Untangle And Be Free

Join Steve for the 'Untangle And Be Free' strategy for dealing with inner experience. Steve learned this approach during his study with meditation teacher and contemplative neuroscience consultant Shinzen Young.

Transcript

Stable,

Supported,

Upright position.

And just for a moment,

Just letting your mind go wherever it goes,

For as long as it goes there.

Just settling in.

Relaxing the muscles of your face,

Jaw,

Tongue,

Throat.

Breathing normally.

Suddenly relaxed.

Even if any time you want to move,

Need to move,

Please feel free to do that.

And for a few minutes,

Turning your attention to the inner visual space.

The inner visual space.

What I mean by that is,

The images,

Visual material that's inside,

In your mind.

Rather than the visual material that's outside,

So to speak,

Coming in your eyes.

And if you wanted to,

You could use a label,

A rhythmic kind of a label,

Which helps in bringing your attention to that space.

It's fine if you drift off,

It's not a big deal.

You could say something like,

See.

See.

See.

You could say it inside of your head,

Kind of like saying it in your mind.

Or if,

Particularly if you're at home,

If you find yourself extremely scattered,

Or you're in the grips of an extremely powerful inner experience,

Sometimes speaking the label out loud is the best option to do.

It really helps.

And whatever you do,

Whether you speak out loud or speak inside your mind,

See.

See.

Try to do it in a voice that is calm,

That's relaxed.

So even if your internal process is very agonizing,

For instance,

And it needn't necessarily be,

You could be feeling quite alright,

But even if it's very,

Very agonizing and inside there's this raging tornado,

Just having your own voice inside.

See.

See.

Being calm,

Peaceful,

Equanimous in that way,

Very,

Very powerful.

You can also subvocalize,

Whispering,

Kind of saying the words,

But not the sound doesn't come out with your mouth.

This is a range of intensity of the labeling that will be good and useful depending on how scattered you are and how intense the inner experience is.

So just for a few moments,

Resting our attention on the inner space.

Now it's possible that there's nothing there at all,

And that's fine.

You could consider that to be a rest state,

A rest state,

A kind of a gray scale blank or just nothing really much going on there.

In which case you could label rest,

Rest,

Rest.

You don't have to label,

These are just additional tools that are useful.

And you may as well,

For now anyway,

Seeing as we're learning about it,

You may as well try them inside your mind.

It doesn't matter if you can tell exactly what that visual content is,

You may just get ghostly fleeting images,

Or you may get the hint of a kind of a picture and so on.

You don't need to work to clarify what is the content of the inner visual space.

It's more a case of looking at the contour.

In other words,

Being aware that there is something there is enough.

You don't need to clarify what exactly am I looking at here.

You may find that it's not very clear a lot of the time.

That's fine.

So you're labeling either see,

Or you could label rest if there's nothing there.

For a few minutes,

See in.

Roll.

Roller.

Roller.

And you may notice other sensations intrude.

Or are felt.

For instance,

You may have a strong emotional component which is very,

Very difficult to ignore,

So to speak.

Or maybe some sort of external sound or physical discomfort.

And that's fine.

You just allow those things to go on in the background.

You don't have to exclude them from your attention or your awareness.

You're deliberately concentrating on see in,

In this case.

But it's perfectly alright if you have other sensations going on.

You don't have to push them away or suppress them or repress them.

Just allow them simmering like a sausage in a pan,

You might say,

In the background.

Okay,

Very good.

Now let's turn your attention to your internal auditory space or what you can hear.

Now it may be that you can detect actual fragments or loops of conversations,

Phrases,

Sentences and so on.

It's also possible that you can hear songs or a kind of just a sound of some sort.

It's also possible that you hear a sort of whispery kind of feeling there,

That you're rumbling,

You're not really sure what's there,

But something's there,

That sort of thing.

So it doesn't really matter.

You don't need to be at all clear about what it is that's being detected in your internal sound space.

It doesn't matter what it is.

It's just to be aware of it.

And if there's nothing there,

Well you could just note rest.

So you could note for instance here,

Here,

Here,

If you wanted to use labeling.

Once again in a calm,

Peaceful,

Maybe soothing voice,

That has a big effect.

And you don't need to use the labels,

I'm suggesting that you try them just because we're learning it,

Why not?

And if there's nothing there,

You could note rest,

Rest.

So for a few minutes,

Enter in.

.

.

Alright,

Good.

Now let's turn your attention to what you can feel.

Now we could make a distinction between body sensations that are physical,

Purely physical in nature,

The feeling of your legs on the floor and things like that,

Or maybe you've got a bit of pain or aching in your body,

Or pleasurable relaxation.

