[186] Working with Emotions During the Holidays - with Joe Parent

6:04PM Dec 20, 2024

Speakers:

Joe Parent

Keywords:

meditation practice

mindfulness techniques

emotional regulation

physiological reactions

antidotes for anger

jealousy antidotes

gratitude practice

sending and taking

emotional triggers

body awareness

spacious mind

daydream recognition

emotional insights

meditation benefits

practice consistency

Music.

Thank you, Alyssa. And Alyssa, you're you're going to be continuing to host for how long,

so through the end of December,

we will miss you. Thank you.

We're going to send out a formal announcement so everybody knows, but I appreciate that.

In case they missed the announcement, I want to just tell everybody how much we appreciate you. Thank

you. I really appreciate that

good so shall we begin? Okay, now, when you're recording this, do you put it on speaker view or gallery view? It's entirely

up to you. It will just record the speaker so I see.

Okay, that's what I was asking. Good. I have it on gallery view so I can see everybody who is there. Now, along those lines, when we're doing our meditations, the sequence that I usually go through, we start getting settled and centered with our eyes closed, but then we move into mindfulness and open awareness with our eyes open. Because the idea is, this is a practice that we want to generalize into our everyday life, and we don't walk around with our eyes closed. So it'll be helpful once you've taken your seat and that you get set up in a way that you're not looking directly into the screen, if it's far enough away, and you're looking downward and there's nothing in between you and the screen. That's good, because part of it is gazing pretty steeply downward, but then you're going to be looking straight out. So it is helpful if you're not looking directly into your into your screen, and you can either move your device or you can move your chair. However, whatever works for you, what I thought I'd work we'd work on today for the holiday season. I know sometimes the words Happy Holidays fill people with dread, rather rather than happy rather than good cheer. So I thought I'd talk a little bit about working with emotions that we and how we work with emotions. So we'll, we'll do a little bit of that in the practice. But there are a number of different ways in the tradition. I was trained in the Buddhist tradition of working with emotions. The the kind of grossest way is to isolate yourself and remove yourself from the source of what the what's provoking those emotions. Now that's kind of a band aid. And people go and say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go on retreat. I'm not going to relate with this. I'm not going to relate with that, and that that's really not effective in our our modern life. So the next level is to work with one's own attachment and aversion to things that are provoking our emotions. And just saying, I don't need to be attached to, to these things. But again, this is a very austere kind of renunciation, which works for some people. The the next level includes, and I'm and these, I'm just picking a few there are, there are, like a dozen different ways of working with this at all sorts of different levels of depth and and and experience in working with the mind. So one of them has to do with changing the way that you're thinking about what you're experiencing. Now, we've talked about this before, and I know Andrew has talked about it as well. The physiological expression of an emotion, the physio physiological reaction when when triggered, has a lifespan of 60 to 120 seconds, actually 30 to 120 seconds, it reverberates, and you feel that energy and reverberation. But if you don't keep triggering it, if there was a single trigger, and then it's completely gone from mind, you. That that energy will dissipate, that feeling will dissipate, and you'll return to your normal unemotion. You know, unemotional, when I would say unemotional, we all have our emotions happening all the time, but an extreme emotional experience, and so the idea there is to catch the thought that's triggering. And here's where the different kind of approaches happen. And one is saying, Oh, I'm feeling anger. And these are called antidotes. I'm going to use an antidote to this anger, and that is the for the people that I'm or situation I'm feeling angry about, I'm going to say, what if I change that and express kindness and say, you know, Maybe they were unaware of what they were doing. But whatever logical rationale you want to make, I'm going to extend kindness to them instead of anger, and we can apply that to ourselves. When we're angry at ourselves, we can say, is this, is this really doing me any good? Beating myself up. I need to be kinder to myself. So that's one of the antidotes. Another one is to say, Okay, I'm I. There's no way I'm seeing the whole situation. Why don't I withhold judgment and withhold my anger till I learn more? So these are the kinds of using your logical mind to create an antidote. If you're feeling jealousy, you you can say, Okay, why do I feel like I deserve something more than somebody else that's being self centered and and you can also say, I'm rejoicing in their success. I'm happy for them. These are, these are examples. There are many, many more aspects and a lot of subtleties that we can get into when we have a discussion, such session, after the after the meditations. I and and if the jealousy involves someone, feel it fear of losing the attention of someone, the love of someone something else, then it's to say the an antidote to that is to say, Okay, I need to understand the whole situation. And if it means setting that person free, it means setting that person free, but trying to hold them will only increase their it'll only increase their, their wanting to go and increase my jealousy. So what we have to recognize is that emotions feed upon themselves, and when we indulge in them, we actually fuel them. So the idea of these antidotes is to remove the fuel if we were feeling depressed, which or lonely during the holidays that's pretty common. One of the antidotes is, think of others. Think of all the other people who are feeling the same way. And the interesting thing is, then you don't feel as lonely. Feel gratitude for what you do have. And and the deepest gratitude is that you're a good natured person, that your nature is good and, and how lucky you are to have and, and in our situation, we have the the good fortune of being able to meditate and hear these teachings about mindfulness and awareness and and wakefulness enlightenment. So there's a lot to be grateful for. Let's see um feeling poverty stricken and deprived. This is the same it kind of goes along with the depression, one of feeling, thinking, of wishing that, knowing others feel that way, and wishing, as soon as you start wishing that others have more, it feels good. It's, it's like the traditional saying, it's, it is better to give than to receive. And the reason it's better to give and receive because it feels good to give. So we have that as an antidote to feeling like we're not getting enough, and to say, Okay, well, I want, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do the opposite. So this is another level of actually doing the opposite when you're feeling angry towards someone. Say, I'm going to do something kind for them. When you're feeling stingy, do something generous. Stingy or poverty stricken when you're feeling jealous, be more magnanimous. All of these things that go against the grain, and they're not easy to do. That's why the tricky thing here is not to get, what do they call it, over your skis, not to get to try to take on something that you're not really ready to handle and comfortable with. So that's the that's the level and and the practice that a lot of people have been introduced to that we've done a version of is sending and taking, and that is actually saying, Okay, I the source of a lot of these feelings has to do with my

