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Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation with and : Class 1 Breath - Tanya Wiser, Kodo Conlin

Tanya Wiser: I am asking people if they'd share a couple of words about why they're here and what they're hoping for.

Steve: Hi, I'm Steve. I've been in Redwood City for a long time watching Gil [Fronsdal] for maybe three or four years and haven't made it yet. I usually watch the second half of his lecture and kind of don't do the meditation in the first half. I've done a lot of meditating, but it's something called intuitive medicine where you do chakras, clearing, grounding, symbols, and all this active meditation stuff. I just wanted to see the other side of a real still, quiet, Buddhist-oriented meditation and learn it, and just be more proactive with the group. Awesome, thank you.

Nancy: Thank you. My name is Nancy and I've been coming here for a while. I guess I've been meditating for a few years consistently, but sometimes I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. So it's always great to come to an intro to meditation class. I'm pretty excited you guys are offering this.

Tanya Wiser: Great, Nancy. Thank you so much for being here. Somebody else willing to grab the mic?

Sveta: Hi, yeah, it works. My name is Sveta, and I've also been following along with Gil and the IMC for a number of years now. I'm here to support my friend who is here, and it's an excuse to come to the IMC. I love this course, I love intro. I think as Gil says, an intermediate or advanced meditator is just a good beginner.

Nadia: Hi, my name's Nadia, and I'm Sveta's friend. It's my first time here, and I've just been doing a little bit of meditation here and there, mostly just for my mental health. I did this five-week series thing through IMC, just listening to the AudioDharma. I'm blanking on the name of what it was, but yeah.

Tanya Wiser: Well, if it was through here, it was Vipassanā^[1].

Linda: Hi, I'm Linda. I'm here at the invitation of my daughter. I was here once before. I actually used to meditate daily, and then for some reason when I moved to a different apartment, I just got out of the habit of doing it. Interestingly enough, I didn't do it at all during the pandemic, which I probably should have. Anyway, when she invited me to come, I decided it was the nudge that I need to get back to doing a practice. Here I am. I did it with Deepak Chopra on a video in the past.

Carlin: Hi, I'm Carlin, Linda's daughter. I really picked up mindfulness meditation over the course of the pandemic moving forward. I honestly started with an app on my phone and started a practice in the mornings as I was working to help with the stress related to the pandemic. This past January, I had the pleasure of going down to Baja and doing a seven-day retreat where we did a mindfulness practice every morning with a gentleman who told me about IMC. I had just a wonderful experience there, came back here, and wanted to start to incorporate more into my practice. It's taken me a while to actually get here, but I was able to do a sit with Gil a couple of weeks ago, heard about this intro, and was happy to come and learn more.

Tanya Wiser: Any other kind of different reason for being here? Maybe there'll be more time for those questions and answers or things to be brought up. I guess I should kind of shift into orienting and starting.

Introduction

Tanya Wiser: I'm Tanya Wiser. I'm happy to be here. Really grateful for your presence. It feels like a pretty significant shift actually for IMC to be opening back up and starting to offer the intro class again, and I'm really excited to be a part of that and hoping to support more of it and more community. Just a heads up too that there are a couple of other follow-ups we'll be offering. A day-long for intro will happen in September on the 10th, and then there'll be a second series following this one about establishing your practice. We'll just sort of keep building and see where we go. But I'm glad you're here and hope that it supports you making the connection real. The Sangha^[2] is real.

I want to just say a couple of words about IMC, Insight Meditation Center. This is a Buddhist center in the Vipassanā tradition. Within the origins of Vipassanā, all teachings are offered by Dāna^[3], meaning generosity. This whole center, because of our founding teacher Gil Fronsdal^[4], is completely devoted to everything being offered freely. There is not a single employee of Insight Meditation Center. No one gets paid to do anything here. You, the community, have paid for and pay for everything, all the costs of Insight Meditation Center. It's completely because of people's generosity, time, love, and finances that we exist. You're a part of it if you want to be a part of it. There's no membership other than that.

I think it's pretty profound. I actually just feel a sense of shivers in myself because, to me, it is such a profound thing to be a part of and to offer. So I invite you to be comfortable. There are restrooms, there are cushions. Kodo is going to talk about sitting posture, and you can use the equipment here, so please make yourself comfortable. I hope you feel welcome, totally welcome, included, and part of.

Maybe now, Kodo, you could say a few words introducing yourself.

