Welcome! You are listening to The Mindful Minute, Meditations Created for Everyday Joy. I'm your host, Meryl Arnett, and my passion is making meditation accessible and enjoyable. This podcast is recorded from my live Monday Night Meditation Class, where we have a brief discussion followed by a guided meditation. If you would like to access these meditation practices as standalone audio files for your daily practice, please subscribe to my newsletter at merylarnett.com.
It's free and you'll receive a new mini meditation each week, along with behind-the-scenes content and bonus material for each podcast episode. Alright, let's grab a cup of tea, a comfy seat, and settle in for today's practice. Hello, happy Monday. I'm really glad to see you this evening amidst rainy, rainy storms. So hopefully weather will cooperate, power will cooperate, and if I disappear or you
disappear, we'll just know it was fates of the universe. So we are moving our way through a series on big emotion, and I named in the first class grief and anxiety simply because those are both two emotions that I am personally paying attention to and noticing in quite a few conversations I'm having, but by all means those aren't the only big emotions, right? They could be any emotion in your personal domain that feels big to you, right? That is very present, is very much
at the forefront of the mind. Any of those can fall into this series. And we started by talking about a phrase that I initially learned from Tara Brock. The phrase is real and not true. And it's one that I like using quite a bit when I'm feeling really overwhelmed by emotion because the phrase reminds us that what we're feeling is real. That's the real part. My feelings are real. I'm actually feeling them. They exist in my body. Very, very, very often, however, the thoughts, the stories,
the beliefs I'm having that surround those feelings are not true. And so that phrase is an invitation to us not to blindly accept that that's true, but to invite innocence of curiosity, a sense of relationship or questioning when we're feeling overwhelmed. Because it's easy to have the feeling and go right into what the three-year-old version of each of us would have done. You know, and I know last week I talked about, I can't remember who, but one of my kids having a
meltdown and that's like a daily occurrence with little children, right? And today, can we just take a moment? Interrupt this whole series to say, last day of summer break, today, tomorrow, two kids, in school, I am pumped. So we had a really fun day today. We went to the aquarium, both of my kids loved the aquarium. We go to the aquarium. And as anybody who knows who's been to anything ever with a child, you cannot leave those places without walking through
the gift shop. And this is not our first visit to the aquarium. We have been to the aquarium. We have bought stuff at the gift shop. And so I sit them down this morning and I say, we're going to go to the aquarium. And I said, that's what we're doing today. We're not buying anything while we're there. We're not buying anything at the gift shop. We're not going to stop and look. We're not buying anything today, okay? And I said, yes, Mom, I understand. Okay. And we go. We do the whole
aquarium. So fun. And we're tired at the end. We've done a ton of walking. We've been around a lot of people. We're all tired. And now we have to walk through the gift shop. And it's awesome. There's so many cool things. And of course, my kids want everything. And I say, no. And they did such a good job to their credit. So good walking through there. And I could feel how upset they were. And they really held it together. And then we make it through. And we're walking down the walk
way back to the car. And my four year old goes, Mom and her little voices, Quibbri, I just can't hold it any longer. I'm so upset. I really beat something. And she kept saying over and over again, I can't hold it any longer. What an amazing phrase for all of us. Because we shouldn't be holding it. Right. This is the lesson of today. We're not meant to hold it. We're meant to let it move through us. Yeah. So I want to back up the second. I just got to do a really cool interview
for the podcast. For my podcast listeners, the interview will have already aired by the time you hear this class. And for my life, folks, it's airing in a couple weeks. And the interview is with a woman named Carla McLaren, who is an emotion and empathy expert. She literally wrote the book, the language of emotions. And in the book, she shares a really important definition of emotion. This definition comes from a sociologist whose name I butchered in the interview and I'm not
going to say it again, because I don't remember the right way to say it. So forgive me for that. But this is what the sociologist writes about emotion. Emotion is a biologically given sense and our most important one. Like other senses, hearing, touch, and smell, it is a means by which we know our relation to the world and is therefore crucial to the survival of human beings in group life. Emotion is unique among the senses, however, because it is related not only to an orientation towards
action, but also to an orientation towards cognition. The piece I really want to focus on for tonight is this view of emotion as a sense. As a sense, just like our taste, our smell, and our touch, our hearing, is so interesting because I wonder if like me, very often big emotion is a problem that needs fixing. Right? That would probably be my most standard viewpoint when it comes to really big, really uncomfortable emotion is what do I do with this? How do I fix it and get rid of it so that I
don't feel it anymore? And I think it's so interesting to turn our gaze to shift the lens we're looking through that rather than emotion being a thing I have to do something with, it's just another sense. It's the way we experience the moment that we're in. We see it, we hear it, we smell it, we feel it. And each of those senses is giving us information, right? It is giving us a way to make decisions to interpret what's happening and why it matters and which direction we might move
because of it. So different than emotion being a problem. Now in order for this to be true, you know, I think the thing that happens just as my four-year-old reminded us is when we experience big emotion, the first thing we tend to do is contract around it, right? We clench every muscle in our body and go, oh no, I'm not supposed to be upset because I can't get a toy today. So I got to hold this in. I'm not supposed to be upset because that email felt like it was
worded in a hurtful way or because I dropped the ball on something and I feel bad about it. I'm not supposed to act out about that. So let me contract, right? And our mindfulness practice, this definition of thinking of emotion as a sense, these are inviting us to remember to soften. We're not supposed to hold it. We don't need to hold it. We're going to let it move through us. And as I was writing this talk for tonight, a dream I had a couple nights ago came to mind.
