This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Holistic Mindfulness of Emotions

So in this meditation, I'd like to do a little guided instruction meditation on mindfulness of emotions. This is an important part of our human life, our emotional life.

I think one way I understand this Buddhist approach to emotions—or mindfulness approach to emotions—is we're looking to experience whole emotions, where we're looking to experience our emotions in the wholeness, the whole being of who we are. Often the difficulties arise with emotions when we only are aware of part of them.

Our emotions belong to our activities, both of the body and of the mind and of the heart. If we prioritize one over the other, or we don't notice some of these other aspects, then it becomes not whole. But the moment we have an awareness that opens up to the wholeness of it, it's much more likely that we'll find our ease with it, our freedom with it, our wisdom with it. And it's very respectful, because then the wholeness of who we are can process, work with, and find freedom with our emotions. That's harder to do if we are not finding how to be whole with them.

In a sense, emotions are a nexus of the body and mind, the bridge between body and mind. They have one foot in each domain. If we're mostly in the mind, then we're like a tumbleweed in the desert that has no roots, just rolling along whatever way the wind is going. Whatever way the winds of thinking go, so go our emotions. And if we're only in our body with the emotions, then sometimes it can seem overwhelming, or we seem caught in it, or we almost become the emotions.

But to have this ability to open up wide awareness so we're both of the mind and the body, and in that allowing open awareness, there is freedom to be found. Sometimes we're looking at the emotions directly for the solution and to fix them. And in mindfulness, there's this little key, this little secret, that it's in the awareness that allows them to come to awareness. The space, the room, the open channels that allow us to become aware of the emotions—that's where freedom can be found. That's where wholeness can be found.

So to begin this sitting, take a posture that, to some degree, allows you to feel you're bringing your whole body into the meditation. Part of the advantage of sitting cross-legged on the floor is that it's a posture that for most people gathers together all of us: our legs, our arms, our torso, everything in a whole. But sitting in a chair or even lying down, find some way you feel whole in your posture.

And to accentuate that, perhaps you can take some long, slow, deep breaths. Deep breaths, as far as you're comfortable, but engage the fullness of your torso expanding. The fullness: back rib cage, front rib cage, stomach, even the shoulders. And then the fullness of settling in as you exhale. Relaxing, settling in. Letting go and feeling you come to a place of being rooted, firm with the weight of your body against your chair, your cushion. Feeling the full support sitting here.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. And then maybe continuing to focus on your breathing. Every time for the next little while, every time you exhale, see if you can relax a part of your body. Not to lose a good posture, not to slump, but to release extra holding. In the face. In the shoulders. In the chest, in the area of your heart. And in your belly, softening in the belly.

And then if you find yourself thinking a lot or anxious a lot, you might do the three-breath journey: count three breaths while you give yourself fully over to each breath. Each time you count and exhale, let go of your thinking.

And then if you're feeling your breathing in your torso, the expansion and contraction of the torso as you breathe, maybe you can feel that each time you inhale, you're expanding and making lots of room. In a sense, we are making room in the lungs to receive the air, but lots of room—broad, wide space. And then as we exhale, relaxing, opening into that space. Expanding as you breathe in, and as you exhale, almost like letting go into the edges, beyond the edges of your body. Almost as if there are no edges as you exhale. Just lots of room.

And then whatever you're feeling, whatever emotion or mood or mind state that you have, see if you can feel it within your body, within all the room your body has. Feeling your mood, your mental state, your emotional state. Feeling it in your body. Where does how you feel get expressed in your body? And as if you're breathing through your mood or your mind state, your emotional state, continue to make lots of room in the body, in the awareness for it. As if your body is larger than how you're feeling. With lots of room for it. Letting your body process, feel how you are. As if your body is a friend that can accompany how you are.

And then to be whole and to include the mind in mindfulness of the emotions, very quietly in the mind, make an act of recognition of how you're feeling. Sleepy or awake. Calm or anxious. Content or discontent. Sad or delighted. Warm and friendly, or cold and distant. And see if in a very kind, relaxed way in the mind, you can have a mental note^[1] or a little tag that recognizes how you're feeling, where that recognition is independent of how you feel.

With your body, make lots of room to feel the embodied qualities of how you feel, breathing with how you feel. And with the mind, step back and recognize what is happening with the simplest and kindest recognition possible. And if you're not clear what you're feeling, but there's something, just label it as "something."

Breathing in the middle of how you feel. Opening the body to how you feel. Stepping back from the thoughts and ideas and associations to label, to name, to clearly recognize how you are. Looking for your freedom in the open space and in the clear recognition.

Being rooted in your body like a well-rooted tree. With a mind like the vast space, open space around the top of the tall tree. Rooted and open. Rooted and clear. Rooted in the feelings of the body, and clear in the open recognition. This is what's happening.

Reflections

When we sit, when we live, and we're mostly in our thoughts, we're not whole. And if we don't engage our mind's capacity for awareness and live mostly in the body and the energies of the body, we're not whole. But bringing mind and body together to be whole, and not divided from each other, from within ourselves, is really the wonderful way, wonderful place for our goodwill to flow.

When there's no energy division within us, when we're whole, then there's lots of room for our goodness, our kindness. Being whole, we discover there's lots of room. Lots of room to receive, to experience, to take the world in. So there's time for deeper wisdom and kindness to respond. That's not possible if we react and are quick and fast. Not possible if we're divided in ourselves.

If we can trust our ability to be whole, meaning to include both our body and our mind and our hearts, and with that room, with that wholeness, to go out into the world and meet the world with our goodness, to meet it with our kindness, or to meet it with what wisdom arises from within. When there's room and there's time for our wholeness to experience our life.

And in whatever degree or way that we've touched into or are getting close to our wholeness of being sitting here, may it be something that we can remember or stay close to. So we give time and space and awareness to touch into our generosity and kindness when we're with people, communicating with people, when we're thinking about people.

And may it be that this meditation practice, that we use it as a basis, as an inspiration, as a reference point for wanting to live kindly and compassionately and caringly for this world. May our practice support the whole world. May all beings be happy.^[2] May all beings be safe. And may all beings everywhere be free.