Kodo Conlin: Yeah, sure. Thank you, Tanya. Can everyone hear me okay? If you need it as we go along, there are hearing-assisted devices just around the corner if that's useful for you.

My name is Kodo Conlin. I live in San Francisco, so I travel down here to be with all of you. I take a lot of joy in insight meditation, Vipassanā practice. I've been practicing meditation for about 20 years, and that has added up to a lot of hours, a lot of wrong turns which turned out to be right turns. I hope we all have such good fortune.

I think the thing I want to communicate at the beginning, just to echo something Tanya just said, is inviting you to be comfortable in the space, whatever that takes for you. Finding your way, being comfortable in the body while we're here together, because I think that supports us being together in community. I think one of the benefits to all of us being here together, and being here online, is that we have other people we're going through this course with, and starting to make those relationships as we want to. I think that's all for me.

Tanya Wiser: Great. I'll just say a couple more words, and then Kodo will do posture. You're here to learn mindfulness practice, mindfulness meditation. It is from Buddhism. Buddhism cannot exist without mindfulness, but mindfulness can exist without Buddhism. So there's no requirement for you to be a Buddhist to be here or to practice. You can have any other spiritual or non-spiritual beliefs and practice mindfulness. You don't need to agree with any philosophy or approach. It's about a practice, and it's a direct practice. It's a practice that supports us in connecting with our inner experience with more depth and our outer experience with more ease. Connection, depth, ease.

The practice helps us gain choice and reduce our reactivity. The invitation, as much as possible, is to be comfortable, to allow, to know what's happening as it's happening. This is why we're emphasizing this idea of it's okay to be in your body, it's okay to sit however you need to sit, it's okay for whatever thoughts and feelings to come up, and we're practicing being with our experience in a connected and non-reactive way. That's what will grow.

All right, Kodo, do you want to guide us on sitting posture?

Posture Instructions

Kodo Conlin: A big invitation as we go along discovering the posture for the next 10 minutes: if you need more supplies, you probably saw them on the way in. We have cushions, blocks, benches right around the end of the stage here, and of course chairs. As I'm talking, if you discover something that will support you in finding the posture to help you stay alert and comfortable for a stretch of 20 or 30 minutes, please feel free to get the supplies.

A basic definition of mindfulness to start with is a clear, stable, non-judgmental awareness that's attentive. Attentive to what's happening now, clear and stable, not entangled at all. We're going to express that with our bodies. We're going to express clarity, stability, and balance a couple of different ways. We can go about finding the basic postures. I'm going to talk about sitting on the floor, sitting in a chair, and I'll even mention lying down practice, which I did for about a year.

Maybe let's say something about sitting on the floor first, since I'm here. There are certainly some benefits to sitting on the floor. It lowers your center of gravity and can give you a wide base. I want to say, before I begin talking about sitting on the floor, it is perfectly wonderful to sit in a chair for meditation. I love that the mythology of the future Buddha has him sitting in a chair. So you're in good company if you sit meditation in a chair.

Regarding all postures, the most important thing is an alert spine, an upright spine that's both energetic and allows the body to relax. There's really something about having a spine that's balanced on itself in such a way that the body is alert, that all the muscles can start to balance and let go and release.

Some particular pointers. Sitting on the floor, everything starts with the base. Everything needs a foundation for your spine to be upright and alert. We have something like a tripod down here. One point is the sit bones on the cushion. If you're on a cushion, sitting on the front third can be helpful to get the spine to align in a comfortable way. There are any number of cross-legged postures, but a balanced one we recommend is one leg in front of the other, called tailor fashion or Burmese fashion. This helps to be symmetrical and doesn't put too much torque on the knees or on the hips. I invite you as we go through to feel free to play around with these different postures. Over the five weeks, really spend some time finding what works for you.

Something I'll say: if the hips and the knees are really tight, in order to help lower the knees, it can be helpful to raise the hips. Sometimes I'll sit on two cushions, and it raises this situation. Or sometimes a knee doesn't want to come down, but we need the weight of the leg transferring to the floor. Put something underneath if you're going to support a knee. Something to experiment with, or to make note of, is that you want to try to have the hips above the knees. If the knees are above the hips, it makes the lower back sort of turn out. I love seeing everyone moving around and trying this out. Please feel free.