I really debated sharing it and you can tell me after class if you're like, don't share dreams because I get it. It's like they're very personal. Do they ever matter to anybody else? I don't know, but it felt like a good metaphor. So I'm going to share it tonight and I promise not to do it too often. So in this dream, there's like a big lake, beautiful lake. And on this lake, there is boardwalk, like a dock, right? A really long, almost like a bridge that goes way out into the middle
of the lake and it's low. It's just a flat right on the surface of the water, wood dock, no railings on the side, just like almost a plank. And I'm walking out on this boardwalk. And in the periphery, there's a big splash. I can tell something has just jumped off the side into the water. And I sort of instantly freeze. And I'm looking like, what was that big thing that just jumped in the water? What's going to happen? And so something swims and pops its little head up and it's an otter.
And it waves at me. And then it dives under the water and starts swimming to where I am on this dock. And again, I sort of freeze in my body. And I'm thinking like the fear that's happening in that moment is, is this otter going to knock me in the water? And I'm sort of frozen, just standing there like, oh my god, don't let this thing knock me in the water. And it swims right up to where I'm standing and pops its little head up again. And very clearly is like there to play. And I just
like, oh, you know, thank goodness. And all of my muscles soften. And then I'm there to like play with this otter. It was super sweet. But the contraction, the fear had me frozen. Right? I'm just standing still. I'm not doing anything. I'm not running away. I'm not moving toward it. I'm just contracted. And the moment I take that breath and soften the edges of my body, all of a sudden, the feeling of the dream has shifted. It's no longer a scary dream. And suddenly, I'm like having
this magical dream with playing with an otter. It's lovely. But that's not how it started. And I feel like it's the difference between when something big happens and I contract against it. Oh, my God. Is this going to pull me under? And what if I take a breath, soften those edges? And stay curious about what's going to happen next. Soffining the edges is maybe one of my favorite phrases when teaching a meditation. I say it a lot
right at the beginning. We like take our breaths. We say now's my time to meditate. And then somewhere in there, I say soften the edges. Because I think it's so natural for us to be in a state of contraction. It's so natural for us to protect in some way. It's like we use the boundaries of our body as a wall. And we clench around ourselves. But the emotion, the feelings are already in here. Right? We don't need to trap a wild animal. We don't need to hold it.
