How Mindfulness Transforms Us | Jo Pang | TEDxGatewayArchSalon

[Applause] who are you how would you answer that and are you living in a way that's true to who you are I often start off my new mindfulness series exploring this question by having two people ask each other who are you so one person asks and the other person responds for three minutes uninterrupted and what I find is that generally in this first round they talk about the more external layer of who they are they talk about their work their hobbies their friends all of which are really important but none of which are who they fundamentally are and so then they ask a second time ask who are you again and this time I asked them to get a little bit more cosmic in their answer so after wondering what they've done signing up for my class they start to get a little vulnerable so they talk about their struggles in their past the fact that they have anxiety and other pains that they have but what I find is that for most people no matter what they said there is still something in them that realizes that that's not who they are either but I don't have them ask for a third time because for most people who they are beyond these two initial layers is largely unexplored territory and really difficult to put into words I lived 25 years of my life with the deep suffering of ignoring who I was because I was scared because I didn't want to hurt anyone and because I didn't really love myself enough to change and so when I came to meditation I came for some relief but what I found was that the pain was not actually coming from the core of who I was the pain was coming from how I was relating to who I was so through mindfulness I began to learn and accept who I was within and beyond those two layers and the transformation that has happened from there has given me a kind of peace and happiness that I could never have expected so I'd like to share with you today a framework in four steps on how mindfulness transforms us both from my own experience and the experiences of many who have been doing this practice for over 2,500 years so the first step is like the gateway of mindfulness it's coming to this heightened realization that the new kicks the girlfriend even getting an a boarding group on Southwest don't actually bring you sustained inner peace and happiness you're happy for a bit and then you get used to it and then you're on to something else and then on top of that everything ends breaks or dies so no wonder it is so hard to be happy as a human when there is always something between you and happiness and so many people live their whole lives in a habit of believing that if only I become less or more this or have more of that then I'll be happy so when people come to meditation this represents a willingness to step outside of this endless cycle of if only to practice being present with who we are and what we have right now so I'd like to invite you to try this practice out with me because in the same way that I can't talk at you about playing piano and then you become a virtuoso I can't talk at you about mindfulness and then you become more mindful unfortunately the brain doesn't work like that so through neuroplasticity our brain actually develops based on how we use it and so when we practice mindfulness through meditation our brain develops its capability to be mindful and compassion in it and that's really why it is a practice and not a philosophy or magic it's accessible to everyone and so let's try out this practice and to start I'll just ask that you close your eyes and this just helps bring attention inward and just feel what it feels like to be in this body in this space and in this moment bringing your attention to your breathing in this body so following it as you breathe in and breathe out breathing in again and breathe out the breath is always present and a reliable place to come back to you just continuing to follow your breathing and you might notice thoughts like to take your attention away and so all you have to do when you notice that happens is observe where your mind went and then come back to your breath learning how to come home to who you are and now taking one more mindful breath and opening your eyes so for some of you that might have felt nice for others that might have felt awkwardly long and for most of you you probably noticed a lot of thoughts and that's actually part of the practice so as we continue to practice we become really conscious of what takes us away from inner peace and happiness because when we meditate we try to be present and then we notice all of the thoughts and the motions and our top 10 tunes that really like to get in the way of that it's as though the waves of the mind start to settle enough for us to see more clearly what's going on underwater and rather than our normal life where we're too distracted to notice we ignore it or we get really caught up in it we learn how to notice it to gain insight from it and to let it pass and that starts to create space for us to choose our response from a wiser place I remember one summer I was getting into my car and it was extremely hot and I noticed in me all of this irritation and this inner complaining and because of my practice I could be aware of it without being totally caught up in it and it gave me the space to to remember that just a few months ago I had paid for this exact same experience at the sauna and so that changed my whole perspective because suddenly I realized that it wasn't actually the heat itself that was causing my suffering but it was my resistance to the heat so rather than being the complainer and being the irritation I was able to be the noticer of the irritation and complaining and choose to let it go and so as we start to get less caught up in our emotions and our thoughts we start to have greater access to this third layer of who we are are more kind are kind wise and conscious self where our true values live as we become familiar with who we are and as we start to allow thoughts and emotions to go without getting caught up in it we start to discover our true nature and through meditation we get this in glimpses of the quiet peaceful mind and what it is to just be and we discover the joy compassion and peace of our true nature and this is this experience is one of connectedness it's one of aliveness and it's one of a deep contentment as we start to discover who we are it becomes natural then that all of the layers of our being start to transform from this place I would never have expected that such a simple practice would transform every corner of my life from how I eat to how I speak to the work I do and the habits that I have and these changes haven't come because it's New Year's or because from from a place of self-hatred or the delusion that maybe this thing will bring me happiness these changes have come from a wiser and more compassionate place in me through meditation I finally discovered I gained the self compassion and the insight to come to terms with being transgender and that my brain had developed as male and my body got a different message and after I came out to my family I went home and I found these journals that my mother had kept of as a young child and I discovered that from the age of two and for several years I was persistently telling my parents that I was a boy and when they would tell me that I was a good girl I would say no I would start crying and tell them that I was actually a good boy and I think they might have just thought I was really stubborn but as I read these journals I I remembered my first short haircut as a child and what it felt like to feel embodied a feeling that a feeling of really being seen for who you are and it was a feeling that I would lose four decades after as I saw that this is what I'd always been any doubt that I had that maybe I was making these changes out of a place of pain that went away I knew then that I was making these changes from a wiser place out of compassion for my pain and it became clear to me then that mindfulness is of transformative practice that brings us back home to who we are before we are ever told who we should be and that brings us a deep level of happiness that we can't find externally there's an old story in Thailand of a group of monks that had to move this really big clay Buddha statue into their new temple and when they tried to move it it was unexpected unexpectedly heavy and it dropped and some of the clay broke off and they found a little bit of gold underneath so after they investigated further they found that actually the whole statue had been made of gold and that hundreds of years before the Burmese army had threatened to come to town and so they covered it with clay to try to protect it the analogy here is that over the course of our lives we pile on layers of clay clay that we use to protect ourselves but eventually we to forget the gold we really are we forget that the clay was just a remnant of the past and no longer who we are today through mindfulness we learned the skill of transferring the clay by getting close to and transforming our clay and our suffering and getting in touch with the gold that we are and this is so important to me because when we're covered in clay and we are when totally caught in our stresses and our striving and our suffering we don't have as much access to our gold we don't have as much access to the innate compassion we have to be open to and to do something about the suffering of others and the words and actions we make out of our clay out of our fear and our pain can cause tremendous harm over 40% of transgender people try to kill themselves and it's not because of who they are at their core it's because so many in this world have yet to learn how to turn inward and to access compassion that they have for others and for themselves and this is just one kind of unnecessary pain our society has not yet learned how to help transform I don't think that world peace and greater global happiness are going to happen because one day all of the government's come together and decide that now is the time for a more harmonious enlightened world it has to start small we have to practice it and build it inside of ourselves and then we need to practice it the next time we're cut off on 64 every every moment is an opportunity for practice and if we can meet the world in this way we can begin to transform from the inside out thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 365,778

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Health, Brain, Happiness, Meditation, Mental health, Mindfulness, Neuroscience, Pain, Passion, Self, Self improvement, Self-help, Sex

Id: 9gi2ER4pSaU

Length: 13min 33sec (813 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 13 2018