Finding a way for your lower body to be arranged such that the spine can be upright and alert is key. It may be cross-legged. Let me show you another base posture before I sort of build the rest of the posture up, and that is you may sit kneeling. You can turn one of these cushions up like a wheel and sit like this. That may be more balanced. Experiment. Finding the base that supports the spine to be upright allows the shoulders to roll back.

The hands, we say, can do anything where they're symmetrical. A lot of people will do palms down on the thighs. Palms up is fine. Very traditionally, we'll have one hand on top of the other with the thumb tips touching in front of the low belly. Whatever works for you. Something you want to look out for when placing the hands is not placing them in such a way that your shoulders get pulled forward. Trying to maintain that front-back balance is really important, otherwise a real strain comes to the back. Resting your hand on a pillow can help with that.

From here, one way you can really get into an upright position is, once your base is settled, you can sort of lift yourself off the seat and let your spine grow nice and long, and then lower back down. Doesn't your spine feel just a little bit longer, straighter? The chin, we say, is just barely tucked. Another way to think about this is putting some space in the last vertebrae under the skull. The chin is tucking just to give some space up here.

In this tradition, we sit with the eyes closed. If you're comfortable or have trained in another way with eyes open, that's fine too. Mouth is closed. I like to say relax the tongue. I keep it in contact with the palate at the top, but soft. I find if there's tension in the mouth, there's all this tension in the face and the neck that can develop. One thing to check as you're establishing the posture is, does your head feel balanced? Feel around. Is your head square on your shoulders? Are the ears lined up with the shoulders in such a way that your back muscles can relax?

Wonderful. So a thought or two about sitting in a chair.

Participant: How important is it to sit without back support?

Kodo Conlin: Oh, that's fabulous. Thank you for the question. I can say it can be really helpful to sit without back support in the sense that it helps support the attitude of independence and self-reliance. It may be good to know that I sit with a back injury, so very often I'll need a little something at my lower back. On a chair, still try to keep the feet flat on the floor if you can. Have your knees a little lower than your hips or right at the same level. But sometimes I'll tuck just a little support back here; it really helps the lower back. I try to minimize how much I lean on this. If my back feels healthy and I don't need the support, I'll actually sit on the edge of the chair, or something like this that feels really comfortable. If you need back support all the way up, which sometimes is necessary, you can roll up a towel or put a cushion in half and put it along the spine such that the shoulder blades can still relax back. I hope that responds to the question from YouTube.

So those are some of the basics of posture. The upright, alert spine, having the sitting base established, hands not pulling the shoulders forward, everything sort of aligned and opened. If at any point as we go along, or in any of the breaks, if you have questions about your posture, we can certainly address them. It's really well worth investing the time to determine the posture that works for you. It can make all the difference in establishing a practice in a more useful way.

Tanya Wiser: Do you feel comfortable right now where you're at in your postures? I'll just say one more thing about posture, which is it's okay to be a little bit uncomfortable, and it's important to respect your body. If you have an injury, or if you're afraid you're starting to hurt yourself, just take a breath. Recognize it's important to move, and move with consciousness, with awareness to change your posture. Don't make yourself stay because you're not supposed to move.

Meditation is like a gym to grow and strengthen our mind and our mindfulness, but we want to do this in all of our lives. It's not that we have to not move. We don't want to hurt ourselves. It is possible to cause injuries to ourselves if we overdo it in a posture, so nerve damage can happen. It's not common, but I've known people who've had it happen. It's important to not feel like you have to sit through a lot of pain. We'll talk later about working with pain to support people who do have injuries or just physical pain.

Preparing the Mind

Tanya Wiser: Now I want to shift and talk a little bit about how to prepare the mind. We're preparing our bodies, which is also supporting and preparing our mind, but when we come to practice meditation, it is helpful to do things to orient the mind to prepare the mind before you actually begin to formally sit.

First, please give yourself permission to have any and every experience you have tonight. Whatever thought comes up, whatever mood, whatever feeling, please give yourself permission to know it, to have it. It's not about sitting down to try and create an experience; it's about learning how to show up for the experience that's happening.

I asked earlier about your expectations or why you were here. Just take a moment and reflect a little more deeply. A lot of times people start to practice because they're suffering. Maybe you're here because you don't want to be so anxious, or you don't want to be so depressed, or because you don't want to say stupid things anymore. Or maybe you have a deep aspiration for freedom. Those things are all really important. They can support your practice when held in the right way. No mud, no lotus, right? No suffering, no freedom. We can use all of our experiences to help support our awakening. But if we sit down with an agenda, we will suffer more. If we're trying to make ourselves be different or have a different experience, we're not going to find much peace.

