Class And Practice - Our Open Conversation with Life

A live class offered at MNDFL in Brooklyn, NY that begins with a 15 minute talk on the nature of emotional experience. It concludes with a 25-30 min practice for working with difficult emotions that integrates Buddhist meditation with the "parts work" of Internal Family Systems. This powerful practice begins with cue for calming and opening space in the mind-body before moving in to processing with our emotional parts.

Transcript

So one way of framing this life,

Whether you think of it as a spiritual path or conscious evolution or the examined life or personal development,

Waking up,

Whatever words you like to put to that process.

One way of defining that,

One way of framing this experience that we're all going for is stepping into a conversation with life itself.

Stepping into a dialogue with the universe,

If you will,

With experience,

With what goes on within these bodies,

These nervous systems,

These minds,

These hearts.

We are constantly in dialogue,

Actually,

Which seems like a kind of pedestrian point to be making,

But it's actually one of those deceptively simple points in that it's kind of profound and we skip past this essential element of our lives all too often and all too easily.

That we are in dialogue with our experience.

Meditation is very much a dialogue with ourselves,

Especially the form of meditation we'll explore in this class.

Part one of the dialogue,

It's kind of like a call and response.

Have you ever been to a kirtan?

In a kirtan,

Which is a devotional form of worship in the Vedic traditions,

One person sings the mantra and then the community sings the mantra back.

It's this really beautiful process of one person leading but everybody responding.

There's this call and response.

When we practice meditation,

We're issuing a call.

The application of a technique is like issuing a call.

Then there's a reverberation,

There's a response called our experience,

Our reaction to that technique.

I've been talking about this a lot lately,

That meditation is inherently vulnerable.

Going within is taking a risk.

It's letting go.

We're dropping our guard.

There is a response.

Our body has an involuntary hardwired response to vulnerability called defense.

Either our preemptive defense mode that most of us live in most of the time,

Where we're just strategizing and planning and organizing and laundry listening and remembering and fantasizing,

Which is all about safety actually.

It's all about how do I avoid distress and stay close to what's warm,

What feels good.

Then we have our more extreme defenses that come out when those buttons get pushed and vulnerability is exposed a little bit too much.

The way I come at things when life feels out of balance,

Which is generally speaking either chaos or rigidity.

We either go into fuck it or we clamp down and we start making rules and try to get our house in order.

That's another way in which we're having a conversation with life.

Somebody pushes my buttons a little bit too much and going to this side or going to that side is our response to that.

Then there's another reverberation because if I say fuck it and I go on some sort of binge,

Shopping,

Drinking,

Sex or otherwise,

Or rage,

Or panic,

Another kind of form of binge,

Or if I clamp down and start making rules for people and get rigid and tight around things,

Then we're going to get another response of life is going to give us feedback from that on what those choices resulted.

We're in dialogue with things.

We're in dialogue both outside of ourselves in terms of our actions and what we put out and then what we receive back and the situations in our lives are feedback.

If you're in a situation that isn't working,

That isn't flowing,

That's a form of feedback.

If you're in a situation that is working,

That is flowing,

That's another form of feedback.

This is very general and loose,

But of course it gets much more specific and intricate.

With meditation,

We're applying a technique internally and we're getting a feedback called now I'm freaking out,

Or now I'm uncomfortable,

Or now I feel like I can't do it,

Or now I'm numbing,

Or now I'm blissed out and feel connected,

Or parts of me are relaxing and something deeper is emerging.

That's another form of feedback.

This is one of the reasons why I am committed to identifying as an agnostic practitioner,

Because both theism and atheism are actually forms of faith that entails some blindness.

You can't prove to me that God doesn't exist,

Nor can you prove that God exists.

Atheism is actually a way of shutting down the conversation saying no,

I'm sure.

The same way that theism is a way of shutting down the conversation to me subjectively.

This doesn't have to be your truth,

But to me,

My experience of it is it's a way of saying no.

I'm sure,

I know what's going on,

And therefore this is black and this is white,

And no more questions.

It comes from a book now,

Which is attractive,

Which is so alluring.

One of the reasons why religions are the opiates of the masses is it would be so much less vulnerable to say there is a certain way that I am sure of.

I don't have to question anymore.

I don't have to deal with this ambiguity anymore about matters as large as what is this existence and what does it all mean and who am I and what am I here for?

I've come to prefer the anxiety of I don't fucking know,

Because there's room.

There's room for the dialogue to stay open.

There's room for me to discover things.

There's room for mystery.

There's room for me to be wrong and to admit it and to choose a different way.

It keeps the conversation open.

With regards to our emotions,

Which is what we're here to explore,

We're in dialogue with them as well,

And we don't realize it.

Our emotions are giving us a form of feedback that we respond to that feedback,

Usually some form of shutting it down,

Or it becomes our boss and it takes over and begins dictating to us what we do next,

What we think next,

What we say next.

Both of those are forms of communication that we're having with our emotional experience in the moment that they come up.

It's a communication.

And then there's a response.

You repress enough anger and soon enough you'll flip out on somebody that you don't really intend to.

Soon enough you'll have an exaggerated response and somebody will trigger your anger and all the latent stuff you've been holding in your body and repressing all that time is going to come out.

Just because we push it down doesn't mean it goes away.

Knowing this and seeing this opens a door,

Opens a door to having a conscious conversation with our emotions,

To stop this blind intoxication that most of us enter into when we are triggered and activated.

Our relationship to our emotions tends to be nebulous because nobody really teaches us about them.

