Arriving In The Body (with George Mumford)

Speaker 1 · 0:50I'm excited to be here. And it's interesting, my my first teacher, Larry Rosenberg, he had a few sort of I don't know what I would call them, I guess, premises. Maybe he said that if somebody asked me to teach, that I was supposed to say yes. And he also, not that I do that all the time now, and that'd be overwhelmed if I did, but starting off, I would say yes. And he also said that if nobody showed up, I was still supposed to teach. So it wasn't about who was here, or it wasn't so much about how many were here, it's about just making a commitment and forming the intention to teach and then to teach you when somebody showed up or if it was just one person. So I'm excited about being here. But what I like to do is just engage in what I call arriving, because a bunch of you folks, I'm pretty sure were coming from

Speaker 1 · 1:40some place or some activity. And if anything like Rocky and myself, you are you're, you know, I I talked to a teach Rocky about having a full catastrophe, you know, about you know, the whole, you know, and Zoba de Green, the movie, they asked him, they said, you know, are you married? He said, Yeah, I'm married with kids, the full catastrophe. So that's another way, even if you're not married with kids, you have the full catastrophe in the sense that we have a full plate and there's a lot going on. And I I believe the model that I learned a long time ago, and that was if you wanted something done, give it to a busy person. So I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of us on this call are probably in that category. So let's just take a few minutes of just sitting and breathing what I call arriving, but it's also very powerful because it's it's the beginning of this idea of spending

Speaker 1 · 2:31time together and being present with each other, and to do that, we have to be here, and so just tuning into your body, you don't have to get into a cross-legged position, you just be sitting, just having your sternum open, lightly shutting the eyes, tuning into the body and the breath to the extent that we know that there is a body, so you can feel the body because it's making contact with surfaces and just breathing, noticing that you're sitting and breathing, and distinguishing between sitting and breathing in, sitting and breathing out, and the idea is, and they talk about this in uh Satipattana

Speaker 1 · 3:12Sutta, that all we're doing is being aware of the body to the extent that we have a body, to the extent that there is a body, and that we can have the can continuity of my continuity of mindfulness or bare awareness, just feeling the body and the seated posture while breathing in and breathing out, so we can focus on the body as a whole, from the bottoms of our feet out to the fingertips and thumbs, the top of the head. We're just sitting and breathing and knowing it. So when thoughts come, we get distracted just by thinking about the body, thinking about the breath. The attention goes there, and then it's just a matter of sustaining it or just being aware of the sensations of sitting and breathing and knowing it. We can rest in the body. So, what I mean by rest is just settling back is just alert, relaxation, alert, you know, being relaxed and alert at the same time, and being like a silent witness, just observing our experience in a way where we're allowing the body and the breath to speak to us in its own language without interpreting, without interacting, in terms of interpret in terms of pushing away or pulling something towards us in terms of trying to make something happen or to achieve some state unifys or optimal state of mind. It's really more about just sitting and breathing and knowing it. No agenda with no activity other than just observing ourselves as we sit and breathe, observing the body while sitting

Speaker 1 · 5:34on the once in a while to tune in and to notice what the mind is involved in. So is it with the body and the breath, or is

Speaker 1 · 6:15it involved in thoughts, images? Maybe we have to shift position for whatever reason, or just the screen. Just being mindful, being present to what is happening as it is happening, and then returning to the body and the breath.

Speaker 2 · 6:42Simplicity of just thinking about the body, and then the attention goes there. Then it's just a matter of just noticing what's there and allowing it to be as it is.

Speaker 2 · 13:03And so to continue to be resting in the body, resting in the breath, and allowing the sound to just come and go, arise and fade.

Speaker 2 · 14:37So thank you for indulging me with that. I don't know about you, but I definitely needed that.