Relaxing The Mind

What happens for you when your body or mind signals that it’s time to relax, and you pay attention to the signal? From a Netflix perspective, it might be just that: turn something on; turn off all the rest. That seems legit – I do it plenty.

From a mindfulness perspective, though, relaxation is different. It’s letting go. For me, it’s a few minutes in stillness, watching thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise, and lovingly letting them go. It’s a light touch, a commitment to go easy with each moment, each thought, this wandering mind, this being called “me.”

Relaxing the mind is the “loving” element of loving awareness. It’s rejuvenating and regenerative. It's the pause that allows wisdom and compassion to naturally arise. Best of all, it’s a sweet way to live.

Transcript

Hey everyone it's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 495.

Nice to see you all and big hugs and hellos to all of the new people who are here including some of you and some of our longtime people who I got to meet and hang out with at last week's Mindfulness and Law Society conference.

Wasn't it great?

So I've missed you all again.

I've been gone since I think it's July 3rd and here we are on the last day of July and I feel like I always say this but a lot has happened in the last few weeks in the year and so it's it's just good to be together in this way kind of a refuge from from everything.

So lately we've been looking at something called the three trainings and these are the the three ways that mindfulness invites us to train our minds and our minds of course being this whole being right not only the mind that resides upstairs but also the body which doesn't really have a mind of its own but it's part of this whole system and you know when we're doing this training sometimes we're training based on what comes in on the data we're receiving but sometimes we want to be aware it may be coming in through our our traditional mind the brain sometimes it's coming in from our heart sometimes it's coming in from our guts might even be coming in from our fingertips or our toes right so we're really training this whole being and the three trainings are just one scheme and mindfulness has a few and so in this scheme we're training with the first element which is Dhana or generosity and then the second one which is Sila or ethics and then the third one which is Bhavana which is traditionally or classically translated as concentration so if you're new to the wake-up call and you're interested in hearing a little bit about Dhana and Sila in the context of lawyering then you can find that on past wake-up calls I've been talking about that this summer and in the spring and today I want to talk a little bit about Bhavana so again Bhavana is is often translated as concentration and the idea is that to be a mindful person and a mindful lawyer we want to we don't want to train in generosity and ethics and to be concentrated or focused so concentration as a practice is a whole path and some of you may have heard of Jhana practice in which a practitioner is invited into ever deeper levels of concentration and I have just the the wispiest most basic familiarity with that practice not going to talk about that but for the most part for our purposes unless we're planning on training with the Jhanas on long retreats and with someone who is a qualified teacher Bhavana is more about everyday concentration which is primarily about relaxing the mind and Jhana states as I understand it are also about relaxing the mind in ever greater degrees but let's play with the idea of Bhavana as a practice of ordinary relaxation in each moment so what does it mean to relax the mind and it might mean something different for each of us but I'm gonna start with that it's not something we learned in law school when I look at this mind here this whole body mind or body heart mind it's kind of the opposite right I was trained to to keep things taught in other words to keep the body on the ready to keep the mind on the ready to say how high if anyone even remotely nearby yelled jump and the same you know with this cognitive mind I was trained to be ready to to analyze to respond often with a counterpoint or argument but always with the right answer in any moment and not only to do that in any moment but to be able to switch from whatever was on my mind in any given moment whether that was a different case or matter or a thought like I need to call mom or I wonder how my daughter did on her French test right and not only to switch but to be able to switch back and forth and back and forth you know I have this recollection of so many times when a partner would poke their head into my office and say got a sec or a kid would appear and I'd look up from some or a kid would appear and I'd be at home working and in either case and I'd look up from some you know 50-page industrial lease with this completely confused and unfocused look right and it would take a minute before I could switch to sure have a seat or sure you can have another piece of pizza help yourself right so in one way you could say that the the mind maybe the mind body was focused on the lease and that that was a concentrated mind now wouldn't be completely wrong it was it was concentrated and focused on the lease but it was also I would say a very sharp-edged mind right reading for whether each provision was correct for was it good for my client could it be used against my client in the future could it be dispensed with could it be better written could it be condensed you know was it in line with the latest case law or the statutes right so everybody here understands right so concentrated and focused but not relaxed right and that legal mind on alert analyzing thinking arguing we trained that mind so we're talking about the trainings of Donna and Selah and Bhavna we trained the legal mind too we walked into law school and maybe some of us read for the bar but over that time over those years those three years in law school however long it took you to read for the bar we intentionally cultivated those qualities of mind even if we never sat down and told ourselves that's what we were doing and we might have done that too because some of it just comes under the basic rubric of critical thinking right and some of what you may have been taught in law school was also explicit and the reason I mentioned that is because the mind that's relaxed that form of concentration that takes time too right that takes training too or our at least it has for me and continues to be a training for me so some of you know I was just on a on a retreat it was a nine-day retreat a loving kindness retreat and it was privileged to be there an amazing retreat and to do some pretty intensive training in this kind of relaxed concentration meta practice loving kindness practice is considered this kind of practice and and now I'm back and then between the retreat and there was the mindfulness and law society conference the training is there I remember it but it's not instantly available the way it was during the retreat or at the end of the retreat right so I'm continuing to train on the cushion in my formal practice right here and also in portable practice throughout the day but I'm just saying relaxing the mind it takes some training right and some time so I'll share a little bit about the meta retreat next week but for today let's just sit together and we'll play around with a little bit of relaxation practice okay alright so finding whatever posture will support you being in stillness for the next 10 minutes taking a moment whatever that posture is sitting standing lying down and checking in with the body and just seeing yeah how am I doing right now and doing that with with a lot of love with loving awareness checking in oh this is how the body feels right now and then beginning to turn the attention to the the breathing the body breathing just the easy in and out of the body breathing and as you as you check in see if there's a small measure of a little bit more relaxation that you can bring to the body can you relax a little bit more than you are the shoulders the jaw the eyes and can you relax the breath a little bit as well so that each in breath flows in naturally and each out breath is just like a tiny sigh just a letting go of that breath so loving awareness of the this remarkable body that we live inside of and of this breath and then just taking a look at the mind and whatever is arising can you turn your loving attention to the mind and just let it go nothing special about this process just noticing and with loving awareness noticing and letting go that's maybe emotions not pushing anything away no antagonism towards anything at all just noticing with loving awareness and letting go inviting the body to relax and let go and the breath and the mind thanks everybody hope you hope you enjoyed that take good care be safe out there I will see you next week