This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Harmonizing With Emotions; Introduction to Mindfulness Pt 2 (3 of 5) Emotions. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Harmony With Emotions; Dharmette Introduction to Mindfulness Pt 2 (3 of 5) Emotions - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 17, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Harmony With Emotions

Hello and welcome to our morning meditation. Sitting down here in my meditation posture to meditate with you all, I feel quite happy. The happiness has something to do with a variety of things, but the main one at the moment is that taking this posture and sitting down, I am going to come into a process of discovery and harmony with what is here within me.

This is a very welcome posture to enter into, to receive, to welcome all of who I am. It is an opportunity for all of this to come into a kind of harmony where it is all included. In ordinary life, I am focusing on particular things. I am taking care of things. I have something that has to be done, so there is a directedness of attention and a concern with particular things. But here in the meditation posture, it is a chance to let it all just arise, show itself, and be here. It is a chance to discover, to allow this psychophysical system to come into harmony.

Part of the way in which meditation supports a deep harmony within us—where all of who we are can be there—is to appreciate our emotions, to value them, and to make room for them. Part of what I think of meditation is that when we are practicing in a posture of meditation, we are finding a posture—both physically and attitudinally—that makes room for all of who we are. We create a container, a context, or a space for what is here to show itself, to move, to unfold, or to dissolve—to do what it needs to do.

The key is to have part of who we are get out of the way. We are neither participating in our emotions—actively feeding them, reacting to them, or judging them—but just making room, allowing the emotions to be there. We are also not succumbing to them, collapsing into them, or reacting to them. It is as if we stand tall or stand upright in a dignified, upright posture, whether we are lying down or sitting. There is an intentional posture in which we are sitting in the middle of it all. We are in the middle of it all in a posture that allows it all to happen while at the same time not identifying with it, not defining ourselves by it, not judging it, not making something out of it, and not collapsing into it.

Emotions are messengers. Emotions are, in one way or another, an attempt of our inner life to come to a wonderful harmony with our circumstances—to be in relationship to our circumstances. While we are meditating, we trust it all. We trust it just to be aware, trust it just to make room for it, and have an ability to be with what is happening.

Rather than being a tense person, we are sitting here with tension. Rather than being a sad person, we are sitting here with sadness. Rather than being a calm person, we are sitting here with calm. Rather than being an angry person, we are sitting here with anger. Rather than being a confused person, we sit with confusion. Rather than being a scared person, we sit with fear. None of this defines us. None of this is us. But all of it is to be included and held with respect and care, without being defined by it. This allows something profound to happen.

Gently close your eyes. With your eyes closed, adjust your physical posture. The posture itself can be somehow a bigger container, a bigger intentional place within which we can feel all of what is here. For some people, for this purpose, it helps to be a little bit more centered on the spine. The spine is upright, and there is a little bit of strength and stability in the spine. Maybe the chest becomes a little more expansive, pulling in the spine between the shoulder blades so the chest comes out a little bit.

Adjust the head so it is not hanging forward, but is tall enough to look over the walls of the labyrinth. The head is above the lotus flowering out of the muddy waters. Find a kind of uprightness or straightness of the vertebrae of the neck, with the crown of the head being lifted up into the sky.

Take a few long, slow, full breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Take a few more fuller inhales where you stretch and expand the torso as you breathe in as a reminder, as a connection to your ability to be wide—wide and large enough to hold anything that is within you without being defined by it. Then, let your breathing return to normal.

In the same way, with the inhale, feel the expanding of the rib cage and the belly, as if you are making yourself large enough to have enough room—breathing room—for how you are right now. As you exhale, relax and settle so that you are not caught in how you are. As you breathe in, imagine that the mind expands as well, like a gas that expands and radiates outward. The mind radiates, flows, and opens wide. As you breathe in, thoughts drift away. And as you exhale, that thinking mind quiets and relaxes.

Notice what your mood is, what your emotional state or mental state is. simply recognize how you are. Whatever your emotional state or mood, where is that? Where do you feel that the most in your body? Try not to think about it, so that the thoughts about how you are become not the most predominant thing, but rather what you highlight is how it feels in your body. What part of your body seems most activated or most alive with how you are feeling?