Our work is to soften so that emotion can flow. It can move. Some of you might already know that when we look at the cosmology in the body, as taught, you know, I teach this quite a bit, as taught by many of the ancient paths, there are the elements that reside in the body, right? Earth, air, fire, water. Emotion is the element of water. Emotion is the element of water. Water that is malleable. Water that changes states. Water that is perpetually
in motion. It's not meant to stand still. Water is meant to flow, to fall, to drip. And if anything in tonight's talk sticks, perhaps it will be this, that our contraction, our clench, is asking emotion to stand still and what it wants to do is move through us. And so our work, if we're going to call it that, is very simply to keep softening. To keep letting go of that urge to grip it and be curious, you know, question the same way you
might question like, what am I seeing right now? Have you ever done that? Like, you're not sure what you're seeing. So you kind of like really focus or you rub your eyes or you blink a couple of times. Like, what am I seeing over there? Emotion is another sense. What am I feeling? What is this saying? What is it asking me to pay attention to? We could ask that of our emotion. The last thing I'll say before we practice is that it's entirely possible at some point or a lot
of points that you find you cannot soften. You listen to this talk and you're like, whoa, this sounds great. And that's not going to happen for me or I'm trying and I can't. It's too much. It's too big. It's too scary or too overwhelming. And I want to name that that is not abnormal. That will happen to almost all of us at some point around something. And I think that like anything else that is just another piece of information for us to pay attention to. Is that saying I need support
from a therapist or a counselor? Is that saying I have to move my body first because I'm so locked up that I need to yoga or walk or dance. Do I need to journal or paint or go primal scream in the woods before I can sit down and physically soften my body enough to let this feeling move through. And if it ever feels unsafe, if it ever feels too big, then you take that work to a therapist.
Right, you take that work to somebody who can stand with you and help you hold the level of emotion you're feeling because whether it is gigantic or just a little flow, either one it wants to move. It wants to move. And so tonight as we do our practice together, we'll do this work of soffany just over and over again as we sit in this practice. Can I soften? Can I let whatever is there tonight? Move through. So let's do this practice together. Yeah. Take a minute as always
to shift around. I'm crush your legs if they've been crossed for a while. Move around to get yourself into a comfortable seat. Decide if you'd like to have your eyes open or closed. Allow your hands to rest onto your lap. And when you're ready together, we'll take a deep breath in and mulex hail out of sigh. And we'll just do that once more in healing deeply. Exhaling out of sigh. We'll allow you your breath just to flow. Taking a minute to name for yourself. Now is my time to meditate.
And as you see those words, I wonder if this moment can be that first level of soffany. Some subtle way that you can say to your body, you don't have to get up right now. You don't have to move or prepare to move. And so instead, I wonder if you could just sit down more. Soffanine all the edges of the body. Maybe even letting them ripple a bit as if the edges at the body were the edges of a lake. Letting your breath flow.
And letting the full presence of your body drop into the chair or cushion beneath you. Relaxing along your thigh muscles and your hips. Relaxing all the muscles through the center of your chest. Soffanine across your shoulders and down the length of your arms. Feeling the neck lengthened a bit. The jaw, let's go of any grippy. Letting go of the inside of the cheeks. And the tongue. Soffanine the skin around the eyes. And letting go of the eyes and the sounds.
Feeling or imagining your forehead broadening. Creating a little space behind the forehead. And lifting up the top of the head so that you feel tall and awake. And for a moment, you simply take in your body breathing. You feel the inhales expand. The exhale gently pull you inward. You might begin to feel or imagine your breath as a wave. Letting this wave of breath, this movement of water pulls through you. You don't have to force anything here or exaggerate.
You're just feeling each inhale in as an expansion outward. And each exhale is a very subtle drawing inward. The waves wash out. The waves wash in. And our job is not to hold anything. We allow the waves to carry our thoughts. We allow the waves to carry our feelings. And as we settle ourselves into about 10 minutes in silence. We'll continue to feel the breath. And you will likely notice moments where a thought or a feeling has asked you to contract. As pulled you into some sort of a clinch.
And each time you notice that, whether it's once or a hundred times, let's see if we can return to the breath. Let's see if we can soften all the edges so that they once again become shoreline. And we let water, we let emotion flow through us. Let's sit in silence here together. And we let the waves flow through us. And we let the waves flow through us. And we let the waves flow through us. And we let the waves flow through us. And we let the waves flow through us.
And we let the waves flow through us. And perhaps noticing if there's anywhere that you have contracted. And inviting once again a wave of softness to move it through your body. Allowing emotion and breath to flow, you might deepen your breath a bit here. And you might start to wiggle your fingers and your toes finding those edges once again. When you're ready, we'll take a deep breath in together. Exhaling out of sight, making all the time you need to let go of your practice.
To blink your eyes open once again. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Mindful Minute. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or leaving me a review wherever you get your podcasts. This helps others to find the show. And let's face it, we could definitely use more meditators out there. The Mindful Minute is recorded on Muscogee land and is produced with the support of Michael Sayhouse
and Brianna Nielsen. To join my live classes, ask questions or learn more about my teacher trainings. Please visit maralarnet.com. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next week.