The Secret Formula of Human HAPPINESS | Gelong Thubten

practicing meditation itself creates compassion creates love builds love builds kindness why when you meditate there is a relationship with your thoughts and that is the key point I'm really happy to be back again speaking for with MindValley I was loved to come to mind Valley events I've been over the last few years to several of your events and I'm getting more and more involved in your family and doing more work with you guys and yesterday I was as I was flying into into the airport I felt such happiness I thought oh I'm gonna be with MindValley again it may always makes me happy so thank you for coming this morning to my talk my talk is about happiness I'm going to talk about happiness and I'm going to talk about obviously meditation or mindfulness and compassion a few different subjects it was actually really deep unhappiness that sent me to a Buddhist monastery I'm not here to try and convert you all into monks don't worry you can keep your hair but just to tell you a little bit of my own story it was I was incredibly unhappy in in my early 20s I was living in New York I was living actually a very wild lifestyle I was going to parties all the time I was an actor and I was just burning the candle at both ends and extremely unwell in my body and also in my emotions very stressed I was having panic attacks those panic attacks were so frightening that I remember I remember one panic attack I was sitting I was standing in a in a shop and I had to sit down on the floor because I just had this feeling that the things in the shop were going to attack me you know panic disorder is very irrational but very frightening I mean you you know that the clothes or the books are not going to jump off the shelves and eat you but you think they are so so it's a very frightening experience and I was experiencing a lot of anxiety a lot of depression and it reached it reached a fever pitch I had a kind of meltdown basically a major crash a burnout where I had physical symptoms very similar to a heart attack and I was just mentally filled with fear anxiety terror and so I was sick for about four months three or four months in in the States I was bedridden I couldn't move and during that time my mother looked after me and she is a Buddhist and she wasn't sort of pushing it on me but she kind of casually left a few meditation books around my bed and I started to read them and I started to think yeah it's all about how you think and how you feel and that's something you can change you can I started to get really excited about this idea of mental transformation and this idea that you don't have to be stuck the way you are the way you think you are you can change and you know how everything just comes together at the right time so what happened at that time was an old childhood friend was also there and she said to me there's a Buddhist monastery in Scotland where she was gonna go for one year you can enroll for one year to be a monk or a nun in her case and I thought that's a great idea I'm gonna do that it didn't seem like a huge commitment because it was just one year and so I went and four days later I became a monk but only for a year so now 26 years later I'm still a monk because what happened after that year was I decided to continue so I decided to not be a novice monk anymore I became a fully fledged monk that's why my name my name is tip 10 but we say geylang tipton girl long means like full monk in his life long monk so it's like a I don't know like a title or something and my name is Tipton so I became a monk and have been a monk now for 20 26 years and as you heard in the introduction I do a lot of teaching and most of the teaching I do is in completely non Buddhist situations I'm not interested in going around trying to preach a religious message and it's a very debatable subject where the Buddhism is actually a religion anyway it's more like a philosophy and it has all of these really great techniques that people in the modern era are really interested in so the whole mindfulness movement of course has its roots in but doesn't necessarily even mention the word Buddhism you don't have to it's just about training the mind and I do a lot of that kind of teaching internationally working with companies but also working in schools and universities my latest project which I'm really passionate about is I teach 12-week mindfulness programs twelve week-long mindfulness programs to medical students as part of their training so it's now been accredited as a course within their training so they learn vaccinations they learn surgery they learn medic meditation is pretty cool and so I'm doing a lot of that I'm working in prisons and working in drug rehab centers lots of very diverse situations but I want to start this subject today by telling you a very specific thing about my story and how it relates to today's subject matter which is that I started to teach mindfulness kind of three or four years into being a monk and I started running around the world doing a lot of teaching but after doing that for about 12 years I really started to feel incredibly drained I felt like I was giving giving giving but had no way of refueling my own resources I was just feeling more and more tired and I also felt that the teaching was very intellectual it wasn't really coming from the heart it was just you know stuff I'd read and had heard and I was passing this on and it felt a little bit fake you know didn't feel like it was coming from a really deep place so I discussed with my teachers and between us we came up with the decision that I should go into a very long meditation retreat to really deepen my training you know like a retreat is where you go into a place and you have no contact with the outside world you're really enclosed in a building basically for that period of time meditating all day with zero contact with the outside so it was a four year long retreat which is a little bit long isn't it but hey I'm an extreme guy so I went into this retreat on a remote Scottish Island in 2005 and it was yeah it was with 20 other monks so of course we could talk to each other a little bit although in the second year we took we had to take a vow of silence for five months so during those four years you are really thrown into a corner with your own mind I'll tell you a little funny aside to this story before I did the four-year retreat I was teaching a lot in prisons and I went to a prison like a month before my retreat and I said you know what you guys I'm actually choosing this I'm going in too and they were shocked I said you know I'm actually choosing to go into a kind of prison for four years and maybe you could see your prison time in that way as a meditation retreat at first they just laughed in my face and