Continuing today we're discussing mindfulness of the body as part of the overall practice of mindfulness. And today, it's respect. So respecting the body. Many years ago, I saw an article in, I think, was Mother Jones magazine. And it was the title struck me the title was the body, Friend or foe, or total stranger. And so we have complicated relationships to our body. And some of its been acculturated into us by the way that our culture relates to the body. And some that has to do with life experiences and maybe what individuals have told us about our body and our features. And tremendous amount of suffering goes on in our society that's related to our bodies. And you know, to admit name, just one there's, or isn't the many the mean there's attitudes, our culture, many cultures have towards skin color, body size, height, you know, all kinds of all kinds of things that goes on. And, and so we live under the many of us can live under the weight of thoughts, preoccupations about our bodies, you know, my nose is too big, too little, my, when I was young, I was very concerned about having too high of forehead and worried I was going to lose my hair, and in seventh and eighth grade, and, and I would spend an inordinate amount of time in class, measuring the distance from my nose to my forehead, my, my scalp, I would take my finger like this, and, and kind of feel the distance to make sure that I wasn't too, you know, losing here. I could probably also right, maybe his somewhat interesting autobiography, often perspective might have my hair, that I made my hair length about what I've done with my hair, over these decades of my life from crew cuts, when I was a little kid who long here, you know, halfway down to my belly button, later in my life, and then a shaved head when I was a monk and on and on. And so, you know, what was that going on? What was the associations, the beliefs, the attitudes going on. So all this idea of our bodies. And, and, and so there's often an overlay on top of the body, of our judgments and ideas or preoccupations. And one of the things that's possible, maybe discover, the exercise of the hand that I gave in the last guided meditation is to experience a difference between the hands experience of itself and our ideas of the hand. So the idea is my hand grip, my fingers are too long, too short, my fingernails or this or that, or my head is chubby, or to the whatever it might be. It can be kind of debilitating and depressing even some of these ideas and thoughts. But the hand itself doesn't have those thoughts and ideas. The hand itself is just feels itself what it is, has no judgments about what it is. And to it's a tremendously respectful for the hand, to leave it alone to free it from our judgments, ideas, associations, and to experience the hand or whatever part of the body whatever is going on in our body, independent of the acculturation independent of the life experiences event and the judgments, the ideas and how we've been treated. And part of mindfulness practice is to give ourselves the gift give our body the gift of allowing it to experience itself independent of all this other comparisons we make comparisons with other kinds of hands what it should be and not be and you know there are you know if
you know if if you know if I might feel, you know, because I'm hanging out with a certain group of people, I might feel bad about myself for being too short. And just all you know, too short and this is unfortunate than there are people looking down at me all the time, and You know, I have to look up high and, and it just happens to be them hanging out with the National Basketball Association basketball players. And, and so in comparison I'm short, but you know comparison to many people in our culture, our society, I'm a little bit tall, but I kind of make a story and get caught up in it. These differences of comparisons caused a lot of suffering. And I don't want to dismiss the suffering and challenges at all This makes that we need to address it wisely. But in meditation, we can give ourselves the gift of experience the body, in and of itself, free of all that, if we really want to respect the body, we want to somehow be able to distinguish between the judgments, the stories, that commentary, the associations that we pile on top of the body, from the body's experience of itself, which is often very simple. And that can also be relevant when there's pain, discomfort in the body, that we have predictions that have this continues, you know, I'll have to my knee pain, I'll have to amputate my leg, and there'll be the end somehow. And certainly, there are dangers with the body being uncomfortable in pain. But sometimes there's not. One of the great things that can happen through the heightened sensitivity, the respect of the body, by really paying attention to it in meditation is we can tell the difference between pain that is a danger signal and pain, which is not. And if it's a danger signal, then change your posture. But out by all means don't don't live with a danger, if you're in doubt of what it is change your posture. Don't stay with pain that way. But if there's no danger signal, I like to think of that the you know, the pain is a signal is a message. And part of that message is not that something needs to be changed, but we have to do something, but rather than messages that we can offer it to the medicine, of awareness, to hold it in