Tara Brach - "Coming Back" - Meditation Instructions with Q and A (from retreat) (2015-06-26)

Episode Date: July 31, 2015

"Coming Back" - Meditation Instructions with Q and A (from retreat) (2015-06-26) - A special recording from the first morning of the 2015 IMCW Women's Retreat that offers further guidance and addresses some frequently asked questions about meditation. (13.5 min)

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. There are many different ways to practice, as most of you know, and some of the common denominators are that whether we've been practicing for a long time or just real fresh to it, most of us need some time dedicated to simply coming back, as I call it, just noticing that we've drifted off into trance and just gently arriving back again. So mostly I want to encourage you as you kind of enter into retreat to keep it that simple just to notice, oh, am I here? You know, as a mind off in some sort of yesterday or tomorrow my time traveling, you know,

come back, come back. in the coming back the key piece and this is probably I think one of the center pieces of the whole path is the quality or attitude that is

attending and our habit usually is when we notice we've been off in thoughts or we notice we're sleepy or whatever is to think there's something wrong with that we just add on this layer sometimes it's conscious and we're really critical

and sometimes it's just a subtle thing, but there's a something's wrong with how it is kind of. Does that resonate for you? Okay. So just include that in mindfulness. Just say, oh, okay, there's that too. And have the intention to really create space for how it is. It's absolutely the nature of mind to go drifting. We're wired that way. I give a whole spiel on that. So you're basically, you're deconditioning a habit to exit presence. And it just takes over and over again. So to notice in that moment when you first realize, oh, okay, I've been drifting, you're already arriving back that noticing is a quality of presence. And then you deepen that presence by saying, okay, let's just

pause and just relax the attention open again. Just notice what's right here. And just the sounds that are here. Relax the attention open in the body again. Sometimes it helps very intentionally to re-relax, especially the areas that as soon as you drift, they re-contract. You know, the shoulders. Soften the hands, the belly. Re-inhabit your body. The reason when I guide meditations, I take a real good amount of time in scanning through the body is that most of us are dissociated to some degree. And a huge part of our practice is learning to re-establish presence in the body. So if you've been drifting, take some time to come back into the body because that will ensure that you'll stick around longer. Otherwise, you'll say, okay, back,

back, back, here I am, and then you'll just fly off again because you haven't really arrived. These are just little pieces on the coming back. Really know that you're here in your body. Feel your hands, feel your feet, be here. We usually offer the breath as an anchor because it's the most popular one usually. Any time during the day the breathing is going on. It's a natural rhythm. And so if that works for you, you can let that be in the foreground and what it'll do is it gives you an easy way to land again. Okay, there's a familiarity with the breath. It gives you a quicker way of knowing you've left because, oh, I'm not right here, the

breath isn't, I'm not aware of the breath. And it gives you a place if you want to deepen your collectiveness and concentration, you can really deepen in with the breath. said that, there are always a percentage of people that find the breath really not a good anchor for different reasons. For some, it's a little too narrow and it's hard to kind of really find and stay with. For others, it puts us to sleep. The breath, breath tends towards sleepiness if you have that leaning anyway. And for some, there's been trauma around breathing. So, if it's not a good anchor, you can let sounds be an anchor.

You can let certain sensations and parts of the body be an anchor. You might have your hands and your feet. Or you might feel the posture and the sensations of the sitting posture is a broader anchor. So as you're probably picking up, it's very much custom design this practice of meditation. no one size fits all and each one of you needs to experiment and I know most of you've already been in that process with the inquiry of what most serves presence, what allows me to be most awake and relaxed moment by moment. So we've been emphasizing coming back.

