion from dry land—from a place where you are not stuck.

It could be a verbal note: "joy," "sadness," "annoyance," "peace," "calm," whatever it might be. See if you can find a way to be aware of the emotion from a place where you are on a stepping stone, where you are not being pulled into it, participating in it, feeding it with stories and reactions, or being overwhelmed by it. Find a way to say that mental note. It is also possible to have a nonverbal note; it doesn't necessarily have to be words, just a clear recognition of the emotion that is there. In that recognition, we are on a stepping stone; we are seeing the terrain but not in it, not stuck in it, not pulled into it.

Some of you might have a really wonderful relationship with some of your emotions and think, "Why should I do that?" But for the purposes of deepening the meditation, this is invaluable. So you might want to experiment with it. Make that note or recognition: "Oh, this is anger," "This is boredom." See if you can make that note in such a way that the noting itself—the recognition itself—is free.

To add to this, it might help to make that note either at the beginning of the exhale or the beginning of the inhale—whichever is nicest for you. Experiment a little bit. If you do it at the beginning of the exhale, make the note—"sadness"—and then as you exhale, relax. Relax around the sadness, relax with it. Just relax the stickiness, the leaning into, or the reactivity that might be around the sadness. Relax with the exhale.

If you do it at the beginning of the inhale, maybe it is more of a being grounded, centered on yourself, and making room to feel the emotion more fully while not being stuck in it.

Over time, you will learn how this simple, one-second act of clear recognition brings with it a little bit of freedom—or a lot of freedom—in relationship to emotions. It is not to dismiss emotions; as we will see, it is actually to have a deep respect for them and make room for them. We cannot do that if we are stuck in them, involved in them, caught in their orbit, or participating in them.

Assuming a meditation posture, gently lowering your gaze or closing your eyes. Check in with your posture to see if there are any adjustments to be made that help you feel more stable, grounded, and aligned.

Gently take some breaths which are a little deeper and fuller than usual, so that you can have a longer exhale, relaxing the body as you do so.

[Silence]

Let the breathing return to normal and continue relaxing the body on the exhale, maybe going through the body systematically from the top of the head and down through the body.

[Silence]

Feel your breathing in your torso—the movements of the body, the sensations of breathing. Feel the part of your torso that moves as you breathe. Feel the weight of it, so that as you breathe and relax, you are settling in, settling your body, grounding it here so the weight settles and relaxes.

[Silence]

Feel the sensations in your torso as you breathe so that you are beginning to be aware without being centered in the "control tower" in the head. The awareness practice is centered in the body.

[Silence]

As you continue, you might notice whatever mood, emotion, or state of mind is present, with no issue around whether it is a pleasant or unpleasant emotion. At the beginning of the exhale or the beginning of the inhale—whatever feels best for you—quietly have a one-word recognition, or one moment of wordless recognition.

Experiment with how that moment of recognition stands alone by itself. It is not entangled or reactive to whatever mood or emotion. Without preference for or against, it is a moment of recognition that is free.

Then, if you are with the exhale, relax with that emotion; relax around it. If it is at the inhale, allow yourself to fully feel the emotion. With every breath, see if you can find that stepping stone that involves recognition and naming that is above the mud.

[Silence]

It might be interesting to think of this exercise of naming or recognizing your emotional state as a form of truth telling. Just saying the truth about how you feel, but doing so from a place of freedom. It is completely okay to have this emotion here. Recognize it from the stepping stones. Recognize and then relax with it. Recognize and allow it space and room without being involved. Stay on the firm stepping stones.

[Silence]

Gently pull yourself out of whatever state you are in—whatever emotional state—and with respect for the state, care for how you are, find a way of naming. Truth telling: "This is how it is." Simply naming it puts you up on this solid ground, free of being pulled into whatever state you have.

[Silence]

Coming to the end of this meditation, perhaps recognizing or feeling how a simple act of truth telling about how you are can make room for you to be more than whatever emotion you are. It is a way of making space—breathing room—so that how we feel is not interfering with an open, available way for our care and our kindness to be ready to meet the world.

