This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Relaxing into Mindfulness; Intro to Mindfulness (2 of 25) Relaxing Distractions. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing into Mindfulness; Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (2 of 25) Relaxing Distractability - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 09, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing into Mindfulness

Happy to be here with you. This is the second session on basic instructions in mindfulness, laying down the foundations for what we do.

Yesterday I said that one of the functions of mindfulness of breathing—a sincere but relaxed dedication to being present with the breathing—is not to succeed at that task, but rather to have that task highlight how distracted we are, how busy the mind is, and what we're caught up in. One of the advantages of beginning that way is that then you succeed right away. If you try to stay present on the breathing, but there are a lot of forces of distraction, then you can be frustrated right away.

The other reason is that it's useful to think of distraction itself. The more that we're distracted, the more we're ruminating and caught up in our thoughts. The more we're fixating on something like our emotions, our memories, what's happening around us, or our body experience—the more we're caught up in it, the more it represents stress. The more it represents tension. There's a feedback loop between tension, stress, and more distractibility, more rumination, and more distraction. So, a very important part of meditation is really relaxation, reducing the stress that we have.

One of the wonderful, very significant applications of Buddhist mindfulness practice in the United States, and in the world now, has been a protocol, a process called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction¹. I don't want to diminish the tremendous value of that, but from a Buddhist point of view, if you study the teachings of the Buddha, it would be reversed. It would be stress-reduction-based mindfulness; stress-reduction-based awareness. We begin by focusing on relaxing. With the proper kind of softening, easing, and relaxing, then rather than a feedback loop with more thinking, there's a feedback loop to more awareness, more present-moment attention.

Assume a meditation posture that supports two things. First, it supports relaxation, some sense of ease in the body. That could be lying down, it could be sitting, it can be standing, and it could also be walking. There is something called walking meditation. Assume a posture that works for you. If all things are equal, I suggest a seated posture—a posture that allows you to relax.

The second thing about the posture is that it brings with it some degree of alertness. An attentive posture, something that has some intentionality in it, where we're activating something that we have to be attentive to being present here with. So, relaxation and alertness together.

Gently close the eyes. Or if you don't want to close them, which is fine, perhaps lower the gaze so you're not looking at anything in particular. Just kind of a loose focus, as if you're looking at a mountain far in the distance. If your eyes are closed, notice if you have engaged your eyes as if you're looking at something, using your eyes primarily to be aware. Let your eyes rest in their sockets. The eyes do not have to be activated.

Often, when we're stressed or tense, it affects the breathing. Breathing becomes sometimes more shallow and short. Sometimes breathing is more in the chest. Often, if there's tension, there's more work exerted in breathing. Gently take a few somewhat deeper breaths, maybe half as full as you could. Then, as you exhale, extend the exhale. It's almost as if there's an added relaxation, letting go, softening in the body that allows a longer exhale. Relaxing as you exhale.

Then, let your breathing return to normal. As you exhale, especially at the end of the exhale, soften the belly. Relax, let go, so in a natural way the exhale continues for a few moments.

As you exhale, relax the chest, the rib cage. Letting go. A softening on the exhale.

On the exhale, softening the shoulders. Having the shoulders yield to the pull of gravity.

As you inhale, feel whatever tension there might be in the area of the face. And on the exhale, soften the muscles of the face.

If you notice that you're distracted, the chances are there's some place of tension within. Pressure. Contraction. It could be in the thinking mind, the area maybe in your head where thinking is congested, contracted, pressured. As you exhale, relax the thinking mind. Relax the forces of distraction.

Drop into your body's experience of breathing, wherever in your body the experience of breathing is most pronounced for you, or clearest, or easiest to feel. On the exhale, relax into that experience of breathing.

If you find yourself being pulled into your thinking, appreciate that you know that, that you see that. Appreciate the awareness that can know you're distracted. If you know it clearly, you are not distracted; you're mindful. Then see if there's any tension in your muscles or your mind associated with thinking that you can relax on the exhale.