either poverty mentality, that I'm not good enough, or the opposite of feeling I deserve more, but all they're all about self centeredness and a level of self importance. Even when we say, I feel really bad about myself, we we're really special because we feel worse about ourselves than anybody else. So we find ways to to make that focus. So this, this practice of sending and taking, is saying is called exchanging oneself for others. And we could just go for the golden rule, treat others the way you would have others treat you, or put yourself in someone else's shoes. And, you know, I, I, I think that one of the most important things is sense of humor and putting things in perspective. So when it comes to putting yourself in someone else's shoes, if you're in a fight with somebody, put yourself in their shoes. Oh, what's the saying? Walk a mile in their shoes, because then you'll be a mile away and you have their shoes. So we have, we have to add some humor to the whole thing. And the last level, which takes some experience in practice and insight, and that is looking directly into the nature of the emotion. He's taught by a lot of Tibetan teachers as the as a way of working with afflicting kinds of emotions that have gotten hold of us is look at it and see that it came out of a thought, and see that it is a bodily sensation mixed with a thought, but where is the solidity of it? If it comes, if it's about logic, and you're convinced that's a thought, if it's about a feeling, that feeling without a thought is just a feeling, and you look at its nature, look directly at it, and see that it doesn't exist any particular place we might feel in a particular place in our body. But is that the emotion, or is that just a bodily sensation we might think we feel it that, that it's in our thoughts, but those are thoughts, and they keep changing. So it it's seeing the insubstantiality of that emotion as as you're experiencing it. So the it takes some it takes some strength and mindfulness and awareness in your mindfulness and awareness practice to do this and not continue to get swept away. But it's basically not indulging in the emotion, but also not suppressing the emotion, but looking straight at it, it reminds me of a story of my Buddhist teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, when he and a group of other monks were approaching this monastery in Tibet. This is before he fled from Tibet in front of the Chinese when he was a young man. The a lot of the monasteries had very protective, vicious guard dogs out front, and this one had a guard dog, and it was barking, and it broke its chain and started running towards the party, and all the other monks turned around the other way, and my teacher ran towards the dog, and the dog went, Oh, nobody had ever done that before. And so if we can turn and run towards our emotion, we might be surprised that, oh, it's not as solid as we thought. And that that penetrate. It that way, and undercutting its solidity without indulging or suppressing is the that's the highest, not highest, but the deepest is better form of working with the emotions that way, that way. If you suppress it, it's just going to come back. If you indulge it, it feeds itself. And very often, the emotions arise out of a lack of perspective, and don't bring in the whole picture. So as soon as you penetrate it, you get a bigger perspective, see more the bigger picture, and then you get insight of what you can actually do about something and work with something, because when you're bent out of shape, you can't think straight, You can't see straight, and you can't walk straight. So that's that's the message for today. Okay, well, I talked a little longer than I expected to, but let's get started with the practice. So for the first part, gonna let your eyes gently close and kind of get settled into your posture. If you need to open your eyes to see where you're you're sitting and everything's around you, that's fine. Let's start with letting yourself sink into the seat that you're in. We do this in in sitting sitting up, because if we're lying down, we tend to fall asleep, and if we're standing up, we tend to want to move. So this is putting ourselves in neutral so we can experience, we can explore what's arising in our mind and our feelings. So let yourself sink into the cushion if you're on a chair or a cushion on the floor, if you're on a cushion on the floor, naturally, your legs are probably crossed in front of you in a chair, you can put your feet flat on the floor, about hip width apart, with your shins vertical move is perpendicular to the ground. And if you if you feel like if your knees are higher than your hips, it's going to put some strain on your lower back and and your hips. So just cross your feet at the ankles and let your knees open up wider so that your knees are slightly below your hips, you're excuse me, a second, the neighbor's dog is barking and I left a window open. I