Our mind works in a way that weaves together all of our different sense experiences that are happening in the moment, coupled with our memories from the past, our learnings, our beliefs, and perceptions. All of the stuff in our mind is a weaver, and it weaves it all together. So much so that we're often not even aware of all the separate pieces and things that are feeding the experience we're having. We might not even know that part of the experience is actually based on the past or expectation, instead of what's really happening in the moment.

One of the ways we go about learning to practice mindfulness is that we break apart parts of our experience. We start to learn more about each part. We get intimate with it so that we become much more familiar with how it flows in us, how it shows up for us, and how it influences us. Over time, we become increasingly attuned to these different aspects of our experience.

This week, the first week, we start with mindfulness of breathing as our primary investigation. Next week, it will be the body. The work you do between now and next week will be on the breath, and that work will lead and support working on body awareness. The third week, we'll start to focus on emotions, and the breath and body will support your ability to be more mindful of emotions. The fourth week will be the mind and thoughts. Again, we're building, and we're helping ourselves get intimate with each aspect. They're all interconnected, but we can attune more finely to each one independent from the others.

So this week is going to be about the breath. This thing that our bodies know how to do. The first thing that we did when we were born, and the last thing that we'll do in this life is to exhale in this world. It's our longest companion, and it's a changing experience. It's much easier for the mind to tune into something that's variable than to try and pay attention to something that's relatively unchanging. When you're doing certain kinds of therapy like EMDR^[5], you're bilaterally stimulating the brain. If you have this stimulation that goes tap, tap, tap, tap, tap at the same speed, it doesn't take very long for the brain to absolutely ignore it. It stops being input because it's no longer causing the mind to pay attention to it. It's been figured out, and it doesn't need to be attended to. I emphasize how important it is to be tuning into something that has some degree of flow and change in it. That's part of what helps our minds stay connected, just because of how we're wired.

Guided Meditation

Tanya Wiser: So I just want to sort of glide into a meditation here. As I'm offering these instructions, you might notice I'm slowing down. The invitation is to sort of let things come to more of a stillness. Finding your body, maybe acknowledging, okay, here I am.

A couple of deep breaths can be a nice support, a nice reset for the start of a meditation. Feeling the support of your feet if they're on the floor, your bottom if it's on a chair. And if it's comfortable, you might try shutting your eyes. If it's not, no problem, you can gaze. Typically we say a few feet in front of you on the floor, or at some sort of blank object, so your eyes can just sort of gaze there.

Just taking a second to see what you can notice here as you receive your experience. Maybe making the breath the star of the show. A little spotlight of awareness on the experience of breathing.

Noticing if it's long or short. Fast or slow.

Just being curious about the experience of breath. Noticing if there's a difference between the inhale and the exhale.

We can feel the breath in the body in a lot of different places. Maybe noticing first how you experience breathing in your nose. Noticing perhaps in the throat. The chest. And the belly.

Receiving the language of the body, which is sensations. Receiving the massage of the breath as it comes in and goes out.

And then just seeing where you are most aware of the breathing, where it's most natural for you to feel the breath. Wherever it's easiest, just sort of resting in that space. Maybe relaxing a little bit more.

You might think about yourself as a naturalist, somebody who's very committed to non-harming and observing nature. Not there to make anything happen or change anything, but to be a beautiful witness. To take in the beauty of the nature, the life, with this reverence. With this sense of respecting the life, which is what we experience with breath. Life.

So with the mind and the heart of a naturalist, just being attuned to breathing as it's occurring. In this body, in this moment, in this place. How this breath is. And the next breath.

When—because it will be a when—when the mind catches you and carries you downstream in a thought, there's a precious moment when we recognize that's happening. When awareness is aware of thinking. We don't need to go anywhere, we don't need to change anything or try and chase the thought away. See if you can't breathe with it. Breathe through it, and in time maybe the breath will become in the center spotlight again. Being patient and kind.

Breathing. Just breathing. Breathing with.

If it's hard to stay with a breath, it can be helpful to think about maybe a three-breath journey. Just seeing if you can stay connected to three breaths in a row. Feeling the beginning of the breath, the ending, the in-between, the new breath. Riding it like you might ride a surfboard on a wave. Just three breaths. A little journey.