As you relax, appreciate the awareness, the mindfulness that results. The greater sense of being here with your experience that relaxing evokes.

As your lungs fill with oxygen on the inhale, let your awareness spread out throughout your whole body, feeling it. Then, as you exhale, relax the whole body. Release holding throughout the body. As you relax, release, and soften the body, no matter how little you're able to do—even if nothing—see if there can come a natural increase in feeling present, aware, here, now.

Resting with your breathing. But when you're distracted, be intent to know that mindfulness is working to know you're distracted. Then see where you can relax, soften, let go, so that there's a heightened sense of being present, being aware. Into that awareness, invite back the breathing.

As we come to the end of this sitting, take a few moments to notice how you are right now. How you might be different from the beginning of the meditation. How are you in your body? How are you with your breathing? How are you with your mind? And how are you in your heart?

For the next three breaths, relax on the exhale. Relax as deeply and fully as you can, maybe with an extended exhale.

Consider going forth from this meditation, and after my teaching, perhaps to encounter the world—people, animals, plants, neighbors, people in the community. All places where you find people who have stress and tension, who maybe are suffering some way or other. From whatever calm or subtleness that you have, aspire that the benefits of this meditation can spread from here to benefit everyone and everywhere that your attention goes.

Any person, any being that you think about, meet, or see: May they be happy. May they be safe. May they be peaceful. May they be free. And may I, may each of us, contribute to that possibility through being a relaxed, calm, peaceful presence for others.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (2 of 25) Relaxing Distractability

Hello and welcome to this second talk on the introduction to mindfulness practice. One of the very important principles of mindfulness is simplicity: don't make the practice complicated. Mindfulness is the capacity to be aware of our present moment experience in a simple way, and one of those areas of simplicity is to notice things as they are, not as we wish they are.

If we're distracted, if we're caught up in our thoughts, a successful moment of practice of mindfulness is to know that. To know it in such a way—maybe it's sometime in the future for some of you, but it's possible—that in the clear knowing we're distracted, we step back from being distracted by our thought stream. Just enough of a step back that we can really see it. It might still be going on, so that we can almost, as if (or maybe we do in our mind) say, "Oh, this is distraction. This is being caught in thought." And to be delighted in that knowing. No matter how difficult or challenging the thinking or the concern might be, to have some deep appreciation for the value of stepping back and seeing it, knowing it clearly. That's possible: simply to know that we're distracted, and over time come to appreciate that simple knowing.

With most forces of distraction, when we're caught up in anything, the chances are that we're tense in some way. Something is tense inside of us. A representative example of how this might work is seeing with the eyes. If you take your eyes and you find a little spot in front of you, and you hold your eyes on that spot—just fixate on the spot, don't let it move from that spot—the eyes will actually tense up. It's actually tiring for the eyes to hold them on a little spot without moving. What the eyes want to do when they're relaxed, free, doing their own thing without our holding onto something, is float. The eyes move, roam, and kind of just float around. Scanning the experience of what's happening, not fixating on it. We might look at some small area, but the eyes by themselves will gently scan and move. They're relaxed. But as soon as we kind of fixate, there's a tension that builds up. It's the same thing with our distractibility; there's a tension that builds up.

One of the instructions in meditation is the importance of noticing that tension. Noticing how we're tight in the shoulders, in the belly, and the chest. It could be in the hands, in the thighs, in the lower back, or the shoulder blade area. It could be in the throat. It could be in the jaw, the nose, the cheeks, around the eyes, and the forehead. It could be deep inside someplace, deep inside the skull. There are many places where we can hold tension, where muscles get tight.

Remember that just to know something is the essence of mindfulness. To know it in such a way that you really appreciate knowing it, which means that you're not caught up in the judging of it or assigning meaning to it, but rather you're appreciating stepping back: "Oh, I can see it. I know it." Look at that. Look at that tension. Look at all that tightness in my muscles and my jaw. Look at that. It might feel painful; it might be unpleasant. But don't be distracted by the unpleasantness, don't be caught in its orbit. Just kind of stepping back and saying, "Oh, that's unpleasant." The essence of this, then, is: Can you relax? Can you soften some place in the body? Soften the shoulders, soften the eyes if they're fixated, soften the muscles of the face.