Gently, with your breathing, breathe in to make an expansive space around how you feel. Create breathing room. As you exhale, feel how you are, leaving it alone, letting it be. Create wide space around how you feel and relax the thinking mind as you exhale so you can better feel it in your body.

With your inhale, bring a welcoming to how you are, whatever it might be—a welcome that frees you from being defined by how you feel. Then, with an exhale, feel it more fully—a settling, relaxing around it. As calmly and quietly as you can, acknowledge what it is you are feeling. It is almost like you are saying hello without identifying with how you feel.

Then, return to your breathing, centering yourself. Breathing in and breathing out. Leave how you feel alone while you entrust yourself to breathing.

Notice how you feel—your mood, mental state, or emotional state. Be with it like you would if you became really still and quiet because an unusual bird has landed a few feet from you, and you don't want to scare it away. You are very quiet, peaceful, and still, just to allow it to be there as you watch it. Be this way with whatever way you are feeling. Be with it. Feel it in the body. Let your awareness, the core of who you are, be very still, quiet, and nonreactive so you don't interfere.

Gently, without changing much, begin again with mindfulness of breathing. Maybe almost the same way, where the sensations of breathing are like a little bird hovering nearby.

To end this sitting, acknowledge how you are. Acknowledge how you have shifted from the beginning of the sitting to now. In the middle of it all, take some fuller breaths, breathing in and connecting to your wider body—the edges of your body against the space, against the chair, the floor, or the bed. Then, let your breathing return to normal again.

As a way of getting ready for this to end, and in a sense to return to the world of others, take the time to wish others well. The people of your life, known and unknown—wish them well.

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

You can't make that happen automatically for all beings. Maybe in small ways, you can contribute to this happening for the people you encounter today. May you be a force of peace and goodness in this world.

Thank you.

Dharmette Introduction to Mindfulness Pt 2 (3 of 5) Emotions

Hello and welcome to this third talk, which is part two of the introduction to mindfulness meditation, going through the sequence of instructions for the second time. The first time was last week. The sequence for this third talk has to do with emotions.

Emotions are wide-ranging. For me, it is meant to be somewhat of an open-ended word that includes our mind states, our moods, and the broad attitudes. Not an attitude of the moment, but an attitude that represents a disposition of the moment—the way we are oriented in the world. "Emotions" is a very good English word which, as some of you have heard, I love because the Latin roots of the word include the word "motion" and the prefix e-, which apparently in Latin can mean "out." So emotions are what move out.

We are learning through mindfulness to have a radically different relationship to emotions than what people often grow up with or develop over time. Learning to have a new way of being with emotions is part of the task of mindfulness. One of those ways is to be respectful of them and to really give time and attention to allow them to be there with respect. All emotions are to be respected when we do a mindfulness practice.

Respect is an alternative to automatically believing emotions, automatically giving in to them, or automatically being motivated to act in the world because of them. It is an alternative to collapsing into them or being overwhelmed by them. There is a way in which we learn a certain kind of ability to be upright in the middle of emotions—to be there in a present, attentive, and caring way. We are attentive in a strong, independent way where we are not being defined by the emotions. We are not identifying with them in the sense of thinking, "This is who I am. I am always this way. I have to be this way because without this I don't exist."

The idea is to really respect emotions. One way I like to say that is that we allow the emotions to be there. One way that I appreciate them is that emotions are messengers. You want to be present for them so we can really hear the message. If there is fear, it is a message that we are afraid of something. What is that? If we are present for that fear and get to know it better, is what we are afraid of something we really need to be afraid of? If it is fear, is there some other way of being with the danger? Or are we trapped in fear? Are we caught in its grip because we identify with it, or are we somehow reactive to it or holding onto it in a funny way? Are we feeding it? Are we involved in stories and feeding it over and over again by what we keep telling ourselves?