so

it's a good practice not to be irritated, but simply acknowledge and work with the situation. So back to sitting, feeling our sit bones pressing into the seat we've addressed our legs. Let your torso be upright, but not rigid. And to do that, you can tilt back and forth, forward and back and side to side, side to side, so that the weight is even on your sit bones, forward and back, so you don't feel tilted forward or back, but just centered and feel like the line from your tailbone up your spine extends all the way through your neck to the top of the back of your head. It's not an actual straight line. There's curvature. But if you feel like there's a straight line, then there's this extension, gentle extension, upward from your tailbone and your chin comes in naturally, and you have the ideal posture for breathing and for meditation, because if your chin is is down, your head's tilted forward, you get sleepy. If your chin is floating up, you get spaced out. And too often we spend the day trying to get ahead. Head. So our chin is sticking out forward, and we're kind of curled over. So here straight line up to the back of the top, top of the back of your head, your chin comes in naturally. Let your arms. Your upper arms hang down from your shoulders, again perpendicular to the ground, not reaching forward or pulling back, and swivel your hands up so that your forearms are along your thighs and your hands are palmed down on each thigh. Your jaw is relaxed, but your mouth is not slack open, so your lips can be either slightly parted or lightly touching, whichever is more comfortable, and let your tongue either rest naturally or float gently upwards, lightly touching the tip of your tongue to the upper palate, just behind your front teeth. And said that that that posture let of your tongue lessens the saliva output. But don't worry about it one way or the other. If you have some saliva, just swallow. You have a sharp pain, just move. This isn't supposed to be torture. We're breathing in through our nose, and if some air comes out through your mouth as you're breathing out, that's fine. So your lips can be slightly parted, not a problem.

Now let's go through and scan and let any extra tension that we have that we don't need to hold our posture, let's just let that melt. Ah, one thing I forgot, okay, because we need a little tension for this, and you can experiment with this just the tiniest bit. Let your breast bone move it up and forward a tiny, tiny bit a quarter of an inch, one centimeter, you feel just that slight movement opens up your chest opens up, your breathing, your shoulders come back in line with your ears. You might even feel a slight pinching of your shoulder blades. You