If you have a tension headache, it can be really fascinating to scan through the body to see where you can relax. Where is the tension? And then see, as you relax—especially relaxing the musculature of the head and the face—how does it affect the tension headache, the pain? Soften the belly.

Sometimes the tension in the body, the physical tension, is a direct expression of tension in the mind, preoccupation and fixation in the mind. It's almost as if the mind—this is a metaphor that the Buddha gave—is a puppeteer, and it has all these strings from the fingers of the puppeteer going down to all the different muscles in our body, constantly pulling and tugging on them to make us tense. You'll probably notice sometimes that you're sitting, maybe minding your own business, quiet and peaceful, and suddenly there's a thought of something terrible, something that happened long ago, and you get angry. Maybe the stomach tenses up, and there's a fear or anger. The puppeteer has done its work. So certainly, the tension of the mind can affect the body. But there's a reverse: as the body relaxes, the mind also can relax. As the body tenses more, it fuels more tense thinking and preoccupation. So this movement of relaxing is such a useful one: releasing, quieting.

Exactly what the activity is for each of us is a little bit different. I keep using the word "relax," but it could be that for you a better word is to "calm." Calm the body. Sometimes I like the word "gentle." Gentle the body, or release the body. Another word I like is to "ease." Ease up. Be easy in the body. Be easy with how things are, ease up on things. Whatever you understand this activity to be—which I use as a general term, "relaxing"—this is an avenue, a method by which to awaken more awareness. As we're more preoccupied and more distracted, there's less present-moment awareness available. As we relax and open, notice how that allows for more simple, present-moment awareness.

As that present moment becomes more available, invite in the breathing. Some people tense up when they are told, "Now focus on the breathing, concentrate on breathing." They have the idea they have to concentrate and not be distracted, not leave it, and so they tense up. Even just the movement of the mind when we say, "Bring the mind back"—that movement of bringing the mind back, so-called, becomes a kind of tightening up. The idea is to find a way to awaken your mindfulness, or allow it to continue, so that there is no tensing up. One form of doing this that works for some people is, once we notice we're back to some state of awareness, to invite the breathing into that awareness. Invite it into attention, invite it back into knowing. Then maybe rest with it, relax with it, flow with it, and be carried by the movements of breathing in and breathing out, until we notice that we are distracted again.

Distracted means that it's almost like you are tensing up, you are getting preoccupied. If there are quiet thoughts in the background, and you're able to just stay with the breathing, let it be in the background. Don't worry about it. But when the thinking comes into the foreground or predominates, that's when you want to let your attention notice your thinking and relax something. In the relaxing, maybe invite back your breathing. In this way, hopefully, there's a developing of mindfulness meditation where you're learning not to be in conflict with any experience that you're mindful of. That's maybe a tall order, but when you learn to do it, it actually keeps things much simpler. Conflict is complicated.

As you go about your day today, you could try noticing when you're fixated on something, preoccupied by something, when you're zeroed in because you have a lot of concerns, fear, anger, annoyance, desires, or ambition. Notice the tension in your body, the tension in your mind. Notice the tightening, the narrowing, and then see if you can relax. Relax the body.

For this day, I'd encourage you to look for lots of opportunities to keep coming back to your body to relax it. Relax as you drive. When you sit down in your car to drive, relax before you start driving. When you sit down to a meal, don't just start eating right away. Take some 10 or 15 seconds just to relax there and soften, maybe occasionally between bites. Look for all kinds of possibilities and see what that does in bringing mindful attention more fully into this day of yours. It's stress-reduction-based mindfulness. As we reduce our stress, mindfulness surfaces.

Thank you very much, and I'll continue with this tomorrow.