Howard Wiley

Boise, ID, USA

Oregon, USA

Lorne Brown

Observe your feeling tones and cultivate equanimity as you dance through the changing flow of your senses.

Performance

Mindfulness Meditation

Buddhism

Mindfulness

Clarity

Traditions

English

The second foundation of mindfulness – mindfulness of feeling – invites us to explore the unconscious ways we constantly relate to our internal and external world. In each moment, something comes into awareness through the senses, and immediately we form a relationship – an often unconscious label, of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. With this practice, we explore these relationships as they are happening in realtime and let this be an invitation toward equanimity.

Vedana The 2nd Foundation of Mindfulness & Equanimity (Short Version)

 Hello and welcome. Today's practice will be one of getting curious about the second foundation of mindfulness. In this foundation, we explore feeling tones, the immediate sensation of pleasantry, unpleasantry, and neutrality that arises when anything comes in and touches the sense organs. We'll also cultivate just a subtle intention here to play with the experiencing, the direct sensing of equanimity, allowing everything to be just as it is moment by moment. So as you arrive for your practice, taking a moment to find whatever looks like a comfortable seat for you here in this moment. Finding a gentle upliftedness in the spine and unfurrowing through the eyebrows, softening in the forehead, and a melting of the shoulders down and away from the ears. If it feels good to you today, maybe allowing the eyes to softly close or letting your gaze rest just a few feet down on the floor in front of you. And we'll begin by dripping the mind into the body. Fall awake into the sense of touch. Finding what's alive from your body from the inside out. And perhaps seeing as you arrive here, if you can invite the body to be a little more heavy, feeling that gentle pull of gravity down towards the earth beneath you. Grounding rooting yourself right here in this present moment aliveness. And perhaps as you ground yourself right here, there's already a connection and awareness to the feeling of the body breathing. Realizing where the breath feels alive for you right here. Bringing your fullness of attention into the rhythm of the body breathing. For this practice, we'll let breath and body be your anchors to presence. If at any point you find yourself lost, or the mind whimsically awry away from the aliveness of this moment, with a gentleness simply return back to breath to the visceral sensate experiences of touch in the body. As we begin to explore this second foundation of mindfulness, the mindfulness of feeling, the invitation is to begin opening to all the senses all at once. Noticing those sounds that are close by, as well as those that feel distant and far away. Opening to sight, even with eyes closed, to smells and tastes. To emotions, and even to the stream of thought in the thinking mind. We'll spend just a moment here. Opening to this dance of aliveness, and see if you can simply notice as something new comes in and touches awareness. The moment where attention is drawn to something new in the space of experience. This dance from a sensation in the body, to a sound in the room, to a thought arising in the mind, back to a sound. Remembering that if you find yourself feeling lost in this dance, simply come back to the breath, ground again into the body, and then reopen. Can't be, can't howl... As the observer to this dance, maybe imagining as attention shifts from one visceral experience to another, that it's simply like changing partners as you dance, moving through each moment.. As one experience comes in and touches awareness, rest with it until a new thing comes in, a sound or a feeling, sensation.... Letting that become the new partner until attention is naturally drawn somewhere else....................................................................... And again, rest until something new comes in. Letting this be your dance. Inspirational storytelling. Lainca Phome pityt direction..... This practice is a beautiful opportunity not just to know what's happening moment by moment but also to begin forming a relationship to know more deeply how you react and respond to the world around you to the subtle feeling tones the Vedanas that drive our every action and choice whether we're aware of it or not. Maybe you notice the subtle reactivity that occurs in the mind for things that feel pleasant the shift for those that feel unpleasant, the reactivity there and the way we tend to easily move on from that which we label neutral coming to see and fully experience this peace of being human of how we relate to our world moment by moment.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................