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. Alright, so happy to see everybody this evening. I'm happy to be with you to be moving through this series on big, big emotions, particularly the uncomfortable ones.
And I just made an impromptu decision, like one minute before I hopped on here, to read a little story that I have definitely shared before, but I don't think in several years. So for some of you this may be familiar, and hopefully for some it'll be new. This is a little tiny story that comes out of the book, Illusions by Richard Bach, which is delightful if you haven't read it.
And we talked last week about emotion residing in the element of water, and we're going to continue with that metaphor this evening. And as I was thinking about water, I was remembering this story, so here's where we'll begin. So this is at the very beginning written by Richard Bach. Hold on. Once they're lived a village of creatures, along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all, young and old, rich and poor, good and evil.
The current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self. Each creature in its own manner plunge tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth. But one creature said it last, I am tired of clinging. And though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust the current knows where it is going. I shall let go and let it take me where it will. clinging I shall die of boredom.
The other creature's laughed and said, fool, let go and that current new worship will throw you, tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die much quicker than a boredom. But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creature's downstream, to whom he was a stranger cried, see a miracle, a creature like ourselves yet he flies, see the Messiah come to save us all. And the one carried in the current said, I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage. All right. Emotion as the element of water. And last week, we talked about soffany.
The edges of the body, soffany, the tension, the resistance, the reaction we feel when big emotion arises. And I think we'll go a little further today because I don't know about you, but when I think about water, I always think about it in a lovely way. As I do with any of the elements, like you're like elemental something, I'm like, loveliest version of the element, there could possibly be, if it's earth, it's like a grassy metal meadow with wildflowers.
And a fire is like cozy and fireplace contained and safe, right? Water is maybe a stream, maybe a little light rain. And as we all know, there is the polar opposite to all of those things, right? Earth could be muddy or barren, the fire could be raging, the water could be a flood, right? It could be one of the unbelievable thunderstorms we've been having this summer.
And in fact, in therapeutic terms, at least, when emotion overwhelms us, when it becomes too much for a nervous system, it is called flooding. That's the word used when we talk about emotion being too much for our system. And so I thought we would talk a little bit about that aspect of working with emotion tonight, how we do it, what we do with that, how we manage the moments that feel like floods, that feel like thunderstorms, rather than a beautiful spring shower.
Yeah. So the first thing I want to say is this, as we think about practicing with emotions, the most important word we could introduce into this is gradual. Gradual. This is not to say, I'm going to pick the hardest, most painful thing in my life and sit down and do a meditation practice around it and just sit there even as emotion swallows me whole. That's not what we're going for here.
And I think that sounds maybe like, oh, of course, I wouldn't do that, except I think a lot of us actually would. It's a bit of our culture, isn't it? Zero to a hundred. The harder I push myself, the faster I'll get better, the better I'll be. It's very aggressive what we do to ourselves to be better. Even if that better is in the realm of wellness or in the realm of care. And so I really want to call out that we are not racing towards a finish line. It is not better to do more.
Gradual, incremental. And at any point, you could simply say, this is as much as I can do right now. And open your eyes. We use the word grounding as a way to, in essence, counteract flooding. If you're on a flood, you want to get onto the ground. You want to get out of the water. And so grounding is anything that helps to stabilize our nervous system. That could be as simple as opening your eyes if they were closed.
It might be placing a hand or a foot on the earth stabilizing yourself against the ground. It might be that you need to really actively engage each of your senses. So caught like actually not metaphorically, literally saying to yourself, right now I see a yellow chair and I hear the hum of the fan and I smell the pumpkin candle. I have burn in in the background because it's almost fall. Like we can do all of the things.
And as we activate each of those senses, it pulls us into this moment where we are steady, we're not lost in the middle of a flood, right? So those are some ways that we could ground. And then incrementally as we start to say, man, I'm having a hard moment. This has been tough, whatever this is. And we sit down to meditate knowing that I'm feeling something or a lot of things.
I'm going to sit down and I'm going to move not necessarily in one practice, but in general over time, I'm going to notice that I move through roughly five stages with an emotion, the first of which is resisting. This is the, I will do anything to not acknowledge this feeling. I will pretend it's not here. I will shove it down underneath something else. I will numb to it. I will run away from it. I will have a fight with it. I resist it.
