Mindful Movement, Somatic Presence, And Compassionate Practice

Speaker 1 · 0:00Welcome to the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast. My name is Sean Fargo. Today we're going to be exploring how to relate to our bodies in mindfulness meditation with somatic presence. Most people carry the idea that meditation means sitting perfectly still and quiet. But in reality, practice can be much more alive than that. Our bodies may move, sensations may arise, and oftentimes some form of discomfort shows up.

Speaker 1 · 0:40Rather than resisting these experiences, mindfulness invites us to meet them with awareness and care, allowing ourselves to shift posture or adjust when necessary. We'll also talk about how a personal practice slowly deepens over time. Practices like loving kindness work gradually, sometimes softening places in the heart that we didn't even realize were holding tension. So this episode is an invitation for us to explore meditation as something living, embodied and deeply human. Do any of you know who Michael Pollan is by chance? He's an author that used to only write about like food. He wrote The Omnivorce Dilemma, Food Rules. He's written for the New York Times and The New Yorker and stuff. He wrote a book called How to Change Your Mind. He just published a book called A World Appears, which is an instant bestseller. But it's called A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. But I'm gonna invite him to be a guest teacher. So I'm crossing fingers that he says yes. I saw him at my gym a few days ago. Like, is that really Michael Pollan? So I've been stalking him ever since. So I'm gonna like write him a letter and ask him to see if he wants to be a guest teacher while he was on the exercise bike. We'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 · 2:34I have something on my mind, is with meditation.

Speaker 2 · 2:38And I know that we invite like the comfortable position for meditation. It's really like so that we can clearly hear or be in the meditation. And I've been practicing in the sitting position and not generally in a chair. And I just wondered specifically with experiencing a monastery, what the experience is or observations there and from everybody else as well about is sitting without a chair, are there tips maybe on finding comfort or bolsters, or there's also some sort of thought that's been present a while that may or may not be aligned with success, which is like when you go into the meditation, if

Speaker 2 · 3:30you move someone, it could be argued that that moment of meditation you could say ends or maybe changes. And what the thoughts are in this container about that, or any tips to be able to sit more comfortably longer and be more attentive to the meditation when in maybe the least of the comfortable positions.

Speaker 1 · 3:54I think say for meditations that are aimed at concentration, where you're kind of locked in on something and kind of excluding other parts of experience, like samadhi practice, where we're really like settling into a sense of stillness or oneness, then movement can distract us or pull us out of that to some degree sometimes, because stillness is kind of the goal. So if you add movement to it, then it may add a little speed bump. With the practices that we tend to talk about here around mindfulness meditation, we can incorporate changes of posture into the meditation itself much more smoothly. And we typically do

Speaker 1 · 4:58that first by noticing, say, the arising of the desire to move or the aversion of or the discomfort or the unpleasant sensations of the body, noticing what the mind does, okay, like I want to get rid of that, or you know, maybe moving might be helpful. Is there any judgment that arises? Just kind of noticing what the mind does with the physical sensations and the desire to change it. Is there judgment there? Am I disconnecting from this experience by going into a story or a worry? Like what's the underlying emotion here? And can I just relate to all this with curiosity, gentle awareness of what the mind is doing in this instance? I will usually try to notice what the mind does and then not move unless I really feel like I'm either going to be too overwhelmed,

Speaker 1 · 6:14or maybe I'm very emotionally fragile and I don't need this as a training exercise to wait this out because I got other things I gotta deal with, or I'm going to be in physical, like I'm gonna injure myself if I don't move. So those are the exceptions, but I'll try to wait it out if I feel emotionally stable, if I don't think I'm gonna be injuring myself, and I'm not gonna be too overwhelmed by this. I'll try to just sit with it and notice the arising or the increase of discomfort. I won't like hold on to it or forecast that it's always going to be there. I'll still try to hold it softly and say, oh, in this moment, it doesn't feel very pleasant. It feels unpleasant. And there's some tightness here, heat there, tension here, like physical descriptors of like what's actually happening, like in the knee or the ankle or the hip or whatever. What's actually here physically? It's not like good or bad, right or wrong. It's just the arising of specific real-time physical characteristics. Maybe I do judge it to be bad or wrong. Maybe I judge it to be good or right because it's a sign that I've been sitting here for 60 minutes and I'm a great meditator. Look at me, you know, I get a trophy. So maybe I associate it as being good or right, but noticing whatever judgments come up. So that's part of it. Can I relate to it with this gentle awareness and stay with it? Or zoom out into the whole body. These sensations in the knee are there in the knee, but they're localized in the knee. The rest of the body feels

