A Short Q&A On Meditation

A short question-and-answer session given in Massachusetts in 2017. The topics for this session revolve around the physical part of the practice. We talk about staying relaxed in the meditation position without falling over or holding yourself too tight.

Please note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

How's everybody doing?

Anybody find themselves nodding off to sleep during the meditation?

So I'd like to use the next five to seven minutes for questions that you guys have.

If you guys noticed anything in your practice that you'd like some adjustments,

Some help with.

Asking questions is always helpful.

So if you're trying to relax,

How can you stay upright?

So the way to sit,

You really want to find a posture that's kind of effortless.

That's more or less like how I sit.

It's really effortless for me.

And you're right that it's not relaxing completely because then you would just fall onto the floor and just sprawl onto the floor.

So I was at the Memorial Hall library and I led a meditation for youth.

So it was like middle school and actually middle school.

We're doing the walking meditation and I was walking and I said,

Yeah,

Relax,

Relax your shoulders,

Relax your arms.

I said relax your legs and then one of the kids collapsed on the floor.

It was very cute.

So the interesting balance of meditation,

The paradox of meditation,

The polarity of meditation,

The reason meditation works,

It's on one hand you're awake and you're alert.

You're upright,

You're alert,

You're awake.

And on the other hand you're relaxing more and more and more and getting deeper and deeper into this letting go process.

And you need to hold those two opposites simultaneously because if you're too,

I think I heard once the metaphor that if you're trying to shoot a gun and you're too tense and too focused and too,

You know,

Then it's kind of like shaky.

But if you're too relaxed then it's also kind of like not working.

So you need that nice balance of having like a structure,

Having like a stable and a form and a direction but completely relaxed.

And I found that that balance between being completely awake but also completely relaxed,

That's what allows the mind to rest in the middle because you've created these two poles.

And then in that place the mind rests.

So you'll actually see that although you're sitting upright,

And it's okay.

So sometimes I would also notice sometimes if I'm starting to slouch and I won't even think about it,

I'll just kind of then slowly sit up again.

You know,

So just slowly bring myself back up to an upright position without thinking about it.

But what eventually happens is that your mind gets more and more subtle and eventually the body almost just kind of like locks in position.

So even though you're still upright it's like you don't even notice it,

You're not there anymore.

It's just sitting all by itself.

Your body almost becomes like a shell and the mind just gets really subtle into another place.

So if you notice that you're starting to hunch over and curl over,

Just the second you feel that and you notice that,

Just really slowly bring yourself back up to a sitting position.

Don't think too much about it and keep going.

Also if you found that it's happening a lot,

It could also be because you're sitting too low.

So if you're sitting,

Like if I was just sitting on the floor,

You'd see that I'd naturally have like a curve in my back.

Right,

So I naturally have this curve in my back and I'm on the floor.

But if I were to sit up more,

Then suddenly I'm more upright.

So sometimes it's actually because you're not sitting high enough that your back is curved that you're having to use muscles to hold yourself up.

And that's why when you relax you kind of fall over.

But if you sit up higher then naturally you're kind of upright.

So that's also one way to kind of sometimes attack it is to change your sitting position,

Your height.

Okay,

What else?

So you all have like amazing,

Brilliant meditations.

Even if you don't really have a question but you'd like to know more about something,

I would still suggest asking just to bring the process into the minds.

Well for me it was more like what Joey was saying.

It's like my back starts to ache and my neck starts to ache.

So like I move it to stretch it out.

But it doesn't feel like,

I can feel like I'm letting go of what's outside and focusing on my breathing and then I focus on my neck and my back.

Sure.

I can see it's aching.

Yeah.

So I guess I just have to find the right.

.

.

Yeah,

So finding the right position,

The right way to hold the body that it kind of works for you.

And that also means that you're holding too much tension in your body during the day as well.

So it's often in meditation like I said when you come to that place of rest and stillness all these other things start coming up and you're like,

Oh okay.

You start to see things you didn't notice because all day long we're really tense and we're walking around,

We're doing everything and when you kind of stop you suddenly notice that you feel it.