There is more space for love, for friendship, for friendliness. With whatever degree of open kindness is here, extend your good will out into the world, for the people who live near you or are close to you, to those far away.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

May our openness contribute to that possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (11 of 25) Recognizing Emotions

Hello. Today I begin the third week of this Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation, with this week focusing on mindfulness of emotions. Emotions are an important part of our life, and mindfulness meditation is meant to offer a lot of respect for our emotions.

As I have often said, I love the word "respect" as a synonym for mindfulness because the Latin roots of it can be understood as "to see again"—to give a second look to what is happening. To respect emotions is to really take a second look at them. Don't just take the first impression, but take a second look: what is happening here?

One of the principles of practicing mindfulness of emotions is, in fact, to have a deep respect for emotions. Emotions, in and of themselves, are significant movements within us. We are moved by something. We want to allow the movement without judgment, but also without participating—either reactively pushing it away or judging it negatively, or participating in it by leaning into it and telling ourselves stories that perpetuate it and keep it going.

I am fond of the idea that the word "emotion" has the word "motion" in it. The Latin prefix e- means "out." Emotions are things that are moving out. They represent that we have been touched, we have been moved in some way. In and of itself, it represents our capacity to be moved, to be involved in a way that connects us to this world and with ourselves. Something deep gets elicited. I like to think of a place that is tender within that has come alive and is expressing itself; somehow we are being moved.

Certainly, some emotions are unpleasant, some are pleasant. Some are not helpful for us to live by or participate in, and some are very helpful. But no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, skillful or unskillful, emotions can be understood as providing information. Something is being expressed, and we want to be able to hear, see, or recognize what is happening here. What is being expressed? What is there to learn with this emotion?

I sometimes think of all emotions as messages, and we want to read the message. We don't want to kill the messenger. We want to see, "Okay, this too is carrying some message." Even if it is an unpleasant emotion, or one that is maybe harmful for ourselves or others, it is still carrying a message, maybe from someplace deeper than what it is itself. So we respect it and make room for it so we can really hear deeply what is really happening here with us. That is a kind of truth telling or truth finding in this process.

I like to say that mindfulness meditation is meant to be one of the safest places to feel your emotions. To say it differently, it is meant to be a place where we can allow whatever emotion we have to be there so we can feel it, see it, know it, and find our freedom with it.

That is a tall order. Sometimes emotions can be quite difficult and overwhelming. It is a process of learning. It is a process of building the skill and the capacity to have this kind of mindful attention and openness to whatever emotion we have. It is not something that necessarily can be done overnight or immediately, but that is the "North Star" for this practice: to build this capacity to be present in a non-reactive, non-entangled way to any emotion that we have.

I like to think of it as one of the few places in our society where there is no need to be ashamed of our emotions, no need to repress them, and no need to condemn them. There is also no need to participate in them, lean into them, or collapse into them.

If there is murderous rage, we are committed for the duration of meditation to not move, more or less. We just allow it to course through us without punching someone out; we are just sitting there feeling it, allowing it to be there. If we have great, beatific kinds of feelings of love, it might be problematic sometimes in daily life if we have that in the wrong occasion, but we can learn how to experience whatever emotion it is.

What we are learning is how to know it, how to recognize it from a place of stability or calm—to be able to recognize it where the recognition of it is free. One of the freedoms is to be free enough to be able to listen more deeply to the emotion—to not be so involved in it, so reactive to it, or so overwhelmed by it that we lose the capacity to see it. We want to know it, to listen deeply: "What is this?"

That is where the earlier parts of this meditation practice are very important, because all emotions are expressed one way or the other in the body. If there were no body sensations at all, it might be hard to really discern that you are even having an emotion. So be able to feel the little movements or big movements in the body—the contractions, the tightness, the agitation, the energy, the suffusion of warmth or goodness that comes with some positive emotions. Feel it physically.