Nobody really teaches us what they really are or how to experience them or that we need to process them or that we have a choice other than indulging them or repressing them that we can learn to hold.

Very important skill.

Can you hold your anger?

Can you hold your distress?

Can you hold your worry?

Can you hold your loneliness?

Can you hold your joy?

Can you hold your well-being,

Your sense of well-being?

Can we hold ourselves just like a child wants to be held?

So it is with our emotion.

And then that's another form of communication.

That's a form of communication that says I accept you and I'm willing to be here with you.

Again,

Just like a child wants.

To feel held,

To feel accepted,

To feel nurtured.

It's okay to be you.

I'm going to be here no matter what.

Even if you completely fuck it up and get into all kinds of trouble,

I still love you no matter what.

I will be a good parent to myself,

To my emotional experience.

I will be the warm,

Stable base that every child needs to rest with,

Go out and explore the world and then come home to over and over again.

That's the process of this meditation that we're about to do,

Is it's a re-parenting process.

Learning how to be the parent in our world.

Perhaps a parent that we never had.

Many of us.

But that's not a ship that's sailed.

We can take charge of that process right now.

What's funny about this process is,

And many of you have experienced this if you've been coming to this class for a little while,

Is we can step into a literal conversation with our emotions.

There's some heads starting to nod.

It's wild.

But our bodies,

Like Nietzsche said,

Have more wisdom than our deepest philosophy.

They have information.

They are data processing machines from a certain point of view.

They have information for us.

In the practice we're about to do,

We're going to work with our emotional selves.

We're going to see that we tend to blend with our emotional selves,

Which is what blinds us to the communication that we're all in.

Because if anger comes up and then anger takes over and it's a situation that's like this,

Then I think I'm anger in that moment.

There's no space between me and the anger.

We'll get some space from our emotional experience so that we have some choices,

We have some options in terms of how we're relating to this emotion.

We'll see that we can shift our relationship to our emotions.

I might hate anger at the onset,

But I can ask that reaction within myself to just chill out for a second.

Let's see what else is there.

Let's explore this.

We can get down to a place through that process of just relaxing our reaction,

Relaxing our reaction,

Relaxing our reaction,

A place where we're actually willing to be accepting of something relatively intense.

From there,

I'll say this as quickly as I can.

With regards to difficult emotions,

There are really two categories.

They're either a hurt or a defense.

It's much more labyrinthine than that,

Of course,

But really those two categories are what we're working with at all times.

The hurt parts of us need,

In order to heal,

A communication that very much looks like parenting,

Very much looks like caring for,

Of holding,

Of tending to,

Of getting down,

Bending down and getting eye level with that child.

What's going on with you today?

Why are you freaking out?

What can I do to help you?

Our defenses are like angry bodyguards that maybe in the heat of the moment don't make the best choices,

But wouldn't it be great if we could enter into a relationship with them that was more friendly,

An allyship rather than you coming in and hijacking me and then look out world,

Here I come.

But if that bodyguard had a better sensibility and there was an open line of communication,

So the kind of communication our defenses need from us is one of the friending,

One of mutual appreciation.

That's the idea.

We'll put it into practice and just see how this dialogue goes today.

Is anybody due to meditation in the room?

Show of hands.

Awesome.

Welcome.

Welcome.

I'm glad you're here.

We begin by letting our seats be really heavy,

Our legs positioned in a way that they feel sustainable.

We'll practice for a good while,

But there will be a break in the middle.

But for reals,

Let your butt be heavy.

Feel that support of the earth.

Let the spine be long.

We want the collarbones to be wide and the heart to neither be concaving in or out.

So placing the hands at mid-thigh will help support that situation.

It's best if the neck is both long and straight,

So we'll find the length by lifting from the crown.

Top tips of the ears go directly upwards.

And then we'll find the straightness by tilting the forehead forward just a little bit,

Like half an inch.

It might feel good to let the chin move in towards the throat just a tiny,

Tiny bit as well.

Eyes gently closed.

Tongue can relax in its palate.

And you can begin by just welcoming yourself to the space of your practice.

You can communicate to yourself some useful things,

If you like,

Such as noticing how safe you are here,

That there's no threats.

Quite the opposite.

You're in an environment of goodness,

Of belonging with these family members that surround you.

You're in an environment that is built to support your well-being and your self-discovery.

And that is grand.

And then please begin taking big,

Deep belly breaths.

Breathing in through the nose and expanding the belly,

Breathing out through the nose or the mouth,

Very relaxed,

Non-ambitious,

Gentle,

Deep,

Long breaths with no forcing whatsoever.

This will automatically trigger our nervous system into winding down over the course of the next three minutes.

So keep breathing.

Seeds of hope through your shouts.

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Reviews

Thank you! 🙏

Eye opening! I’ll never forget this experience, thank you ✨

Very nice. Thank you.

Very powerful experience. Lots to learn 🙏

Amazing!!!!!

Thank you so much!

Nice, with ease.

Thank you. Opened up. Felt it. Wound down. Thank you.

Very very powerful . I’m working with Karma right now. This meditation is what I needed. I will continue with this. With much gratitude.

This was truly amazing!!! Thank you so much. I love the practice of holding your emotions like you would hold a small child. I felt so much compassion and love for my sadness 💗🙏

This was a very valuable experience for me. many thanks! 🙏

Transformative.

Incredible. Difficult. Growing.

Incredibly helpful, thank you so much for sharing this process and learning.

Thoughtful and compassionate presentation of therapeutic techniques. Beautifully paced meditation, thank you, I shall return to this many times.