so that sets the posture of your torso that way. And now just scan awareness of your scalp and your face. Sometimes there's even though we said we were relaxing our jaw, there's residual tension. Really let it melt without your mouth hanging open. Neck and shoulders, sometimes we carry our shoulders up near our ears, and don't even know it no without pushing them down, just let them fall naturally, chest and upper back again, a little tension in the chest to raise that breast bone a tiny bit everything else, relax around it, rib cage, all around stomach, lower back and deep belly, and sometimes we're clenching our deep belly or pelvic region and don't realize it. Again, just breathe out. Let the tension melt without losing your posture. Breathe out and sink down to the chair. Breathe out and let any tension your arms slow down and out of your arms and out of your hands. Breathe out and let any tension flow down and out of your legs and now we've explored and really inhabited our body, so let your awareness now rest deep in your core. We're three dimensional beings, front to back, as well as when we're not the image in a mirror. So feel that depth forward to back. And you can feel that as you breathe in, there's an expanding of the tors the deep belly in all directions. And as you breathe out, it contracts. Let your awareness rest deep in that core, couple of inches below the navel, just in front of the spine. Just hang out down there.

Let the body breathe by itself. I promise it will do it without you controlling it. So you can relax into the rhythm of your breathing. The rhythm may change a little bit, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Breaths, deeper, shallower. Just ride the rhythm of your breathing.

It's a relaxing rhythm like gentle surf at a lake or the ocean on a pretty calm day where it goes up beach and then back into the Ocean, breathe in, breathe out, back into the ocean and

with each out breath, you can Feel yourself sink into the seat a little more so. Are feeling grounded, connected to the earth,

set the intention to let the body breathe itself, be an observer,

and set the intention for your mind to be open like the sky That lets everything arise and pass through it without blocking, without encouraging, and without being moved by it.

And it's helpful to set the intention that the practice that we're doing isn't just for ourselves, but so that we can be of more benefit to others and

keeping your awareness deep in your core, let your eyes gently open about halfway so that you're aware of your posture, you're aware of your Body and the space that your body is sitting in, space that your body is Breathing in.

The focus of our attention is simply that sensation of the deep core expanding as the breath comes in, contracting as it goes out, filling and empty, and if a thought comes to mind that takes you away into a series of many thoughts, you'll find you're in a daydream, no longer aware of your body, your breathing, your environment. But at some point you'll pop, that Daydream will pop, and you'll be back. And the practice then is simply to smile, acknowledge that you are wandering or daydreaming and without judgment, simply return to your deep core, your posture, your breathing and the space you're sitting in. We'll do this for a few minutes. You.

You can take a moment to refresh your posture. Move if you need to take a fresh start when you're ready, take your posture again.

Connect with your breathing now, raise your gaze again so you're not looking directly into your device. Raise your gaze and look out naturally in front of you. It'll probably be slightly below the horizon. Open up your peripheral vision, soften your gaze so you're looking in a direction, but not at something particular or like you're looking at a landscape in front of you,

and open up to your hearing, particularly to your feeling of bodily sensations.

As you breathe out, feel like there's more opening breathe out, open to a bigger space. Ride the breath out before we were riding the rhythm of the breath deep in our core. Now we're riding the breath out into openness, out into openness and open to what we're going to experience with big mind, with a big perspective. It ventilates whatever we're experiencing to have that much space around it.

So just work with that feeling of going out and opening to a more spacious mind for the Next minute or so you

And now within that spaciousness, bring up particular emotion. You can remember an interaction, you had,

some situation that gave rise to a strong emotion, put yourself back there in your mind and feel the intensity of that emotion, anger, jealousy, pride, defensiveness,

wanting to run away and hide whatever The feeling was, and feel it in your body.

You can do this with your eyes open or closed. If they're open, you can experience this in a spaciousness.

Just feel the texture of the feeling in your body,

and look At the thoughts that gave rise to that feeling is, if you're watching them appear in your mind, they're not yours, they're just appearing.

Why did they have to do this? I Why couldn't I do that so

let your mind go to either one you focused on the thoughts just look at them.

