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. Welcome, friends! Happy Monday! As always, I am glad to be here with you and glad to see your faces or your names and get to share in practice with you. So we are at the end of our Big Emotion series.
And the end always feels so tricky to me because I feel like sometimes the end is like a slam dunk. Like I've been saving the really good thing for the end. I'm like, oh, finally I'm at this last piece and I can drop this little nugget of wisdom. Hello, welcome! And sometimes the end feels like if only there was a lovely ribbon I could tie around the series and deliver it into your lap so easily, I would do it in a heartbeat.
And this is one of those series where the deeper we go, the mercier it gets. Yeah? And I will do my best to tie a bow around it and leave you with something really solid and this end to me feels so ephemeral. And yeah, there's much to work with. So let's talk about it. We are moving through this exploration of how we are with Big Emotions, right? How we're with anxiety or grief. And last week I named sort of five stages of emotional resistance that we tend to move through, right?
Those stages being resistance, first and foremost, we feel something uncomfortable. We don't want to feel it. We resist it. And then from resistance with a little bit of practice, we're able to move into a space of tolerating. Tolerating is tolerating. It's saying, okay, I'll stay here for another minute and I'll see what happens. And from, oh wait, did I skip resistance exploring, excuse me, I feel like I skipped exploring. So resistance, we're resisting.
And then we're willing to explore, which is like just a bit of curiosity about what's here. And then from exploring, it's into tolerating. I'm seeing what's here. I'm feeling it and I'm going to stay just for as long as I can. And then from that place of tolerating, which is already such huge evolution to move from resistance to tolerating, is no easy feat. And from that place, maybe we will be able to move a little bit further into these last two stages, which are allowance and befriending.
Meaning simply meaning I can hold steady here and I can let this feeling come and go without me meeting to grab a hold of it. And befriending being, I'm able to see some value in this difficult emotional experience. And when we talk about allowing an emotional experience, it's like, I'm pretty sure I could talk till I was blue in the face. I could use every word under the sun. And yet when the moment comes, that the big emotion is here in your body and you're like, how do I allow?
What does that mean? Words do us no good. Because this is a purely felt experience and each of us will probably describe or experience that sensation of allowing differently. We know the first two steps, right? We're going to soften our body physically. That's step one always because that is that immediate resistance is the physical engagement of our body. And so we've got to get out of that resisting phase. We're going to soften our edges. And once we do that, we move into soothing.
That's what we talked about last week. Southing being placing the hand on the body where you need it on your heart, on your cheeks, rubbing your arms or your fingertips. And saying to yourself literally saying to yourself the words that you need to hear, right? And remember last week we used the metaphor of somebody falling overboard and we throw them the raft, right? And if that was the case, if you're throwing somebody a raft, you don't just throw it and stand there silently, right?
You're shouting at the person like, hold on, grab a hold. I've got you. And that is the lesson in soothing is it's not stand there silently while you suffer. It's save yourself. Hold on. I've got you. And so maybe we've done that work and we're like in our life preservers now. And we're like, okay, I know the next step is allow. How am I going to do this? I listened to this talk today. I'm as a podcast interview with a mythologist. His name is Martin Shaw.
He was, I listened to it twice back to back. It was spectacular. And although he was not talking about emotion, he was and it felt so poignant to our talk tonight, I decided to weave it in a little bit. And so in this interview, he first shared a myth. He shared an old story. And you know how old stories, like the old, the old fairy tales or the old myths, they're not like the stories we hear today where it's really neat and gentle and sort of clean.
Like these old stories are so uncomfortable because they're very wild, right? There's like edges that rub against you that are like, God, do I have to be that dark? Do I have to be that intense? So he shares this myth. He tells this whole story. And at the end of the story, he says, please don't decide what the story means and tell yourself you understand it. Because the minute we do that, the minute we say, this is what this means, I got the lesson. Thank you so much. That was so helpful.
