Going For Refuge

In Buddhism, we talk about going for refuge to the Three Jewels: the Buddha, his teachings (Dharma), and the spiritual community (Sangha). But there is another refuge: our own self. In this talk, we focus on how we can find sanctuary within our selves simply through the breath.

Transcript

In Buddhism,

We talk about going for refuge and we talk about the three jewels,

The Buddha,

Which isn't going to refuge to the human being,

But going to refuge to the wish for liberation,

Freedom,

Freedom from the prison of our mind.

We place it at the center of our thoughts and the Dharma,

The teachings that point to the truth and also the spiritual community.

But there is another refuge.

We are a refuge.

And how can we begin to go to refuge to ourselves?

And we begin to go to refuge to ourselves by going for refuge to the breath.

Yes,

Refuge for the breath.

And we'll talk about this a bit more in a moment.

So I just want to share,

As some of you were able to share how it was for you,

Michelle,

It brought you calmness and I became more present in a moment.

And not what I need to do later.

I'm not sure about that last bit,

But great that it brought you more into the present.

And Thomas,

Thank you so much.

Thomas writes,

I was able to find freedom by letting go of some of my thoughts and things I was holding on to,

Had a bit of clinging and was able to let go of it at least for a bit.

Fantastic.

This is a taste of victory.

Often when we practice,

We expect that we're going to be like this and we're going to be peaceful for the whole five minutes.

Well,

Forget it.

If we think that,

We just won't have peace.

But no,

We have moments of a taste of freedom.

And those moments get bigger and bigger and bigger.

And the way that we have a taste of freedom is by continually coming back to the body,

To the breath.

Mindfulness teaches us to come back to the body and the journey of recovery,

Whatever that looks like,

If it's recovery from addiction or if it's recovery from trauma,

The journey of recovery is learning to find a way back to the body.

Because whether we have depression or if we have addiction,

You would have experienced trauma.

And when we have trauma,

We disconnect,

We disconnect from the breath,

We disconnect from the body.

Some of us have lost our way home because our bodies were violated in childhood.

Some of us have lost our way home because we was that child who was hiding under the table when we heard our parents arguing,

Or we were the child hiding under our covers when we heard our parents arguing.

Some of us disconnected from our bodies,

From the breath when a parent left or when somebody died or when a new sibling was born.

And even when we grow and we move into puberty,

There are so many reasons why we can disconnect from the body.

When our body begins to change and the body begins to form and move,

Become more masculine or more feminine or in between,

And we don't want that to happen in the body,

We disconnect and we leave the body.

But the healing is in coming back to the body.

And this is an oxymoron because so many of us don't want to be in our body.

So many of us learned not to live in the body.

So many of us learned to separate from the breath.

And we have to relearn that our body can be one of the safest places we could ever inhabit.

Yes,

One of the safest places we could ever inhabit.

But how does the body become safe again is the question.

How does the breath become safe again?

How can we allow the breath to bring us back to the body?

Some of you may have heard me speak about the teachings of the indigenous people,

The teaching when somebody was spiritually,

Emotionally,

Physically,

Mentally sick.

The shamans would ask a series of questions.

The first question,

When did you stop singing?

And that question implies that we had left the body,

We had left the breath,

We had left our voice,

We stopped speaking.

And there were so many reasons why we stop speaking.

So many reasons which I've already mentioned why we lost our play.

Sometimes a father would say to a child,

Man up,

Stop acting like a sissy.

And we lose our voice,

We lose our dance,

We lose our play.

That second question,

When did you stop dancing?

When did you stop moving freely in the world?

When did you stop being enchanted by your own stories?

How many of us who have trauma,

Who have addictions,

Depressions are enchanted by our own stories?

Many of us can't even remember our stories.

We cannot come back to the body.

The body is our birthright.

We come into the world with a breath of inspiration.

We come into the world with a body and a breath of inspiration.

And yet we have lost our connection to the body.

And that fourth question,

When did we stop dwelling in the sweet territory of silence?

And we know that if our mind is full of stinking thinking,

Full of resentments,

Full of what we call,

PEPENCHA,

The proliferation of thought,

We have lost the connection to the body.

In fact,

Many of us prefer to be with that stinking thinking,

Prefer to be with all that rumination because it's familiar.

It's what our ego knows.

And it's just slightly more bearable than coming back to this place of the body,

Which can be experienced.

It's so excruciating,

So uncomfortable,

So unpleasant to be in the body.

And yes,

Some of us can say,

Well,

I can be in the body when I'm angry.

Yes,

When I feel love,

When I'm excited.

But how many of you can be in the body when nothing much is happening,

When things are being experienced as slightly neutral?