See the lack of solidity and

if you focused on the feeling, just feel it. It's a bodily sensation that doesn't have thoughts and

if another thought provokes another kind of emotion, shift to that just either look at your thoughts or look or tune into the feelings, look, feel The feelings. Do that for A couple of minutes you

As the gong fades, let go of whatever you were imagining and come back To getting settled and centered for a few breaths and deep in your core you

now to make A good sandwich out of that, we like to reiterate our intention that we established at the beginning of doing this, not just for ourselves, but so that we can benefit others, and so you can repeat after me or put in your own words. May the practice I have just done, you have even more benefit to others than to myself, and that's a real expression of generosity. So thank you so much, and we can everybody can unmute Alyssa, put the link to my meditation tomorrow morning in the chat. But if people come in after that gets posted, they can't see it, so I'm going to post it again. You're all welcome. It's free, and it's, uh, 9am the link is at that page on my website, so you can feel free to unmute yourself if You have questions, comments, anything you'd like to share you

Alyssa, can people unmute themselves?

Yes, they can. Okay, I have something. Hi, Laura, hi. There's something wrong with my camera, so I look like a ghost a little bit, but I'm actually here. Oh, I had to laugh tonight during the meditation, because I was drifting off into a daydream. And then just as I came back, you were saying something that made it seem like you were watching me, drifting, drifting off in the Daydream, like you said, precisely, you said, and when you returned from drifting off from the Daydream, and there I was. That happened a couple so you guys,

you didn't hear me say anything before that, because not at all you're off in a daydream. That's, yeah, that's the thing. When we're gone. You don't hear anything, you don't feel anything.

Yeah, that's what I was I was so struck by that, because what happens? I mean, it's like being asleep. I wasn't actually asleep. I'm still sitting here breathing and not literally asleep, but it was the same function. I wasn't hearing anything. Yeah. So, yeah, that was really funny.

That's a That's great. And it's an insight that I've had other people say in our session, saying, hey, wait a minute. I i Usually I'm itching, and my posture and, you know, I can't and then I go on day two, and I'm sitting there for a long time with, no, don't feel any itch. Don't feel any aches in my knees. No, it goes away. Where does it go? Well, it's the same, where did it goes? The same place that you go when you're asleep. You don't, yeah, and this is, this is the nightclub. This is dreaming. And, yeah, realize we don't realize we're dreaming. That's the key, and that's why the metaphor is the word Buddha means the one who woke up, yeah, in

that moment of just coming back, in that moment of just coming back, I really got that I had been sleeping.

That's good, that's good. Most people don't, don't get or not most people, but very often it's we're back, so for such a brief moment, and it's not so clear, and the Daydream starts again, or a different one starts so that's great that you said, Oh, I'm, yeah, I'm not someplace else.

And then there was another point, what happened? There was another point when you said something like, All I heard was you say this, so I didn't hear what was coming up, you know, before it because I was dreaming, you know, but I heard you say, you heard you said something like, why did they have to do that

to me? Right? Just in that

moment, I was in this Daydream where it was a memory daydream, you know, I was going back into some memory, and I was exactly, explicitly somebody, and I was thinking, why did they have to do that? And there goes, Joseph. It was almost eerie. And I thought, can Joseph see me daydreaming? Yeah, there it was. And so that that gave extra sharpness to he went on to talk about feeding the daydream or trying to suppress it, and it just sharpened that understanding that I felt about that, yeah, that's good. Thank you. You

anybody else I

it nice to see new and familiar faces, and the emotions will be coming.

My old friend Bruce was on. I saw him, and he's gone now. Bruce Milner, love to get in touch. You.

I you know, when I first started teaching, I used to be concerned if there was question answer time and nobody had anything to say. And now I feel like, Oh, this is the nicest meditation where we're just waiting to see what happens. And it means probably things connected, and people are thinking deeply about things or just resting without having to think about things. So no problem, we're near the top of the hour. You're welcome to stay if there's some discussion and or just hang out with us in this lovely spaciousness and and Birgit. You wanted to offer something, you're muted, the two most common words in the English language. You're muted

when you spoke about emotions being triggered. I had a situation in the summer where I was in the country, kind of a camp situation, and I was incredibly triggered by a persistent. And smell. We had very wet weather, and it was and so everywhere was the smell, the smell of rotting wood. And I had this, and for me, it triggered memories of an actually traumatic situation where I had been in the area, and a colleague of mine got sick and eventually died. And so, you know, kind of all I could and I could tell that this, just the smell, was re triggering that. And, yeah, I mean, ultimately, there was nothing I could do about it. But I was just wondering whether you have any thoughts about that. Well, yeah,