The minute we do that, we essentially say, please don't work on me anymore. I'm done with you now. And the myth is, you know, the myth is not true. It's a story that somebody made up. And yet what the myth says to us is so true. And his invitation to us is do not trap that myth. Rather than trap it, can we trail it? Can we use all of our senses? Can we stay awake to the peace that just keeps circling in your brain?
You keep remembering that one line or that one image because you loved it and it resonated or because it was wild and scary and felt dissonant to you in some way? And can we just pay attention to that thing and let the story work within us, let the truth reveal itself within us? So he's saying all this about a story, about a princess and a snake and a prince. And I was like, of course, the same is true of anything working on us, including our big emotions.
And it would be so lovely at the end of this series to say, here's what your experiencing when you experience anxiety. This is what it means. Now that you understand it, you never have to experience anxiety again. Congratulations. And we tie a bow on the box and we put it on the shelf and we never open that box again. And instead, what we're asked to do is not trap the emotion. Because the truth is that there's no one reason and we could think all day long.
We will not think ourselves out of an emotion. There's no one thing that if we fixed it, we wouldn't feel this anymore. And almost always, there's not even just one emotion for us to try to figure out. There's 47 things happening in our body at any given time. And so rather than us try to trap the emotion and tame it, name it and understand it, can we allow it to just be as it is? Can we allow it to be as uncomfortable and messy and wild and raw as it is, as confusing as it is?
And like, let's be so upfront about the fact that probably the most difficult thing about that is all day long. We are asked, how are you? All day, every day, people ask us, how are you? And maybe there are two people in the world that you're able to go actually. I'm doing this really deep work trying to be with my emotions without naming them and tame them, it's a little bit like a myth. There's like two people we can say that to. And the rest of people, what do we say? We say, I'm fine.
I'm fine, thanks for asking. The problem is, we keep saying that. And so we keep sort of thinking to ourselves, I'm fine. I'm fine, it's okay. Right? When the truth is, we're not trying to make it fine. That's not allowing. That's covering over. That's reshaping. That's numbing. It's something, but it's not allowing. And I'm not saying you got to go tell everybody your deep work.
But you have to at least remind yourself every time you say you're fine, that the truth is, I'm not trying to make it fine. I'm trying to allow in whatever little pockets that I can. You know what? I shared last week on this call, you know, my partner was traveling last week. The kids were sick, we're all fine. He's home. It's wonderful. Life is good again, thank goodness. And it was, it was a hard week last week. It was really hard.
And it was interesting because as I was doing my own work of like feeling what I'm feeling and allowing that to be as it is, I also was very aware of the people I'm sharing my life with and their experience of last week and their feelings and a partner who, it wasn't like he was dying to go take this trip, right? It was for work he had to. He was worried about the kids. He wished he could be here to help.
So I was very aware that he's having his own emotional experience around what happened last week. So we like hold this deep space for ourselves in the pockets that we're able to knowing that we can't just like drop it all over the place at all times.
But each moment that we allow in our own bodies, not only does it make us safer and steadier, but it makes the space around us safer and safer for everybody else to have their allowance, their own emotional stories unfold and we're okay to let that happen without needing to go, no, no, let me put that in a box for you. Quick, quick, let's name it and tie it up and fix it, right? And we're not here to fix.
The other thing I learned about old myth, ancient myth is that the endings were very unlike endings today. There were no happy endings, right? But it was these endings that were always open. Like the story could just sort of continue or loop back on to itself and keep going. Again, just like emotion, right? Because we don't tie a happy ending on it at the end and say, this is it, I did it check.
We continue to work with emotions as they rise and fall in the minutia of the day and in the long seasons of our lives. And it looks different, it feels different, we experience it differently every time it arises. And that's a little bit our gift is that it gets to be a story that's working on us. And all we are asked to do is allow that story to unfold. And so we'll share in our practice this evening.