We're coming to the end of our practice. Not leaving it, but coming to the end. I invite you just to see how you can gently feel intimately your next few breaths.

Just resting as you hear the bell. No need to quickly change. Allowing yourself a slow re-including of other experience.

Q&A and Reflections

Tanya Wiser: Just noticing if anything has changed. Just tuning in to feel the vibration level, the energy, the mind, the heart. What do you notice? Is it different? Are you more connected? Are you uncomfortable and need to move your body? Please feel free to take care of yourselves.

We're going to shift into questions and answers, inviting you to share a little bit about your experience and what you noticed. As you do, it's an act of generosity to share; it helps others find and feel into their own experience. Please take a little stretch. It is very helpful if you'll use the microphones. These talks are recorded and we are on YouTube right now, so it's for the benefit of others that are listening that we speak into the microphones.

First, maybe, what did you notice? You were a little naturalist in the wilderness of breathing. What can you tell us about your observations?

Isabel: My name is Isabel Ocampo, and for a long time in my life, I've been trying to find a practice. I did find myself meditating some years ago, but then I just moved on into different things. Things are fine in my life, but again I've been questioning myself every day of what am I doing? Is there more to my life? I'm very grateful that I'm here today, and after so long I was able to just be. Just breathe. I did notice that I had the need to take this really deep, profound breath, and it was like coming from my heart. I feel relief. This is my experience.

Tanya Wiser: Beautiful. Anybody else?

Nancy: I noticed how active my mind was. After a while, it was kind of like the rhythm of the breath was primary, but the mind was still active more in the background. I didn't necessarily feel calm in the moment, but after the bell rang, I noticed that I felt really calm. I felt my body was so still, and I didn't realize that had happened during the meditation. That was nice.

Tanya Wiser: So great that you were able to stay long enough to feel that, to notice that. There was a share from someone online that said, "Sometimes I feel paralyzed at the end of the meditation. Is this normal?"

Kodo Conlin: Thank you for the question. Without being able to have a back and forth, it's hard to know just what the specifics are of what you mean by the word paralyzed. Paralyzed can have connotations of fear, or a feeling of actually physically not being able to move, which may last for some time. I wonder how long it lasts. If I could talk to you, that's one of the things I would ask. And what do you notice about that transition? Paralyzed can also have this other connotation, which we just heard from Nancy, which is stillness, which may actually be something really wholesome. It's hard to parse without a little bit of conversation. I would suspect that there's a gradual coming back into full contact with the body that's happening. It's perfectly normal for some of the machinery to start to power down while we meditate. It's good to be in touch or in contact with a teacher or an experienced meditator who can help just gently keep you safely on the path.

Participant: I am going through some airway issues and breathing issues, so it's been interesting. It's extremely hard for me to do it, which is a little bit upsetting, but you know, I want to keep trying.

Tanya Wiser: Yeah, and for some people paying attention to breathing is triggering. That's where we'll be talking about the body. This week, if it's just too much to do the breathing, just tune into your body, and we'll talk more about that next week. But sensations move too, right? Because the breath is moving, it is a good object, but you can pay attention to the sense of sitting, to feeling the sensations in your body.

Holly: Hello, thank you dear Sangha. My name is Holly. When I first started my practice 11 years ago, I was so restless. I couldn't focus on the breath. I couldn't do mindfulness of the breath. I had to learn loving-kindness meditation^[6] and Samādhi^[7] with visual objects. I think they're called nimittas^[8], or like colors, or a candle flame. So I haven't even bothered with mindfulness of the breath until today. And now that I've calmed myself through so much Samādhi and loving-kindness, I've finally experienced the richness of the breath meditation. But that's also to say that you don't have to focus on your breath.

Tanya Wiser: That's right, beautiful. Focus on love for others, visual objects. Respecting each of us, our own path, right? Whether it's body challenges, breath challenges, all kinds of things. Listening to what will work, talking, asking questions.

There's a question from YouTube that reads: "In Zen, students work with teachers closely one-on-one. Do such regular meetings happen in mindfulness meditation?"