awareness. And then so part of this respecting awareness that we did in that last meditation is that the awareness with which we hold discomfort and pain needs to be simple, needs to not be piled on with these judgments sociation fears, ideas of self that kind of make it so much more complicated, very simple awareness. So for example, if if someone goes around with a clenched hand, because they're afraid or angry or something, you could come with maybe a plier crowbar or something and kind of try to open up the fingers, you get one open. And then when you start the other one, the first one closes up again. And you kind of like kind of directly trying to fight the clenched pneus. Another way to do it, is to come along with a loving, soft, caring hand and hold the person's hand and support it. And just let it soak up, tell them here, rest in my hand, feel your weight and let it kind of rest and settle into my hand. And then slowly, people's hands will begin to open because they feel the support and the care. So the same way we can do for ourselves that as we bring our awareness to the area of tension or pain, perhaps what we're doing is allowing something to thaw something to relax and open work or we're maybe bringing making space for the body's ability to heal to heal itself. Just like that, you know if the tide clenched, clenched fist is kind of the, I don't know what to call it, but this metaphor the illness, then we're holding it so that it can it can put. So that's the medicine so it can release and relax itself. And perhaps it's not always relaxation, maybe it's just simply that bringing a lot of attention to an area brings more blood to it, or the micro attentions around it relax. Or we begin seeing that the experience of discomfort in and of itself is different, very different experience. If we just feel it in and of itself. Then if we see it through the filter of our ideas, even the idea that it's pain
is kind of an abstraction, oddly enough. And when you really feel it directly, it's not, you know, realize that pain is an abstraction, which really happening is there's sensations of heat or stabbing or pulling or tightness. sore pressure or strong contraction and all these kinds of particular sensations that are intense, but they are the all kinds of different sensations. And we start feeling the particularity of it, then we're not overlaying an idea like pain, which comes along with a lot of baggage, a lot of other ideas about what pain means some people experience associate pain with failure, I'm doing something wrong. And that's a little bit debilitating that idea. And, and so just to feel feel it and be with it. The and then as we feel more deeply into discomfort, for example, there might be a message there. And that message might be that maybe there's some some embodied emotion in that place is stored up from long time ago, that maybe needs to be released. And maybe it comes with gets released with tears, maybe it gets released with heat or something else. But it's, I think it's nice to witness respect of the body respecting the body, do you think that there's a very huge difference between the corporeal body that we have when we're a corpse, and the animated body and the body that has sensations and, and the sensate body is like, think of it as a messenger system. It's always there to inform us about something. So inform us, you know, simple as it's hot outside or cold. Now, take off your sweater put on your sweater, but it's everything is a message. And, and how do we read that message. And with mindfulness meditation, it isn't so much that we're actively reading it. But we're allowing this respectful, careful, simple awareness, to hold the experience to be with experience. So that we get to know it better, and something begins to happen to self healing functions of the body can operate, the message system of the body can reveal something to us more deeply. And maybe what we're learning is not necessarily about the discomfort, or the pleasure that we might feel. But rather, we're learning that the message is, you're not free in relationship to it, you're caught up in it, you're somehow attached to it or adversive to it. And your awareness is not free, your awareness is not in that place of freedom and simplicity. And that's where the work is. That's what the message is that that comes back to us. So to respect the body, and, and so in the instructions that we have here at IMC is to stay with your breathing. That's the default. That's where we develop some concentration. But at a moment's notice, if some experience of the body is more predominant, more compelling, which means that there's a tension set up between trying to stay with the breathing and this others sensation, the body kind of calling attention to itself. You can just let go of that breathing. And then see if you can bring calmly, deliberately, a clear, simple awareness to hang out for a while to hold for a while, this compelling sensation whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, and when it's no longer compelling, you can either continue to be aware of it if it feels like the right thing, or you can come back to your breathing. So respecting your body it's definitely worth it. And friend, foe or total stranger. I would wonderful thing that can happen as we do this practice is our body becomes our friend and we become its friend. So made that friendship last for a long time. Thank you