then after speaking to them for like an hour they really thought yeah this is this is a journey you can do that anyway that's the funniest side so I did my four year retreat and it was very hard really really hard because you're faced with your own mind and you that anxiety that panic that unhappiness that depression that I had had before joining the monastery I don't think I'd really dealt with it I think I kind of suppressed it and just became like this travelling monk and giving lots of talks and you know doing all that but I think I hadn't really dealt with it so it came up much stronger in the retreat and I'm so grateful for that because that's when I really could get to get to grips with it and start to work with it and so my retreat was an amazing period of transformation around actually going into that darkness within myself you know a lot of people think meditation should feel great not always sometimes you know you have to go into the parts of yourself that you don't like and you have to resolve them and that's kind of painful but it was really really helpful because I learned how to go into that sadness darkness panic all of that and learned how to give it what to give that part of myself some love and compassion and acceptance and it did start to change and bizarrely it changed into a kind of feeling of happiness you know the more I think the more you accept and love and give kindness to the parts of yourself that you normally reject the more they start to change into a feeling of like you're it's like wealth spiritual wealth within yourself the transformation from misery to happiness I'm not saying I've achieved it and I'm all you know sorted yet I'm still on the journey but definitely I learned something in that retreat but the reason I'm telling this story is more to talk about what happened when I came out of the retreat because I came out of that retreat in 2009 and I went to London normally when you do a four year retreat you're supposed to have a quite a long period of like a like coming down you you're supposed to kind of go into the monastery and stay there for a month and then it like a halfway house to kind of ease your way back into normal society but I was actually teaching in Amsterdam the day after the retreat ended and then London just because of my role in the monastery I was thrown like a like it could bullet out of a gun straight back into the world and that was very good for me in a way because it taught me a lot so I ended up in London and the first thing I saw is that everybody was walking around with their faces buried into phones and really interestingly that that period of time 2005 to 2009 was a very interesting period in the history of tech in that during that time the smartphone revolution happened the iPhone was launched during that period before my retreat nobody'd heard of iPhones or very few now everybody had them also these social media networks were were launched YouTube Twitter Facebook they all happened during my retreat and so when I came out of the retreat I was really faced with all of this in quite a shocking way you know when you're in it you don't see it happening but you take yourself and then you come back in and you see the difference and so what I really noticed was a few things I noticed how everything had sped up everything was like faster and more instant which has its pluses and minuses of course I mean I'm not anti-technology I'm not some kind of you know miserable monk sitting here saying you've all got to live in caves in the mountains I'm not I'm not anti-technology at all I think it's great but I'm interested in looking at how we use it or how it uses us and how we can get the balance right because I definitely noticed an increase in speed everything's faster more and so more distracted the other thing I noticed was the way we process information has totally changed that landscape has completely transformed in that we are now invaded by information the news has a kind of invasive quality to it you know in the old days if you wanted to find out what's going on you have a choice to go and buy a newspaper or to switch on the six o'clock news and sure it's good to be informed about what's happening in the world but you have a choice you decide it's on your terms whereas we all know how it is now it's notifications just popping up on our screen and you know you're looking through social media and all you want to do is look at pictures of your friends with their cats but you have to also navigate through all the news stories to get there one cat that before the next cat you have a news story inserted so we know how invasive it can be and what that does to our anxiety levels I think because of the repetitive and invasive quality of the news it's made us more jumpy and anxious we always think there's something terrible happening because we're constantly reading about it on a loop again and again we watch Newt the same news feed the same news video again and again so it seems like one thing happened a thousand times and so generally I think as a culture walking around with a little bit more pressure than we used to have a little bit more anxiety I don't know about in the countries where you've traveled from but in the UK there's a thing now where you get onto it when you get on a train public transport you get on a train and they announce over the loudspeaker they announce you're on the train to London there are this stop and this stop and you'll be there at three o'clock if you see anything suspicious phone this number but they immediately tell you that so there's now like a culture around oh there's something gonna go wrong there's a terrorist on the train there's a suspicious package there's this there's that and sure that stuff is happening I'm not saying we should ignore it but the way we're told about it as soon as we go to a venue they say hi welcome if there's a fire that's where you should meet you know so we're always told straight away of what could go wrong and sure we need a certain amount of Health and Safety in our lives but I just think the way it's culturally presented now has made us into a more anxious society so what does this have to do with happiness well in a way we are I think we are overburdened with stress hormones I think we're going through our day with way too much cortisol and adrenaline in our body because of all that jumpy excitable information that we receive and thus that the speed of life the pressure of life you know we're constantly invaded by stuff so we have all of this cortisol and I think what that's done to us is made us more tired we're more exhausted and so then we reach for something that will make us feel energized so now we're way too addicted to caffeine and sugar you know we're so tired so we reach for an energy snack and energy