The answer to that would be to come to day-long retreats where there will be discussions with teachers to sign up for. There is one scheduled for September 10th, and we will be offering discussions with students during that time. Half-days with Gil or other teachers here on Wednesdays is a time to get to talk to a teacher about your practice. They're short, 10-15 minutes; you just kind of go in, you have a particular thing that you're struggling with, and you get a little bit of advice for practice and you go practice. Retreats are set up so that you get group and sometimes individual discussion times with teachers. So within this tradition, those are the primary ways that you get that kind of guidance and feedback, and coming to a class like this where there's question and answer as well.

Kodo, I'm going to hand you this little handy-dandy microphone.

Establishing a Daily Practice

Kodo Conlin: As we do a transition, if you want to stand up again and shake it out, or if you're comfortable, you're welcome to keep your seat. I just want to give that as an option because we've been still and seated for a long time.

There's this old teaching story of a student going to a teacher and asking, "What's the essence of the practice?" And the teacher writes on a piece of paper one word: "Attention." Then holds it up and shows it. And the student goes, "Is that all?" And then the teacher takes the paper back and writes "Attention, attention," and shows them the paper. Actually, attention over and over again.

This basic notion of mindfulness that's going to travel with us across the weeks and through our practice: to notice just what's happening while it's happening. Just to notice if it's pleasant or it's unpleasant. For this week, establishing and nurturing this connection between attention and the breathing body, the attention and the sensations of breathing. And this doesn't, it's not limited to our cushion. What we're going to talk about right now is establishing a daily practice, finding your practice at home.

Something that experience tells us is that in order to develop the skill of paying attention to what's happening while it's happening, and to sort of experience the pleasures that come through the practice, and the sense of integrity and healing and goodness, or getting in touch with something really deep in ourselves, it's very helpful to do the practice daily. The encouragement for these five weeks is to sit each day if you can.

I want to just give a couple of things for you to consider as you're establishing a daily practice. One, it can be really helpful to do a conscious reflection at the beginning and at the end. Very, very helpful to enlist the whole mind and body by saying or thinking to yourself, deliberately setting the intention, "Now I'm going to be attentive and mindful for this period of time." It's really remarkable how much that sort of aligns the system just by making that simple intention for yourself. Along with that intention, making the intention that for the time being—say the 20 minutes of your practice—"I'm going to let go of my preoccupations." The important ones will be right there for me when I'm done, or they'll accompany me during the whole sit, but at least I have that intention.

At the end of the sitting, it is very helpful to take half a minute just to reflect on how it went. Just to reflect on what happened. It's not so much a time to evaluate or criticize or anything like that, but just to take the moment to sort of knead the water back into the dough. This is what happened, this was the mindfulness that I had, this is how this experience went.

In addition to that, just like we were hearing in the Q&A a few minutes ago, everyone has their path that's unfolding for them through their own body and mind. All of us also have our own home with its unique characteristics. Your context is going to present its own little challenges, some of them we have in common. I mention the home because it's ideal to have a place in your home where you always do your sitting, if you have the space. Have that one spot kind of out of the way so people aren't walking by you and it's pretty quiet, if that's possible, so that when you go to sit down, you have the best chance of being not disturbed for that amount of time.

I have found it really helpful to do meditation in the morning. There's something about the machinery of the mind starting to click on; if I get involved with the phone or I start reading the news or if I get into the first activity of the day, it's actually harder for the mind to collect into mindfulness. So I try to do it first thing in the morning if I can. Other people have a different system where it's almost like the mind and body naturally coalesce into mindfulness or collectedness in the late afternoon or in the evening. Feel into what's going to work for your own circumstances.

Something I would like to emphasize is that if there are other people who live in your household, which is true for many of us, I find it really helpful to have a conversation. Not to enlist them to hold you accountable, like I don't want someone saying, "Did you meditate today?", but it is really helpful to let them know of your intention. "You know, I think for these five weeks I'm going to try sitting at such and such a time. It would be helpful if I could have your support in that." I found that particularly helpful.

So, the place, the time, the intention. I think one of the takeaways I want to emphasize here is that this is a process of experimentation, a little bit of trial and error in terms of time of day and the sort of context in which you're practicing. Try something out, see how it works, give it a go, make adjustments. And maybe we'll learn something about how to sustain a practice at home after five weeks of trying that.

We're going to move into another guided meditation, so if you'd like to find your meditation posture again.

Second Guided Meditation

Kodo Conlin: All right, finding ourselves again with an alert, upright spine, supported by the sitting base. Alert spine, relaxed wide shoulders, tucked chin, and softly closed eyes.