The practice that really liberates is being here, which means being in relationship with whatever is a rising moment. to moment. So you might come back and find that what you're coming back to is a huge wave of sleepiness. How many of you found that sleepiness was a big one? Can I see by hands? You might look around in case you felt plagued and alone. Yeah, so what do we do when there's sleepiness? What do we do? The first thing is see if you're adding a judgment, like this shouldn't be happening. I'm going to waste my whole retreat. Here I spent all this time. I've been waiting for this retreat. This is where I'm

supposed to be awake and go deep and it's like you're just like out of it. Try not to judge. You know, really just notice that, say thank you very much, but get interested. What is sleepiness like? Okay, maybe there's a kind of a heavy kind of thick feeling in the head or sometimes for me there's kind of a squeeze in the chest, a sinking feeling. What does it feel like? You can just notice a little about it, just in the interest to notice it creates some more wakeful space around it. So there's the pure mindfulness of it, just be mindful without judging. And then there's also, there are what are called antidotes that are skillful means that can

help to balance the energy some. So if you're sleepy, sit up a little taller, okay? The other thing with sleepiness is there's no rule with meditation that you have to meditate with your eyes closed. That's not a law. So I sit with my eyes open when I'm sleepy a lot. For some people and you'll notice, especially in the longer retreats, stand up. Practice standing up.

Take a few full breaths. Let sound be an anchor because sound opens up and kind of vitalizes the attention. These are some ways that you can energize. yourself. But the bottom line, whether this morning it was sleepiness or restlessness, our wanting something to be different, are feeling fear or anger, I'm naming all the energies, the key practice and the key teaching really is it doesn't matter what happens, it's how you're relating to it. And if you can make your basic attitude be one of interest, and kindness, then your entire practice will unfold. Instead of judgment, interest and kindness.

So that was my little wrap that went longer than I meant it to go. But let me just see if there's any questions on your practice so far in the room. And Janet has the mic if you do have one. I feel like I've just been trying to experiment with ways to deal with sleepiness and restlessness, which seemed to somehow be present at the same time, it feels like what happens is I will discover like different skillful means, and I'll do them for a while, and then maybe I just get conditioned to exit from them. And I think the main thing that's hard for me is feeling my body. At the beginning when you said, if you don't really come back completely, it's like when I notice I'm off, I'll think,

okay, get into the body, get into the body, but then I'll have more of the conceptual idea of getting into the body, then really feeling my body. So I guess those are my questions, our skillful means for really, really feeling the body rather than just trying to feel the body, because, as you said, when you're not really back, then you're off before you know it. Mostly I want to mirror back your own recognition, which is the body is a portal to full presence. And most of the time where, you know, Mr. Duffy live, the short distance from his body. We're like one step removed.

And a lot of the times it's an idea of the body. So just like you said, even ask again, am I really feeling this from the inside out? And to soften and feel from the inside out is an amazingly powerful training. So let that be, you know, just keep knowing that you're here in your body.

And here's the thing about skillful means, which I feel like you are intuting. They're useful to know about and try out. out and some of them work and sometimes they work for a while. But that's not where the liberation is. It's not finding a way to be less sleepy. It's like no matter what the weather is, can we have a quality of presence and ease and let it be okay no matter what? That's the freedom. It's described as the lion's roar when we have that confidence that whatever it is, there's a profound okayness with it, not wanting it different.

Use a skillful means skillfully, like with a light touch, with kind of a playful touch, with interest. And it makes you less sleepy than yay, but not super yay, because, you know, someday you're going to be sleepy, you're not going to be able to turn the knob, and you're going to have to make friends with it. Might as well make friends now. Yeah, thank you. Could you say a little more about meeting whatever is difficult with kindness, as a therapist I've worked with lots of people

and it seems for myself and for them that that's the hardest place if you've spent years not being very kind. So the question about meeting whatever arises with kindness and just to say that inquiry is the inquiry of the entire retreat really and I'm really really want to thank you for

asking it because it's not going to be like a nice little nutshell of an answer, it's more. That is, if there was a question you could ask yourself, the poet Hafei says, you know, how can I be more kind? I used to, for many years, I would have one of the, my daily prayer was please teach me about kindness. And one of the, we were having this conversation amongst ourselves, you can't really separate out full presence or awareness from the heart quality of kindness. Because if there's not a quality of softness and receptivity, we can't really see what's happening in the moment. So more I'd like to invite us all to let that be right

front and center, the intention towards kindness and the exploration of what really in this moment does that mean. What would it mean this moment? Just to soften a little, to be a little less armored a little more tender. So thank you for putting that into the room. Yeah, I appreciate that. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.