And I think allowances probably a pretty familiar experience for those of you that have been meditating for a while because this is what we do every practice is we simply allow our experience to be as it is. And what we're just asking ourselves to do now is can we keep that going when it gets a little bit more intense? Right? Because I don't know about you, but I sort of have the general spectrum of feeling that I have in a day.
And then the days where things fall outside that spectrum, it's a little bit more in one direction. There's a little bit more push for me to hurry up to not sit so long. I can't stop thinking about this or I need to make a phone call or I have to just be doing something because I feel so agitated on the inside about whatever it is I'm feeling. And so our work, if this is an easy moment for you, is to remember that you're building that allowance muscle for when it feels like I can't do this.
Right? And if this is a harder moment, then with so much grace, so much compassion, we say just how long could I stay today? Could I allow myself to feel this way for one more minute? And if the answer is yes, we stay. And if the answer is no, we are so climbed to ourselves and we do the thing we need to do to take care of ourselves, whether that's open our eyes, place our hands on the ground, drink a glass of water, something to ground ourselves so that we can be safe.
And we keep working in this way, not linear, but almost cyclically, we keep working, building that skill to move from resistance all the way to allowance or perhaps even befriending. Right? And I named befriending as that ability to see the value in a difficult emotional experience. And we'll just remember that the value does not come from a saying, oh, this is what that meant. It's just not there's more there than one thing. Don't tie it off and stick it on a shelf.
Let it continue to work within you, yeah? Okay. Let's do a little practice together, yes? So about we shipped around, let ourselves come into a comfortable seat, allowing your hands to rest onto your lap. And if you'd like to close your eyes, please feel free. And if that doesn't feel quite right, you can always take a soft gaze down towards the ground. And together as a group here, I'm taking deep inhale in, exhale out a sigh. And we'll do that once again inhaling deeply.
And exhaling out a sigh. And allowing your breath just a flow. Taking a moment to settle within yourself and to silently say to yourself, now is my time to meditate. Now is my time to meditate. And as you say those words, perhaps you'll just invite yourself to sit down a little more fully. To let go of everything that you have done today. To let go of all the things that you have to do later. And for this brief period of time, perhaps we can all just find a way to inhabit our bodies more.
To move out of our heads and into our torso. Sending your awareness all the way down to your feet. And take a moment just to feel your feet. And the way that they rest on the earth. Let your awareness scan up through your calves. Your knees and your thighs inviting all those muscles in the legs just to let go a little bit. The soften. Letting go across your hips and the seat. Letting go of the muscles and the belly. The softening in a crusher chest. Letting go across your shoulders.
The back of the neck. Ealing that sense of softness, moving all the way up. Very base of your skull and along your jaw. And riding the inside of the cheeks to let go. And the tongue. Softening the skin around your eyes and across your forehead. Softening even the space behind your forehead. And as you sit and you breathe, let yourself take in the entirety of your body here. And lean all of your edges softening just a bit. As if you could blur the lines between you and the rooms around you.
From the director awareness down inside the torso and from that space inside feel yourself breathe. Following the inhale into the body. I know for these next few minutes, as we sit and we breathe. If there are big or uncomfortable feelings arising for you, you'll know your next step is to soothe. To place a hand or hands on the heart, the arms, the belly, wherever you like to be touched. You'll offer yourself the words that you would need to hear today.
And then as we settle into about 10 minutes in silence. We'll each just do our gentle best to practice allowing. So as we sit and we breathe and you find yourself feeling bored, you could just wonder what it would be like to stay here and be bored or sleepy or frustrated or joyful or calm. And I let go of the urge to give it meaning. And I let go of the urge to understand. And instead can I simply allow myself to be as I am.
We'll sit now, feeling each breath and allowing all that arises to be here. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand. And I let go of the urge to understand.
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And I let go of the urge to understand. 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 can definitely use more meditators in this world. The Mindful Minute is recorded on Muscogee Land and produced with the support of Madeline Day Production Management and Brianna Nielsen Virtual Assistance.
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.