Returning to this practice that we're emphasizing for the week: sustaining contact between attention and the sensations of breathing. Sustaining contact between attention, awareness, noticing, and the felt experience of breathing wherever it's most predominant.

Maybe the nose. Maybe the sensations in the throat standing out. Maybe it's more easeful now to feel breathing in the whole body. Or to let go of the breathing and be attentive to the sense of sitting just where you are.

To sustain contact, one support can be offering a very, very soft note or a label that coincides with the breathing. Say, on the inhale, "in," perhaps on the exhale, "out." Or if you are noticing the breathing in the chest or in the belly, you may note "rising" with the sensations of rising, "falling" with the sensations of falling.

It doesn't have to be the right word, but just a very simple, very soft thought to help keep you here. In this particular practice, to be attentive to the breathing just as it is naturally. To be a naturalist of the in-breath, whether it's long or short. A naturalist of the out-breath, long or short. Just as it is.

Whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant, just to notice is enough. And with this support, the very soft whisper in the mind: rising, falling. Or if you're aware of the whole body, maybe "sitting, sitting."

In this last minute of this sitting, checking in with yourself. Tuning into just how much effort is needed to sustain contact here and now.

So when you're ready, you can open your eyes. We introduced a very, very well-known tool in this tradition during this sitting. Some traditions will count the breathing to help sustain attention, and this tradition emphasizes using a tiny little note or label. It almost sounds too substantial to say that; it can be like a little puff in the mind, very, very soft. And there's a way that it enlists the help of the thinking mind, the mind that really wants to veer off into its preoccupations. It's like you're making an ally of the thinking apparatus to help you be here and now and attentive.

Q&A and Reflections

Kodo Conlin: So we have another 10 minutes for sharing questions, comments, responses. Anything that came up.

Participant: When you started, you shared all the recommended postures, like the most holistic postures, but I noticed myself fluctuating every minute. Is it more important to just be comfortable versus kind of still and regimented in a certain posture?

Kodo Conlin: Sure. I think both of those things have their time. There's a time for practicing and cultivating a sort of skill in stillness, and it's really important I think to ease into that. You'll notice when we were doing the posture instruction, I was sort of delighted when I saw people pop up and get cushions and move around a little bit. Like I said, it's very, very well worth the time to sort of invest in finding the right posture for you. I would suggest being very gentle as we move in. If your body needs to move, let it move. I'll speak for myself only; I can be pretty wound up, and there's a lot of unwinding that has to happen. So please take care.

Holly: Thank you Tanya, thank you Kodo for this. I sometimes find that when I'm sitting or trying to meditate, I'm emphasizing the effort rather than being present. As many people noted, sometimes it's posture that I'm thinking about, or being comfortable, or thinking about things from the past, or worries of the future that kind of become my problems for right now. I just sometimes don't know if my practice is going anywhere, but I still persist because I know it's important. I feel like I have a heightened sense of awareness now, but in that awareness I'm like, "Oh gosh, here I go again. Let me just try and breathe." I know the thoughts don't go away and everything, but it's just being okay with it.

Tanya Wiser: Can I ask you something? You said, you know what's important. How do you know? How do you know it's important?

Holly: You know, I know it's probably not important, and it's the narrative that I've told myself over the years. Now in the effort of trying to sit with my thoughts and just try and see them like passing clouds, I get confused because I don't know if it's my own thinking or make-believe.

Kodo Conlin: What I feel inclined to say is, one, I saw a lot of heads nodding. I think there's a lot of relating to the kind of experience you're describing. Certainly wondering, is this going right? Is this going anywhere? One of the paradoxes of mindfulness practice is that as we begin to be established in mindfulness, we become more aware. As we become more aware, more is revealed. It may well be actually that things are getting more still for you, but there's more visibility now. Subjectively, it may not look that way.

I also wanted to highlight that mindfulness of thinking is advanced practice. Mindfulness of thinking takes a lot of practice. I think if we sort of follow along with the instruction and invest the time in each week, having the base of breathing, the base of the body, the base of mindfulness of emotion (which is often what's fueling some of the thinking), then we're in a much better position to be able to relate to thinking skillfully. So I want to encourage you, and I think your coming here was just the right thing.

