Meditation For Flexibility With Dr. Diana Hill

This guided meditation explores psychological flexibility through awareness, openness, and intentional attention. You’ll be gently guided to notice your thoughts, emotions, and sensations without becoming entangled in them. The practice supports you in creating space within your mind and body, while reconnecting with what matters most to you. It offers a grounded and empowering way to respond more skillfully to life’s challenges with clarity and ease.

Transcript

All right, So let's begin with the bell. Do you want to do our honors today? Yeah, Sure. So the bell is a reminder to bring our attention back to the here and the now. We all had things that we were doing before this, We all have things that we're going to do after this. Maybe our attention is fixed on something or feeling scattered. But we can bring our attention back to the here and now just by shifting it first to what's happening in our world around us the sounds. Is there a particular sound that would be nice to let your attention settle on? We can bring attention to the temperature of air on our skin. Where we make contact with this air in the room that we share. We can bring our attention to sort of our interpersonal awareness, Which is our awareness of other people sharing a space with us. Even with your eyes closed, You can feel someone to your left or to your right. People outside of this room. And then we can turn our eyes in, Attention to our inner world. And one of the sort of most present things that we can bring our attention to is to our breath, The rise and fall of our breath, But we can follow it from its very beginning to its turnaround spot where it pauses and back down again. So you can bring some attention to this breath to your body being breathed. So there's a lot that you cannot control about what's happening right now. You can't control the sounds. You can't control the temperature or the people around you. And you may be able to control your breath, But sometimes that causes more problems. What you can control is your attention. And you can shift your attention not only to these physical things. But you can also shift your attention to your heart. And in your heart, You may have some feelings. Feelings that you like and feelings that you don't like. Things that feel overwhelming. Scary. Things that you want. Things that you don't want. Things that you care about. So as you move into the space of your heart, Of the feeling world inside of you, Can you get flexible with that too, That there's nothing to fix here. The matters of the heart. Can you be willing and allow whatever it is that you're feeling right now. So there's flexibility with your attention where you choose to place your attention, But there's also flexibility with your feelings. Some feelings you can't control. You can't control how much you love someone. You can't always control how scared you are. How embarrassed you feel. How much you regret. But what you can control is how much space you create for those feelings. And then we can have flexibility with our minds. This whole time, We can be flexible with our feelings. But this whole time that we've been doing this practice, Your mind has had a lot of things to say. Lots of commentary. And again, We're not very good at controlling our minds. Our minds tend to get louder, The more we try and control them. So just as you made some space with your heart, Make space with your mind, Maybe appreciate your mind. Thank you for its efforts. Thank you. But what you can control is not following the mind. Thank you. So there's lots of space in your mind, This flexible mind, For thoughts to come and to go. And we can become more flexible with our perspective, With our sense of self. So much of this experience so far has been us sitting here as me, Looking at my thoughts, Looking at my attention, Looking at my heart, And looking at myself, Looking at myself, Looking at myself, Looking at my heart. And we can become more flexible with our perspective. So we can become more flexible with our thoughts. We can become more flexible with our thoughts. And we can become more flexible with our thoughts. The person driving in the car on the freeway has a different perspective than you on their way to work or the airport or to drop their kids off at school, How would they view your experience right now, The ocean, The mountains, The green fields that are starting to pop up with sour grass? How would they view your experience right now? So you can shift your perspective, You can zoom out when you feel so zoomed in. That's something you can control. And we can have flexibility with our sense of purpose, Our sense of why, Our sense of what is most important to us in this moment, How do we want to sit that shows that instead of being so caught up in our heads or so caught up in our feelings or so caught up in our me, How do you want to be? What do you want to say yes to even though you're scared? That's your chosen purpose. And it's unique to you, Your life, Your path. Only you know your chosen purpose. And that's something else that you can control. You can live that purpose right now. How you sit, The speech you choose, The actions you take, The choices you make. And when you get clear on your chosen purpose, You can't help but be flexible in your behavior. You may feel drawn. Drawn to pull the knife out first. But you know that your chosen purpose is related to life. Choosing the next right step and taking it. Even if it doesn't look right to somebody else, Or it doesn't quite feel right in the sequence of things, You know it's right. Because it's linked to your life, Your openness, Your freedom, And your offering to this world. So you are flexible in your attention, In your heart. You're flexible in your mind, In your perspective, In your purpose, And ultimately in your actions. And from this space of flexibility, Can you open up, Open up the front of the body, Like French doors opening up to your full experience of what's in front of you? Can you open up the back of the body, Like French doors opening up to your full experience of what's behind you? Can you open up the top of your head? Opening up like a window to that which is so much bigger than you. Open up the sides of your body, Like windows to relationships, To experiences, To connections. When you are flexible in this way, You get to open up all of you, Open, Engaged, So that everything that comes your way is just one more thing to open to, To respond flexibly to. To not get hooked, Staying open from the front and the back and the top and the sides. Practice and find those spaces that you tighten up, Loosen your grip, Flexible and fluid and open. Pema Chodron writes, But loving kindness, Maitri, Towards ourselves doesn't mean getting rid of anything. Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years. We can still be angry after all these years, We can still be timid or jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to try and change ourselves. Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of practice is you or me or whoever we are right now, Just as we are. That's the ground. That's what we study. That's what we've come to know with tremendous curiosity and interest. Getting to know ourselves and becoming more playful. So we can close with the three bows, The three jewels. We begin with being, Taking a bow to our true nature, Our good nature. And to becoming, The unfolding of who we're becoming, Our teachers and our teachings. And then we bow to each other, Our belonging, Community, Our sangha, Inside and outside of this room.