Being With What Is

Let Lou take you on a soothing meditation that will help increase awareness and improve the ability to be present. Although life is a combination of ups and downs, use this practice to teach you how to lean into discomfort and improve your capacity to respond to difficult scenarios and emotions.

Transcript

Close down our eyelids.

Relax the muscles of the eye.

Relax the muscles through the face,

Through the upper cheekbones,

And allow the lower jaw to relax from the upper jaw.

Let the eyes melt back into their sockets,

Moving our focus from the outside world to the inside world.

Find a widening through the upper chest and then a lengthening through the sides of the waist and the sides of the neck.

And then allow the weight of the lower body to release.

Letting go the need to hold on.

And find some movement of the breath as it moves in and fills up your entire back body,

Entire sides of your ribs.

And then exhale,

Allow the warm air from inside your body to move into the outside world.

Again,

Each inhale filling up through the back of the shoulder blades.

And exhale,

Let it out.

And for the next couple breaths,

Just to settle us a little deeper,

I'd like you to try to simply note on each inhale,

Inhaling,

And silently note on each exhale,

Exhaling.

One of the greatest powers that this practice gives us is the ability to be in control of us and not have to be worried about the outside world,

Meaning our needs.

To be poised in the face of chaos,

To be resilient in the face of failure,

To be able to be with all of life's flux as it comes.

And we learned a big core of this is learning to respond to our situations rather than to react.

So through our meditation today,

We are going to learn to be with parts of our physical body.

And then we're going to do a visualization to bring that into our emotional body.

In the Buddhist tradition,

There are three feeling tones that make up the entirety of our life experiences.

And each time we experience them,

We normally have a response.

And those tones are pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Or neutral.

So we tend to cling to what is pleasant,

To run away,

To retract from what's unpleasant.

And we kind of don't even realize that there is this neutral part of our lives.

So continuing to follow your breath,

I'd like you to begin to scan down through your body,

And see if you can find a part of your body that might feel unpleasant.

So it might be a tightness somewhere.

It doesn't have to be an extreme feeling.

It can be maybe just a place where you feel a little bit stuck,

A little bit unease.

Or it might be an unpleasant odor,

Or a taste in your mouth.

And once you find this place,

Notice if your first reaction is to want to fix it,

Want to change what it is.

And instead,

In our practice,

We are going to learn to see if we can just be with the experience.

See if we can just be with the unease that is in our body,

Without feeling like there's anything for us to do.

And allow each breath to send energy to this part of the body.

And almost like you're just leaning on a door,

Allow yourself to lean into the unpleasant feeling.

And remember,

Being able to lean into our physical body will trigger us during our regular life,

When we have negative emotions come up,

Or something that we don't like happens,

And we're able to lean into it rather than want to fix it or run away.

Take a nice cooling breath in and let it out.

Release the thought of the unpleasant in your body.

And we're going to change our focus.

We're going to scan through and see if you can find a part of your body that is pleasant.

And this can be a little bit tougher.

And it might just be that you find the peace and the satisfaction of sitting in your meditation.

And at any time,

If you can't find a feeling,

You can always just come back to your breath,

Come back to the noting of inhaling and exhaling.

And if you do find a pleasant sensation,

Notice if there's a feeling of wanting to grasp at it,

Wanting to really enjoy it more,

To make it more of your experience.

And just like with unpleasant,

Instead of wanting to do anything with this pleasant feeling.

Using the breath as an anchor,

See if you can simply be with the feeling.

And leaning into it.

Take a cooling breath in and out.

Moving on to a part of your body that is neither unpleasant or pleasant.

So there's a neutrality to it.

It could be the heels of your feet,

Your gums,

Some part that is neither unpleasant or pleasant,

But falls into this kind of in between gray area.

And I'd like you to pay attention and just be curious about this part.

Giving some light to something that we don't normally give our full attention towards.

And leaning into this part of our body.

Take a breath in and let it out.

We're going to now affirm all of the parts of us.

To bring them all in together as an expression of who we are,

Of the ups and the downs and the in between.

So silently in your head or you're welcome to do it out loud as well.

Repeat.

I am balanced.

I am centered.

I am whole.

I am balanced.

I am centered.

I am whole.

Take a breath in and out.

And for the last part of our meditation,

We're going to bring to mind something in our actual lives that we can use this work that we've done of leaning in to the unpleasant and just being with it.

We can foresee a situation happening in our life where this could be useful.

I'd like you to think of something that happens in your work or in your life that triggers you into reaction mode.

Maybe it's an angry email that you get that you just want to reply back and tell that person how you feel.

Maybe it's when your son or daughter does something that always makes you super angry and you just want to scream at them and yell at them.

Go to this place in your mind,

Find a trigger point for you,

Something that stirs you emotionally.

And imagine that event happening.

And from this space of being able to respond,

Maybe you start to feel that emotion that you feel when this trigger point happens.

And instead of doing anything about it,

Through the anchor of our breath,

See if you can allow yourself to lean in to the experience and just be with what is happening.

And it's from this place of poise that we can then mindfully choose to respond in a way that's going to best serve all who are involved,

Especially best serve us.

Take a breath in and let it out.

Slowly begin to come back to your body.

Come back to the weight of the body resting on the cushion or the chair.

Back to the feeling of your hands.

Release any thought,

Release any focus.

And whenever you feel complete with your meditation,

You can go ahead and open your eyes,

Come back being able to respond and be balanced throughout your day.

It's always a pleasure to guide you.

Namaste.

Reviews

This was a new experience for me. Lovely way to get in touch with being with what is. 🙏

Great pacing

This was exactly what I needed- practice sitting with discomfort and not trying to change or fix it. I believe this meditation is helping my body shift on a cellular level. Will be continuing this daily practice to build patience, poise and resilience. My deepest gratitude.

I really liked the explanation of the 3 main experiences of life and the practice of leaning into them to enable equanimity. Very helpful technique! Thanks

Lou you get me into the zone so effectively…thank you!

Thank you Lou. That was soothing and calming, just what I needed to centre myself on a morning where I woke up feeling unsettled 🙏🏾☺️💗.

A great practice for presence and awareness of what happens within us. I loved the delineation of responding vs reacting. It can be difficult to lean into the unpleasant feelings and this meditation was really helpful for managing that process.

Loved this - poised and ready to respond. Thank you!

This is a very good practice directed nicely and well paced. Thank you 🙏

This is a great tool for me Lou. Thank you for sharing you gift of healing!

Thank you for this meditation. This technique really works for me. Can actually feel a sense of ease come over me with the “leaning in” sequence. Aah!

Would like to point out, however, that in my iphone there seems to be something missing at the beginning. When I tap the start arrow it jumps right into the middle of a sentence giving relaxation guidance. There’s no introduction. ??? Have tried the “start” several times and still does same thing. ??? 😘

Pleasent, unpleasant and neutral...
Need to ponder on these...
Thank you 💚

Definitely a meditation I could benefit from practicing every day. Thank you!

During these times Of political chaos, this meditation truly helped me feel more balanced.

Calming, soothing, and centering. Thank you. 😊

Great meditation to focus my mind and help balance thoughts! Thank you!

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to become balanced this morning. Namaste 🙏🏼.

And usual, timely and excellent. I love these.

And it’s always a pleasure to be guided by you! Thank you Lou! 🙏🎈

A very simple and effective tool for life. Thank you