Tanya Wiser: I'm tempted to say one more thing because there were so many nodding heads, and that is, you don't have to decide if those thoughts are important or not while you're meditating. You don't have to agree with them or disagree with them. You don't have to make them go away. Just respect them. Let them be. And gently, with respect, as much as you can, just "okay, that" and breathing. "Oh, in this breath, just so that there's not this power struggle."

Kodo Conlin: I'll say one more thing. There's a possibility of keeping breathing in the foreground and letting thinking move its way to the background without the thinking necessarily having to stop. It can kind of be like, if you're sitting next to a stream and you're watching the stream go by, that's your breathing. There can be the sound of the birds, or the people walking by behind you on a sidewalk, or the wind in the trees. These are the thoughts. Most of your attention is here in the foreground, and it's okay. The birds don't get in the way of the stream.

Participant: Hello again, thank you everyone. I was going to say something about pain, but now I want to say something about the restlessness thing. Mine pertained to thoughts, and I found some advice from Jack Kornfield^[9] helpful to just say label it "wandering," and just patiently go back to the breath over and over no matter how many times it took. And get a new thought, "wandering." And another practice was just labeling them pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral thoughts. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but I think he said that was a good idea. And then, I always talk about pain. If anyone has chronic pain, I have it too. What I noticed today from finally practicing mindfulness of the breath again after so long, was that changing postures and changing where I felt the breath allowed me to almost control the amount of pain I was perceiving from my hand. So I don't know, it's just an observation, not a lesson or something.

Tanya Wiser: Thank you. Let me... I can't resist. Find your big toe with your mind. Just bring your awareness into your big toe. You don't have to wiggle it, just as much as you can. If you can't find your big toe, find your thumb. Whatever you can with your awareness. Just see what you can sense, whether it touches another toe or finger, or coolness, or warmth. Can you feel where the toenail or fingernail is versus the bottom of the toe? Okay, now take a deep breath in and let go of the toe and feel into your belly. Bring your awareness as much as you can into the experience of the belly. See if you can relax it, let it fall over your pants. Feel the breath expanding in the belly. Soft belly. All right, in the next exhale, let go of the belly. And find the top of your head with your awareness. Like where that soft spot is when you're a baby. See if you can feel the individual hairs on your head, your scalp. Just bringing your awareness there. Okay, and let go of that. What happened to the big toe when you were paying attention to the top of your head? Were you aware of your big toe? It disappeared, but it didn't. So this is the commodity that we're working with, if you want to call it that, is awareness. And we can choose where we focus our awareness. That's the practice, right? Partly is learning to direct, and that's why you noticed maybe less pain when you're paying attention to the breathing in a different part of the body. We're just redirecting the energy of awareness, what we're taking in.

Homework and Closing

Kodo Conlin: To bring us to a close, in our last couple of minutes, again Tanya and I will be here afterwards if you have something more to share or another question comes up.

No class would be quite a class without a homework assignment, and we've mentioned most of these already. It's perfectly fine to leave the class tonight and don't think about meditation for the whole week. Perfectly fine. And, the way the class is built sequentially, you can get a lot of benefit if you practice in between as we go along. So we recommend a daily practice. Start with 20 minutes this week, one time a day. Focus on mindfulness of the breathing as we practiced it. There's a handout that's available online and there are a few there on the end of the stage also that have instructions and also a review of some of the major points.

The second thing is to choose some routine activity that you do during the day. It could be brushing your teeth, could be washing the dishes, walking here or there, and experiment with doing that with a little mindfulness, careful attention. Don't have your radio on in the background, or a conversation going on, just that one thing. Just this. "Well, it's time to do this." Thich Nhat Hanh^[10] loved washing the dishes.

And then the third thing is that, similar to the second, extending this mindfulness practice off the cushion, because the boundary is arbitrary between the cushion and everything else in your life. Tuning into the sensations of the body while you're doing any normal activity for about half an hour. Try doing that once this week and see how that goes. And then after tuning in for that half an hour, just check in. What happened? How was that? Kind of like the reflections we recommend at the end of the sittings. Is there any change that I notice? Is there any bit of well-being here? Am I more agitated than I was at the beginning? If it's not what you expect, that's the path. If you're aware enough to notice, you're doing the practice, whatever it looks like.

I want to extend my thanks to all of you. I am really delighted, so nice to be here with you at IMC. I'm looking forward to getting to know each of you a little bit as we go. Tanya, is there anything you would like to say to close?

Tanya Wiser: You can't do it wrong. Thank you. Thank you so much.