To sit in mindfulness is to learn how to relax the thinking mind, to relax the story-making mind, and to have this quiet, peaceful way of being aware where we are neither feeding it, fueling it, nor pushing it away. We are neither denying it nor affirming it. We are neither accepting our emotions nor rejecting our emotions. Sometimes mindfulness is taught as a kind of radical acceptance of everything—you are supposed to accept everything. We see in the ancient teachings of mindfulness that there is a third option that doesn't involve accepting and doesn't involve rejecting. It looks closer to accepting than rejecting, but that is to simply be present without anything extra. Just be present for how things are.

Partly, emotions are messengers, and partly, emotions are what wants to move through us. In moving through us, I like to consider that emotions are the attempt of our whole psychophysical system to find a way to be in harmony with what is going on in the world and within us. Sometimes that effort towards harmony doesn't seem obvious—that the anger we have is trying to find harmony, or the fear, or the greed. But if we respect it as something that is moving towards harmony, we can avoid giving into it or feeding it. Instead, we give room for it to be there and feel it, sense it. In that sensing, it begins to move.

When these messengers, these emotional movements within us, start loosening up—not being frozen or trapped, not being defined by them—they start to move and flow. Then the emotions that are there because of attachments, tensions, and reactivity begin to relax. The harmony is that they evolve into something else, something maybe beautiful and wholesome. Those emotions that are already wholesome, that don't have any tension or attachment with them, can flow, grow, and become something else that is wonderful.

Part of the attitude of mindfulness is the attitude of allowing something that is here to unfold and move. It cannot unfold so well if we define ourselves by it. One of the ancient ways that the mindfulness tradition talked about being with emotions is to add the word "with." So, "I am with anger," or "This is a body with desire," "This is a being with fear, sadness, love, or happiness." We are not saying "I am happy," "I am angry," or "I am afraid." When we define ourselves, we are a little bit trapped, and the flowing can't happen. As soon as we define ourselves too strongly around an emotion, we are locking it in. But if we relax—"Oh, it's just a day with anger," "It's just a conversation with tension," "It's just a time of sitting with delight and joy"—that "with" is meant to be respectful, opening, allowing, and just there.

The way that we practice mindfulness, and the way I like to teach here, is that the center of the practice is like the bottom of a bowl. If you put a marble in a bowl, it will flow back and forth, and when the energy goes out, it rests on the bottom. The bowl of our life rests with breathing—just the gentle rhythm of breathing. But if emotions become compelling and strong enough, it is time to give them their due. Then, neither accept nor reject, but make space—a breathing room—for any and all emotions.

There is no emotion which is unacceptable in mindfulness, provided that you don't give into it, provided you don't act on it, and provided that you make space for it so that you can begin being attuned to how it is a movement within you. One of the ways to do this is to really feel the physicality of the emotion. That is why it is so useful to teach mindfulness of the body first. The more we can open our body, the more the body becomes the container that can hold the emotion. Then we can spend time sensing the sensations of the emotion. The sensations of the emotion are where we can free up the emotion so it can begin to move through us.

The mind often does not have a very good capacity to be with difficult emotions. Sometimes the heart is too small to really hold it all. But the body has this wonderful gift of being able to expand our attention globally through the body. The body sometimes has a much better capacity to make room, to allow, and to begin aligning ourselves—finding ourselves in harmony with the emotion by how the emotion is a movement. It is the unfolding, the vibration, the oscillation, and the energy of it.

There is no emotion that is unacceptable or unallowed in mindfulness practice. But we are trying to find a radically different way of being with it than how we usually are—one that is deeply respectful of it. In being with the emotion, we come into harmony, into peace, into a settledness, and into a fullness of life that is a delight and a source of happiness and freedom.

Today, I would encourage you to spend time with your emotions. Maybe have a cup of tea with them. Maybe go for a three-minute walk. Maybe it is as short as doing the "three breath journey"—spending three breaths with wherever the emotion is. Maybe once an hour, have an alarm go off, close your eyes, and for five breaths, see what happens if you do what I am talking about. For those five breaths, simply recognize what is there. Feel it in your body. Breathe with it. Make the body the wide container for it. Recognize that you are with the emotion. See if, in those five breaths, you can get a sense of how the emotion is a movement within you and how you can free the movement—a gentle movement, perhaps.

Thank you, and may your emotional life be a source of wisdom and deep understanding of yourself and this world. Thank you.