And what we do is we want to shake it up a bit,

Shake it up,

Because that's all we've known when we were traumatized.

Our body was completely shaken up.

And that's all we know.

And it's very difficult for us to be with that subtle sensation of connecting to the touch of the body,

Connecting to the subtle feelings in the body.

Just imagine when you switch off from this flat screen and you leave your room or you leave your car,

Some of you may be sitting in a car,

You leave your room,

You go outside and you try to find your place of work or you try to find your best friend's house and you can't find it.

You just can't find it.

Or imagine tomorrow you're out and it's time for you to go home and you just can't find your way home and you're looking and you've been looking for 15 minutes,

20 minutes and you're looking and you can't find your way home.

Imagine what that would look like.

Be terrifying,

Absolutely terrifying.

And I want to say to all of you here,

All of you listening right now,

Many of us cannot find our way home because home is in the body.

When we can be at home in the body,

We can be at home anywhere,

But many of us cannot find our way home to the body.

We switched all feelings off.

We switched all feelings off a long time ago.

We switched the lights off.

We left our body.

Nobody is home,

Which is why we are still being reactivated,

Still being re-stimulated.

Every time we are activated or triggered in the present,

It's to do with the past.

It's re-stimulating something from the past and it re-stimulates something from the past because we have not been able to come home to the body,

Come home to the breath and experience the sensations in the body.

It's not easy to come home to the body.

And I'm going to say it again,

It's very good for us to repeat ourselves.

It reminds me,

Pema Shodran,

The celebrated Buddhist teacher,

Pema Shodran advises to lean into the sharp edges.

But those sharp edges,

Isn't all the emotional trauma,

Isn't all the proliferation of thought.

She's not telling you to lean into your suffering,

That second dart,

How we create that extra suffering.

She's not telling you to lean into the thoughts.

That's not what she's telling you to do.

When we lean into the sharp edges,

That's where the healing begins.

Leaning into the sharp edges is leaning into the direct experience of what is happening in the body.

So for example,

After I finish this teaching today and I switch off and I go downstairs and I just notice there's just a subtle unpleasantness.

I've been here,

I've been inspired talking to you,

There's a slight unpleasantness.

Can I lean into that?

It might even be a slight sadness.

Can I lean into that feeling?

But what I can do is I don't lean into the feeling,

I lean into the thoughts,

Which is not what I'm meant to be leaning into.

Oh,

The thought that takes me away from that subtle sensation.

The thought is,

Oh,

I'll put something in my mouth just to soothe the feeling.

But we come home to the body by doing absolutely nothing when we are in touch with those uncomfortable feelings.

This is the alchemy,

Doing nothing.

So that doesn't mean being a doormat.

That's not what I'm saying,

But it's touching in to those messy,

Messy feelings without moving away with narrative,

With food,

With a drink,

But just calmly just seeing it's just sensation arising and a new sensation will arise.

Feelings are just events that arise in the body.

They arise and they fall.

Just like the waves in an ocean arise and fall.

Allow your feelings and even your thoughts to arise and fall like the waves in an ocean.

Reviews

I love your teachings 🙏🏼

Wet grateful for your meditations , thank you

This spoke to me soooo much

Very affective and poignant. Thank you ♥️

Appreciate this! Organic and genuine way to talk about refuge, breath, and coming home.

Thank-you, this is a really thought provoking, original and moving talk,on theme of coming home to the body. Lovely to hear more British voices on Insight Timer, keeping it real!

Lovely meditation that helped me to consider why I sometimes disconnect from my body. Lovely guidance for reconnecting. Thank you.

So simple but I keep getting it wrong so thank you for simplifying my life

Incredible. This unraveled something I’ve never been able to understand at a sensory level

Powerful message and thank you for insight to our pain and body reaction!!! I loved your voice !

Thought provoking.🙏 Namaskar.

This brought me right back at home. Had a range of emotions going on. Loved listening to you. Thank you.😇🙏🌼

“When was the last time I sang”? The question made me cry. That’s a sign of how that simple sentence is packed with so much meaning. Thanks for those words.

I loved this as a reminder that our body can be a safe place of refuge. Simply wonderful!

This simple, impelling teaching is so basic and yet so profound. Thank you!

Very interesting perspective on the body as a place of refuge. I have become very connected to, and conscious of, my breath through meditating but perhaps am disassociating my breath from my physical body. Thank you Valerie for the fresh food for thought. 🙏🤝🙏

Not medicating or ignoring our feelings is a way of growth. Sustaining this pattern is difficult for the sensitive soul. Balance balance balance, don't ignore the anger or the grief let's not be ashamed of ourselves but be free. This is what I get from this. Thank you for the memory.