Or feel how the breathing has come into play. Some emotions, when they come up strong, affect the breathing and make it tight, shallow, or fast. Sometimes some emotions help the breathing relax, settle, and become slow and bigger. To be able to recognize the bodily expression of the emotion—what is happening in the body, what is happening with the breathing—is a support to stay in the present moment with the emotion.

What we are doing in mindfulness meditation is seeing any emotion as a present-moment event. It is almost as if, for the purpose of the meditation, it has no before and no after. We don't have to connect it to the story of why it is there, and we don't have to connect it to the predictions of what it means that it is there or what is going to happen to us. We are learning to just hold it, be present for it respectfully for what it is as an event here and now. That means without a lot of thinking about it, without a lot of analysis or story-making, and—we are learning—without a lot of association to self.

One of the interesting things about emotions is when there is a lot of identification with the emotion: "I am the emotion. The emotion defines me. I am this kind of person who always has this kind of emotion." That is an added layer on top that, over time, we learn we don't need to do in this meditation. We can keep it very, very simple, even if it is a very strong emotion. I have sat in meditation with anger that felt like a volcano, but I didn't identify with it. I didn't make myself the "angry person." I just made room in my body. I kept coming back to my body to feel it.

So in this first day of teaching about mindfulness of emotions, I want to keep it somewhat simple. I want to suggest the practice of "one-second" or "three-second mindfulness." This is something you can do through the day. It is an art form or craft that you can learn and cultivate until it becomes stronger for you.

That is the practice of simple recognition of what emotion is happening in the moment. It isn't that the recognition of the emotion is what is important; it is how we recognize it. We recognize it without being entangled. We recognize it without being caught or reactive to it. We recognize it without defining ourselves by it or telling us a story about what this means ("I am some way or other").

It is stepping out of the swampy mud of the field that we were crossing, up onto the stepping stones. We are still able to cross the field; we are still intimately part of this beautiful, natural landscape. We are not removing ourselves from the world or becoming disengaged. We are just stepping up on these wonderful stepping stones where we can walk across the field without getting stuck in the mud.

The stepping stone is the simple act of recognition. Recognizing sadness, grief, just as that: "Oh, this is grief." Not to feel like you have to not grieve, or that you are supposed to be any different, or that you are changing it for the next second after that. Just for that second: "Oh, it's like the sun has come out. Oh, this is grief. This is joy. This is love. This is hatred. This is boredom. This is calm. This is agitation. This is fear. This is confidence."

Whatever state, mood, mental state, or emotion we have, experiment with just naming it. Take the moment to almost like you are pausing for one second, three seconds: "Oh, this is how it is. Yes, this is how it is." Just clearly enough, fully enough, definitive enough that you are almost stepping out of the current of being swept away or involved with whatever emotion it is. Not to stop it, but to see it clearly. To have a moment of truth telling: "Oh, this is how it is."

To repeat myself, recognizing what it is has tremendous value, but in this exercise, what is more important is how you recognize it. That is where the experimentation is; that is where the training is in this meditation. See what you can do to recognize it so you feel like, "Oh, for that moment I'm free. For that moment I'm not identified with it. For that moment I'm not entangled or reactive to it." It is just a very simple stepping away, stepping back, and seeing it for what it is without being entangled.

You might do this through the day today. I don't know—you could set a timer on your device so that every 15 minutes or so there is a little reminder: "Check in, how are you?" See what it is like to just take that moment to name it. Maybe you want to do that a few times over a minute or so just to experiment: "What is Gil talking about—this recognition that is free, recognition that is not entangled or caught?" See what you learn from this. See what you find from this.

If you want a little bit more, if this becomes easy, then do that act of recognition either at the beginning of the exhale or the beginning of the inhale. Just relax with the emotion on the exhale. Or if it is the beginning of the inhale, allow for it. After you have made the recognition, then almost like you make room to allow for it on the inhale. Or once you have recognized it in this nice way, at the beginning of the exhale, then just relax with it and see what happens to you.

So this is just the beginning, and we will continue for the next four days with developing this important area of mindfulness of emotions.

Thank you.