But what we're going to do is we're going to feel in,

Feel in to sensations that are emotional of nature.

And if you feel any kind of emotional state of any kind,

There is a physical component to it.

There's the feeling of happiness,

The feeling of sadness,

The feeling of anger or the feeling of humor or whatever in the body.

And it's that category of sensation that we are looking at when we talk about feeling in.

So you may find upon inspection that there's nothing much going on,

In which case there is something going on,

It's a rest state.

So you could just note a rest state.

You look inside,

Nothing,

You know,

Nothing with you there at all,

Can't feel anything much,

Well,

Rest state.

You can note at that point if you wanted to label rest,

You could say rest,

Rest,

And you can enjoy the feeling of the rest in that feeling space.

We might be able to find some sort of emotional feeling even presently in your body now,

In which case you could note feel,

Feel,

Feel.

Now you may have a series of sensations across the body.

You can either feel the whole body or you can allow your attention to move freely as it does from one point to another point.

So long as it's within feel in space,

You're still fine there in terms of the technique.

Or if you wanted to,

You could concentrate on one or the most intense part of a larger sensation or one of several sensations if you wanted to.

Either of these strategies are fine,

Either just looking at the entire thing or letting your attention float freely within that space wherever it does or directing your attention specifically to one of the sensation points,

Perhaps an intense one or just something that's of interest to you.

And you're just resting your attention on that feeling space.

And once again,

If your labeling is relaxed,

Gentle,

Calm,

Feel,

Feel,

Feel,

Comforting almost,

That's a very good thing.

That'll be very useful for your equanimity component.

And if you feel or see or detect anything outside of the feeling space,

Just let it happen in the background.

Let it chug along.

Nothing wrong with that.

So for a few minutes,

We'll concentrate on feel in.

Okay.

Good.

If you have a particularly intense feel in experience,

You can use the label feel a little bit like a masseuse uses a thumb to conduct the pressure of the massage technique into the muscle.

So when you say feel in a calm and relaxed,

Equanimous way,

Even if you don't feel very calm inside.

It's a little bit like using a thumb of attention and your attention just goes into the feeling,

Goes into the feeling.

And each label is kind of like a thumb stroke from a masseuse going into the muscle of that knot of emotion or that feeling of strong motion in there.

So it can be very useful for that to go feel,

Feel,

Feel.

And each time you do,

Of course,

You're breathing out so you can relax,

Feel,

Feel.

You can massage,

Feel.

Whatever it is that's there to be felt.

Good.

That's good guys.

Reviews

Normal mediation: world of a gazillion concepts —> world of zero concepts
Shinzen Young’s approach/: world of a gazillion concepts —> world of hear/feel/see/rest etc —> world of zero concepts

It’s a really clever bridge

Lots of the lower reviews complain about The audio. This was recorded live and I heard what others complained about but I was listening on my phone speaker with the volume turned slightly down and did not find it distracting. I think the Audio complaints come from those listening on headphone and yes this is probably not the best session on headphones! Otherwise this is great labeling guidance, plenty of space to practice.

Clear guidance in use of noting as used in Unifed Mindfulness Keeps it simple. Well done

What I needed. Thx!

Excellent introduction to the components of Shinzen Young's See-Hear-Feel exercise. I love the style of your interpretation. This isn't my first listen and I've been enthusiastically pointing others to it. Thank you!

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Nice srtaightforward, plenty of quiet. I liked it a lot. Thanks

Excellent meditation for relief of suffering, eases it. Guides practitioners into the experience rather than the mental formation arising from sense experiences.

I found this to be especially helpful. These techniques were new to me. Thanks so much. Another step on the road to being aware of the observer.

Really appreciated learning a new method of recognising where I'm at in the body and my sense experiences. Thank you! Xx

I liked the massage analogy at the end. Thank you.

Thank you for this wonderful meditation. I found it to be very restful and extremely helpful. Lots of thought went into this, continued for quite a long time after it ended. Some very useful techniques I learned. Thanks again

Nice- enjoyed it

Helpful teaching an practice.

New, interesting way to manage your thoughts, feelings, and lack thereof...loved it !

This was unique among the many forms of meditation I've experienced. Exceedingly simple, powerful and beautifully guided. I will use these restful techniques as often as possible in my day when I take a short rest break or find a few moments of waiting time.

A helpful technique, thank you.

Thank you! Very interesting and helpful, lovely and supportive voice! I'll listen to again

I've been meditating for 18 years and had lots of useful instruction, but this was new to me. Really useful and a technique I think I'll use again. Nice calm voice and clear instructions with a good balance of allowing what arises to be OK. Only sorry it cut off a little suddenly at the end. Thank you.