And then because we're all amazing meditators, we're going to move past that because that doesn't really help us much. And so we'll sit down and we might find that we can fall into a bit of a space of exploration. That's what I hope we get to in this series is explore. I'm willing to be curious. What am I feeling? Where do I feel it? Can I be curious about what's here? And as I get comfortable with that, as I'm willing to explore, perhaps I will find that I can tolerate it.
Right, for one minute, for five minutes, all the time. Tolerating would be no one to seem like I don't like this. I don't feel good. And it's okay. Like I know I can ride this out. I'm okay. I'm tolerating it. And from tolerating, sometimes we'll get to the space where we can allow and allow feels more open-ended. So allowing is emotions come and go. They rise and fall. I trust that this is not forever and it's here right now.
Not just in the meditation practice, but through moments, hours, or days. And then the last stage that we might get to is befriending. And befriending is simply to say, I acknowledge that even in the most difficult emotion, there is something there that is worthwhile. There's a gift. There's something I've learned. There's a strength I have tapped into. There is some sort of gift, even in the most difficult emotions.
And at any given point, no matter how long you've been practicing, you might find yourself at any one of those stages. It's never a perfect step ladder, ever. We might move from resisting to allowing. Maybe we never get past resisting this time, but the next time that emotion hits us, perhaps we're able to explore it a bit more. And when we talk about how we might do this in our meditation practice, how we might work with this, I think that we have to look at it through the lens of compassion.
That's the same lens that says do this slowly, rather than push to 100%. That's compassion. And when we think about softening the body, that could be a physical sense of compassion. Right? Physically, I'm treating my body with warmth, with kindness. I'm inviting myself to let go of some of the tension or the clenching or the resisting. And I actually want to just change the words I just said. Eight. Of course, we want to let go of tension and resistance.
And sometimes it's simply saying, I feel you, tension and resistance. Right? Sometimes it's not as easy as being like, oh, I'm just going to let that go now. You might try 100 times in a 10-minute practice and soften not even a quarter of an inch. And that's okay, right? It's still offering that sense of physical compassion. I see you. I feel you. Can I be here while I try to soften?
And then today, I want to take it one step further, so we've softened a bit into our bodies or invited softening in. And then the next thing we have to do after that physical level of compassion is an emotional level of compassion. We have to offer ourselves some sense of soothing, some sense of soothing. This could be, and almost always is, or at least starts with, some form a physical touch. Right?
If you can tolerate it, a hand to the heart, steady or rubbing the circle, I think some people really like to rub their arms. If you can't stand any of that, perhaps you can do that finger move that we do with five finger breath, you know, you rub your thumb from the bottom of a finger up to the top and from the top back down to the bottom doing each finger. And you've just got that physical sense of soothing, of touch, which is so important to our nervous systems.
And then you would actually literally say something to yourself, the thing that you need to hear. This is hard. I'm sorry. This feels unfair. I'm here for you. You're not alone. You will get through this, whatever you might say to a friend, you actually say it to yourself. Outloud or silent doesn't matter, but you actually say the words to yourself. And in this way, we're able to move from the space of maybe exploring into tolerating or allowing that emotion to be here.
If you want to take it back to that flood metaphor, right, somebody fell out of your boat. There in a raging wild river, you would throw them a life preserver, wouldn't you? And you would say, grab a hold of it. I've got you. You're going to be okay, right? That's what you'd be screaming overboard. That is exactly what we are doing in this practice. In these moments, when life is hard, overwhelming, painful, or just, I don't know, confusing even.
You're like, I don't even know what to do with all this emotion at so much. Throw the life preserver and say to yourself, grab a hold. I have got you. You are going to be okay. And we do that in a practice, just seated here. In the same way that we practice week after week after week, close our eyes, soften our body, feel our breath, and then add the life preserver.
And in this way, our mindfulness practice, our meditation practice, it shifts from something that can feel so intellectual to something that feels deeply embodied and compassionate, excuse me. Something that feels very heartful rather than mindful. And that's what we're looking for. That's what we want this practice to be. You know, I, so this is, y'all remember, right last Monday, I was like, yeah, it was Monday. I was like, the kids school. Oh my God, I'm so happy.