Speaker 1 · 8:15pretty good. Toggling with perspective or openness versus like closed awareness, toggling, or finding parts of the body that feel pleasant or neutral, and then maybe coming back to the knee later. And for me, nine times out of ten, the discomfort goes away. It may take 20 minutes, may feel lifetimes of agony. But it usually goes away. All that said, if we do want to move, there's nothing wrong with moving. Absolutely zero things wrong with that. Like if you move, that's totally fine. It's encouraged that you bring awareness to it, though. So, okay, I think I want to move. And I might have I might not have a reason and I might have ten reasons. But either way, I think I'm gonna move into this other posture or wiggle or whatever. But before I do that, I want to bring intention and awareness. So to maybe go from half lotus into a different posture or whatever. I'm just using this as an example. I'm going to shift my body weight over to my left side, shifting, shifting, noticing the transfer of weight and the angles, breathing, bringing my ankle out slowly, feeling that. Twisting the calf, moving the calf around, noticing it scrape the floor, the carpet, bringing it around, noticing the rest of the body move, breathing, noticing what happens with the sensations of discomfort. Are they still there? Are they changing? Is there relief in the mind? Is there judgment arising? Can I stay connected with this experience? Settling into this new posture?

Speaker 1 · 10:34Is there a sense of balance? Is there a sense of okayness? You know, or what's happening, what's arising? Breathing. Checking in with the areas of where I had discomfort or pain. Checking back in with different parts of the body, like how different parts of the body feeling. Pleasantness, unpleasantness, numbness. Oftentimes parts of the body fall asleep, but checking back in. Does a chair feel like it might be more suitable right now? There's nothing wrong with moving, but these are invitations of things that we can consider staying and or moving. With mindfulness, meditation, the invitation is to try to stay connected with the actual experience, regardless of whether there's movement or not. We can even segue into standing. There's nothing wrong with standing meditation. Try not to fall over and bonk your head. But there's nothing wrong with that either. So the invitation is a continued gentle awareness. And to take care of ourselves. But also sometimes it's helpful to kind of push the envelope a little bit sometimes too.

Speaker 2 · 12:15I really appreciate the verbiage you bring to the table on a way to like more compassionately meet those instances. And I think it illuminates

Speaker 2 · 12:25the idea more of like mindfully transitioning and opening to that being a part of the meditation and things to pay attention to instead of be like, no, no, no. Thank you.

Speaker 1 · 12:38Yeah, I mean, sometimes there's these myths out there that you know we have to be statues and we have to be unbreakable. And if we move, then the meditation's lost. We're hopeless. Or we're bad meditators or whatever. But obviously that's far from the actual truth. Compassion is kind of at the root of all this. So let's bring it when we're suffering and in pain.

Speaker 3 · 13:10Uh just following what uh Sarah was saying, there is any special reason

Speaker 3 · 13:16for sitting on the floor? Because for me, my head, it's like the root chakra. So I just have all these assumptions. But I'd like to know why these mainly aninja I saw, and I see some Tibetans doing if it's a city, it has to be wood. So there are so many different approaches and explanations. I'd like to hear your opinion.