It makes itself known.

So it could go both ways.

So one way,

Yes.

Also yeah,

Definitely work on your sitting,

Find the way that works for you.

And also consider getting a massage once a month.

It's not the end of the world when we do something nice for ourselves.

To really work that stuff out,

To really allow it to get some practical assistance,

Definitely.

Can I add something?

Sure.

Of that pain?

Definitely.

So when I came here I do have.

.

.

I'm just sitting not right.

So my whole right side hurts and I'm not comfortable sitting in meditation so usually I just lay down but I will sleep then,

I will think about my life and I will just sit down and I will just sit down.

And I don't really want to do it.

But this time you said let go of this and that and I just trusted that I would let go.

And I kind of,

When I breathed in,

I breathed into the areas I had pain in and this really helped this time.

So it was good during meditation,

It's back now.

But I mean I did really focus on it.

The first times it was oh my god this hurts and that hurts,

I don't want to sit,

Can I lean against something?

But you know with breathing in to those areas and just trusting this is fine helped me and sitting with my mind.

My friend William,

We were monks together in Germany and he got his PhD down in Boston and he works in pain clinics in Boston,

Goes into hospitals and he teaches mindfulness in ways to relate to the pain kind of like what you're saying,

To be present with it,

To breathe into it,

To notice its characteristics,

To not just think oh pain,

Bad,

Fight it.

But to really use the practice of meditation to go into that pain and to really experience it in a different way,

Change the relationship to it.

And often times the pain just kind of goes away because what we often call pain is not necessarily even pain,

It's maybe different sensations or different tensions or different things and by consciously breathing in that area.

I think in yoga they do this too,

Right?

They have the fire breathing they call it.

It's like a purifying breath they do in yoga which allows you to also be in a painful position or not painful but kind of at your limit so to say and to breathe in a certain way that you can kind of go through it,

You can work through it.

And also knowing that sometimes if you're in pain you need to stop doing whatever you're doing.

Also knowing that balance.

Time for one last question and or comment.

Yeah.

What's the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

Was that a good one?

Yes it was.

Do you know the answer?

Please.

I'll leave it up to Shelley for a minute.

So meditation,

It's ultimately this meditation that we're doing,

It's ultimately this process of stilling the mind,

Bringing the mind to a place of stillness which is also a place of peace.

When the mind is peaceful it's still,

Right?

Meditation is kind of that whole process from where we are to having a still peaceful mind,

The process of stilling the mind.

We can call meditation.

Within that process of meditation when I say to you,

Relax your eyes,

Relax your shoulders,

Relax your belly,

This is actually me saying that you're bringing your mind,

You're bringing your awareness to your eyes,

You're bringing your awareness to your shoulders.

So this is mindfulness.

This is that you're you're bringing something to minds,

You're bringing your mind to something.

Right?

So to do something mindfully it's that you're totally present while doing that thing.

Right?

So it's that you're filling your mind into that action and not thinking over here while doing something over here.

You're filling your mind.

So when I do the meditation,

It's like you're filling your legs with your mind,

You're filling your feet with your mind,

Then I say feel the ground.

So it's like we're filling the ground with the mind,

We're filling the room with the mind,

The space.

And then breath,

Right,

Then feeling your breath.

So another way,

Instead of me saying,

When I say,

Do you feel the breath coming in and out?

I could also say,

Be mindful of your breathing.

Right,

And that would be the same,

That would be interchangeable.

So mindfulness is just the application of the mind to something.

Applying the mind to something.

And you could also very mindfully steal money from somebody.

Right,

You could mindfully throw a brick through somebody's window.

When I was a kid I would very mindfully hurt my sister and think it was really funny.

Right?

Yeah?

Yeah,

So mindfulness can have goals that are both wholesome and unwholesome.

Mindfulness itself is neutral,

It's just putting your mind to what you're doing.

But meditation,

Right,

It's an act that has that kind of direction,

That goal.

That's a good question.

So I guess we'll do our walking meditation,

So we move our mats and cushions to the outside edges of the room.