Y'all know who has COVID right now and is home. Yep. Yep. I'm like, what is this stuff he knows I'm seeing on Friday. This isn't good. Uh oh, Saturday. Still a stuffy nose. Sunday, I'm like, all right, we better take a test. COVID. Guess whose partner is traveling across the country all week and is not here to help. Right? And I have a, you know, I have a full week. We all have full weeks. It's the, it's the perfect moment for this practice because I'm not alone.
Maybe you're not having that exact situation, but I bet you could be like, oh, let me tell you about my week, right? Let me tell you what's going on in my life right now. And we could all lay it out there. Each of us with our own version of struggling, of clinging to those twigs and rocks at the bottom of the river where the current washes over us. And we're like, no, no, no, not this again. Please no. And what we can't thank you, Nadia. Thank you, Nishal. I thank you. I appreciate that.
And you know, what we're learning how to do, not that we're not going to have moments where you're like, oh, God, this again, no. But instead of that, can we say, right, my job is not to resist. It's not to resist. This is what's happening right now. And I can say, no, please no, all I want. It's still happening right now. And so how do I show up for myself, for the kids, for y'all, for everybody? How do I show up? And I think it's, I got to throw myself a life preserver.
Each of us has to throw ourselves a life preserver. Yeah. All right. So why don't we try it together? Let's take a moment to shift around to maybe uncross and recross our legs or to let our feet settle down onto the ground, finding a spot that feels as comfortable and safe as possible. When you feel ready, settling into that familiar position, maybe you'll let your eyes close. Maybe you'll decide just to take a soft gaze. And together is a group. Let's take a breath in. Deep and full.
Exhale out of sight. And we'll just do that again. Inhaling deeply. Exhale in out of sight. And allowing your breath just to flow. And taking a moment to consciously let go of everything we talked about. All your own stories and ideas and thoughts. And instead silently to yourself. And let's begin by saying now is my time to meditate. And as you say those words to yourself, really invite yourself to be here. To be here in this room. Here inside this body.
In fact, invite your awareness all the way down into your body out of your head and down, down, down into the torso. Noticing how much you can sit down today. Finding any of the muscles that you've been clenching or holding onto and just letting go of it. And then you can see through the thighs, the hips. Sofining your belly. And perhaps the muscles in the chest. And allowing your breath to flow comfortably and easily. Maybe feeling or imagining your shoulders, sofining.
Holding go along your jaw. Sofining the skin around the eyes. Letting go across your forehead and the space behind the forehead. And for a moment, taking in the entire body seated here. Feeling the way your body reads. And amidst this inhale and this exhale. Invite that sense of softness to permeate all the edges of the body. As if all the edges could become as fluid as water. So that your breath moves like a wave. The exhales fill in you up. The exhale is very gently emptying you out.
The keeping are awareness deep inside the torso of the body. I'm feeling each breath as a way. There is nothing for us to do here. There is nothing for us to fix or change. But in this time perhaps we feel willing to explore. Just be curious about what we feel, what arises as we sit together in silence. And if you find at any point that you're resisting. Maybe once again you'll be able to soften those edges. So let the waves of breath move through you. And to explore what's here.
Let's sit a few minutes in silence like this. Let's sit a few minutes in silence like this. Feeling your breath. And in these last few minutes, perhaps offering that bit of soothing to yourself. Adding a hand to your heart. Or rubbing your arms or your fingertips, whatever feels soothing and safe to you. And as you notice, the tenor of your thoughts, the tenor of your feelings in today's practice. This offer up the silent words that you most need to hear.
If you were being tossed alive, preserve her, what would you want to hear as you grabbed a hold? Once again, feeling your breath here. Letting your breath expand until it fills all the edges of your body. Or maybe wiggling your fingers, your toes. When you're ready, we'll take in one last deep breath together, filling yourself up. Exhaling out a sigh. Taking all the time you need to let go of your practice. To blink your eyes open, if they were closed.
And if you need grounding, you know it's there for you. The literal ground under your feet or your hands can use your senses to identify what you see, what you smell, what you hear. Bring yourself right back into the stability of this moment. Thank you guys so much for softening, for soothing, and for practicing with me today. I have one more component to add to this series on Big Emotion, one more step that we'll explore next week. I look forward to it. Thank you.
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To join my live classes, ask questions, or learn more about my teacher trainings, please visit marrallarnet.com. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you guys next week.