that would, that would be the practice where you would go in rather than try to block, especially if you, since you can't do anything about it, it's everywhere, you know, and just, and just say, and then there are a couple of different approaches. And of course, one of them is saying that was then that's not happening now. That was then that's not happening now. So you can and kind of desensitize yourself. And the other is, it's that's a smell. Where is it triggering it in me? Where? Where is where my and then is my chest, my neck, my shoulders, my face, my legs, my arms. And when I say legs and arms, I'm not being facetious, sometimes those things make us go numb. Is your heart? Was your heart pounding? And just feel that and stay with the feeling. Focus on the feeling and let the thoughts go to the background until the feeling calms down and go, Wow. And that triggered a lot of memories, and breathe with it. But that takes practice. Yeah, practice. So you have to practice it, and then it'll come back, and then you practice it's more it'll come back, and you again, bite size pieces, and don't expect it to all work at once, right?

Thank you. Applause.

I can't tell if Michelle can't get up or she's just exercising.

Uh, uh, Hi, Joe, can

you hear me? Hi, Jerry.

I have a question about, I don't know how to put this, but it sometimes happens when I'm trying to meditate, and sometimes it happens like I

like you freeze? No, I'm joking. You're froze, Jerry, we can't hear yours. You're and you're not moving. Oh, we didn't, we didn't hear most of that. Your No, your picture froze. It was like Laura's daydream. We didn't hear anything you were saying when all we heard was when I tried to meditate, and then was,

well, that's a problem with my internet connection.

Yes, that's right. Is that the problem with your meditation, your internet connection? Gary and I like to tease each other. So what's the try again.

Sometimes I'm meditating, I remember things for the first time in 75 years, and I don't know what to make of it. Sometimes it scares me.

Oh, okay, so supposedly, everything's in there and nothing gets erased. I don't know if you ever saw that movie Inside Out. It's pretty it's in very entertaining movie. And they have the, it's in this, this little girl's brain and and these characters are going long term memory. No, we don't need that. We don't need that. Oh, ah, the jingle from that gum commercial. Yeah. We need to. Keep that, you know, and these, it just they pick these things that just make no sense, why we still remember them, and then others that are kind of meaningful things. You go, what was that guy's name? Again, I don't remember, but remember, we remember some other weird fact, so it's all in there, and sometimes diff, you know, there's a billion pathways in our neural pathways in our brain. Sometimes it gets, it hits one, you know, it's a wheel of fortune spinning around, and then it shows up. You go, what do you know?

Can I tell thought about that for

hadn't thought about that for 60 years. Happens as we get older. I have a friend who's done a lot of studies in Alzheimer's, and in the long term, memories are more stable the short ones go, yes, my I was with my 92 year old grandmother, who had serious Alzheimer's. She was describing what happened to her when she was 11, vividly and clearly what happened yesterday, not there, gone. So mind is an interesting thing, mind slash brain.

Well, can I tell you a joke that just sprang into my mind that happened?

How did I know that was coming

Go ahead? Oh, well, you know what an agnostic is, right?

Yeah. Are you going to talk about the Hindu agnostic?

No, just agnostic in general. I

mean, I mean the Dyslexic agnostic. Oh, did

I already tell you that? So, no,

a million another a number of other people have told me that, but you should tell everybody else. Did you hear about

used to lie awake at night wondering if there was a dog.

I don't know if you got that. Yeah. Well, that just popped into my line after today, after years? Yeah,

well, I can see why you're afraid. No, I'm joking. I'm teasing. I have a feeling you heard that more recently than many, many years ago, because it's gone around. I have a friend who says, Oh, my dog. So yeah, anybody else would like to share anything? Otherwise we'll have a say good night. I'm not sure when I'm on the next Monday night, not next week, but maybe the week after, I think one more time before, before the holidays. And again, you're welcome to come to my sessions tomorrow morning, and then the next one is a week from Thursday. So peace, health and happiness to everybody.

Ciao, for now, thank you. Dr Joe, thank you.