Speaker 1 · 13:41Again, there's no like right or wrong here. I personally find, I mean, this is gonna sound like a joke, but I find the ground very grounding. And when we say ground, you know, I think we can include the grass, the mud, and concrete and wood, stone. Like we can feel into these different grounds, different elements, all have different qualities, temperatures. Again, I think all of them are valid. There can be a nice connection with the root chakra. If I haven't done yoga in a while, I'm always reminded by how much more balanced I feel after interacting with the ground, with different parts of my body. It's like my whole body kind of wakes up and remembers that I am connected with the ground. I am connected with the earth. It is helpful for a sense of embodied wakefulness where it's easy to get caught up in our heads or the space that we're looking out at to kind of bring that full circle out there, like looking out. Or we might have a knot in our belly or our chest, and a lot of our awareness is there, we're suppressing that by going up out here. But when we're intimate with planet, this rock that we're on, feel it with

Speaker 1 · 15:27our legs and our ankles and our toes and our thighs and our hips and our butt and our back, and like when we're really on it, on our knees. For me, there's more of like a balanced, grounded, rooted energy. And my personal belief is that our bodies are way smarter than we give them credit for. If we wake up our bodies through being on the ground, moving on the ground, we kind of help return to our instincts, we come to our senses, we remember we're animals. Or mammals. We're able to walk on two feet, but it doesn't mean that we should never be on the ground.

Speaker 3 · 16:24What came to my mind right now as you were speaking, and you're saying the rocks and that you're just mentioning this, it came to my mind that our bones are minerals. So, yes, root chakra, it's uh what I've been learning. But uh I think in a very, very raw way, it's an opportunity we give to our body to be in contact with the most raw connection with the minerals of our bones with the essence and origin of the minerals. It just came to me as like, oh, it makes sense, at least for me.

Speaker 4 · 17:03Sorry if it doesn't make sense for you guys. But it was like, oh my god, that's one of the reasons, maybe.

Speaker 1 · 17:09Yeah, totally. I mean, we are of the earth, like literally. Yeah, our bones, our skin, the liquid element of blood and tears, and urine, and sweat, and all the rest of it. That's kind of like liquid element of streams and lava and rain and air we breathe, sort of like a wind element. I want to say 99 plus percentage of our bodies are the space element.

Speaker 5 · 17:43Hi, Nicholas. Hi, Sean. I'm just starting to practice mindfulness, loving kindness meditation, you know. The question is around the fact that in this context you can create your own practice, your own formal practice, how much time you dedicate, in which part of the day, as opposed to a context like a retreat or a context in a sangha that you have moments when you gather together and practice together. So I wanted to ask you what's your advice on how to create a practice that suits our lives and a daily practice. What do you want to do? What I wanna do, I want to deep dive, you know, in this. Are you signed up for a retreat? I have a little baby. It would be difficult to do a retreat to follow the whole schedule, you know, but I'm considering to join a retreat with Sharon Salzberg that will be on loving kindness. Okay.

Speaker 1 · 18:55My recommendation would be to slowly read that book, like slowly, like very slowly, like as slow as you can. One sentence, feel it, journal about it, sense it, think

Speaker 1 · 19:12about it, and then go to the next sentence. Like very, very slowly. If you want to do a deep dive, I would sit with the book with each sentence as its own like meditation. Really feel it. Like, what does it mean to me? What does this sentence mean to Nicholas? And maybe write a whole notebook for each chapter. Buy five boxes of Kleenex of tissue. I think I went through three boxes of tissue crying when I read that book. I wrote like five notebooks of journaling because so much wanted to come out. I tried to really feel my heart here. So my invitation would be to let the book and her retreat and her teachings on love and kindness to break you, break the walls that are here, and let them come down and to grieve and cry if you need to. And then also let the book and the teachings fill you back up with love. But sometimes we need to break down first. When we have our book, throw that away. Put your phone in a different room, your family say, I'm doing something important, no TV. I would treat each sentence in that book as a meditation and kind of let yourself soften and break, and then you'll know when you're ready to be filled back up. But it's not a practice where you fill up first, it's a practice where we break down first. That's my experience, and that I think a lot of people feel the same, but for you,

Speaker 1 · 21:12maybe different. I would kind of feel into like what's true for me with each ends. That would be my invitation. Loving kindness and mindfulness, it's hard to separate them. So your work with loving kindness is also work with mindfulness.

Speaker 3 · 21:36Would you please tell me the name of this book that you boys made us girl very curious?

Speaker 1 · 21:45It's a secret, it's only for boys. Yeah, it's loving kindness by Sharon Salzberg. Well, thank you everyone for your practice. For your shared presence,

Speaker 1 · 22:04for co-creating this sweet community. I love all of you. I wish you well. Keep going. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you.