Exploring Fatigue During Meditation with Sean Fargo

Speaker 1 · 0:00Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises podcast. May this be a source of inspiration and motivation in your mindfulness practice and teachings.

Speaker 2 · 0:14Fatigue is not necessarily like suffering, it's just a part of life. You know, the body gets fatigued, like our brains get fatigued. And so we can delight in rest too. Delight in the opportunities that rest can provide and slowing down. Some of my best quote unquote best meditations have been when I'm sick. It's often just easier to drop into a sense of sustained presence because there's a little bit lower energy and there's less restlessness, not necessarily drowsiness, but it's just almost like a grounded presence in a way, sometimes. But so delighting in rest, maybe just sitting more, exploring quote unquote fatigue. Like what does this feel like in different parts of the body? And we may be surprised that some parts of the body feel quite energetic, and that only certain parts may feel heavy, dull, fatigued. I think sensing into the elements of the body can be really interesting when we're sick, like sensing into every day we get to sense into those things. Not from a judgmental point of view, but just yeah, I'm being curious about how that feels. Yeah, noticing respiratory patterns, how do the lungs feel? So just bringing more mindfulness to the body, you know, judgments of fatigue. That's kind of where the self-compassion might come in. There's sort of this judgment of the experience of fatigue, or what it's limiting you. I think self-compassion around the struggle with aging or however you want to frame that, or output levels, or whatever it is, like really tend to that with the self-compassion practices, and really kind of like holding that as your central focus as you maybe go through the Christopher Germer workshop or listening to practices around common humanity or wishing yourself well as you would wish a friend going through something similar, wishing yourself well because you're human.

Speaker 1 · 2:54May each of us continue to find courage in our own way by sharing mindfulness with a deep sense of faith, knowing that seeds we plant will certainly, someday, bloom. To learn more about Sean's Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program and the wisdom, support, and community that's available there, visit teach.mindfulness exercises.com.