drink we're constantly trying to make ourselves feel awake make us get our energy back and so we get caught up in a loop because of course the more of those stimulants we in just the more tired we become the more we need is like an addiction isn't it but I think what it's done to our relationship with happiness is really interesting I think culturally we've moved into a phase where our relationship with happiness is that we see it as a feeling a sensation a buzz a high a hit because we're constantly craving those feelings of feeling better or feeling some kind of like sensation that makes us feel less tired so it we search for happiness in a very kind of instant gratification type way and it it's not a bad thing but the problem is that that search for that kind of feeling psychologically that creates a feeling of unhappiness because the more you try the more we try to feel something and we identify as when I feel that then that means I'm happy the more we do that the more we're telling ourselves we don't feel something so we're feeling depleted and we want some feeling that will make us better but the more we chase that feeling the more depleted we feel and of course this is the cycle that advertisers know how to play on making us feel if you get this you'll be happy and then you get that and then you're still not happy you want something else I mean this is the cycle of craving so in a way our relationship with happiness is about sensations and feelings and a hit or a bar so it becomes kind of unsatisfying because we never get it and the other interesting thing is that our relationship with happiness is always about something that's about to happen I call it anticipate or e happiness something is about to happen chemically this is very true because one of the main chemicals in the body associated with that kind of search for happiness is of course dopamine dopamine I mean these are all natural chemicals in our body cortisol adrenaline doe I mean they are part of us but when they're out of balance we get stressed and we get tired and that's search for a bars that search for a hit that search for something of course leads to another search for something so it's never really arrived so we're always searching and that is the dopamine in our body really interestingly dopamine surges just before we get what we want and it drops away when we get what we want I mean they've done the experiments where they're testing the dopamine animals in dopamine levels in animals and they get a surge before they're about to be fed and then when they're fed the dopamine drops way down so it's like that for us too something about to happen is always the exciting part you know it's way more exciting getting dressed up for a party than the actual party you know New Year's Eve it's always pretty you know like getting ready for the New Year's Eve party is kind of more fun than if the party is always pretty depressing but it's the it's the about to the about to happen so so our happiness is always a delayed response when I get that then I will be happy so this has made us more hungry more unsatisfied so even though color in our culture in modern you know Western developed world we're more comfortable than ever when I think more dissatisfied than ever so something hasn't matched up okay so back to my story just because I think some things about my story might resonate with you I mean you might think we're very different I'm a monk and you're not but actually we're all the same and things I've been through and I'm going through I think will resonate for you so when I joined the monastery I was desperate to be happy I was incredibly unhappy so then what did I do I started to meditate in quite a kind of addictive way I started to meditate to try and get happiness very understandable thing I mean here we go I'm looking at happiness now as a state of mind I'm trying to give up this idea that it should come from outside it should come from within so then I'm going to meditate to get happiness same problem arises the more I'm sitting there searching for happiness in my meditation the more depressed I become the more I start to feel it's not happening I'm not there yet when when am I gonna get the buzz so I realized that I was meditating a little bit like somebody taking drugs always looking for a high because I I was programmed as I think many people are I was programmed to believe something's only working if you feel good as a result of it and that feel good has to be like a ramped up excitement in the body and mind oh then it's working because I felt something so then I'm sitting down meditating and when I first became a monk in my first year I would I was quite ambitious about the whole thing and I used to do a lot of meditation throughout the day I was living in the monastery and I was living in this very kinda quiet life not like now or I'm traveling all the time and I was doing lots and lots of meditation during the day thinking I was kind of really into it you know I was quite ambitious about it I thought yeah I'm doing it I'm in the fast track I'm like you know mr. hardcore monk here I go just you watch me um you know like that kind of feeling like ego basically so but the meditation the more I did the more unhappy I felt and because of that wanting to feel something so what it means is that I'm sitting down to meditate and I'm waiting to get high waiting to get some kind of buzz from it so it means I'm telling myself I lack happiness I'm coming from a place of deficiency and I'm creating that deficiency again and again within my body and mind so I started to get more miserable the game changer for me was when my teachers I've been so fortunate to study with some of these incredible Tibetan masters so my my teacher akan Rinpoche told me you must meditate on passion and that is that was the game-changer is when I started to think oh okay I'm not going to do this for me to get the feeling out of it I'm gonna widen out this this energy of meditation into something to do with helping people compassion kindness and then it starts to change because compassion okay let's talk about what compassion is in a minute but compassion takes the meditation journey from a self-centered grass be addictive kind of reality into something that is of service to the world and then you can let go and you just do your best and day after day you try to be kind to people and your meditation is giving you the fuel and energy to do that it just changes the whole picture from a kind of desperate search for internal happiness into a feeling that happiness is a shared experience because the world is a shared experience we all live together on this planet so surely the happiness thing has to be connected to that that interdependence that community the community aspect okay but what is compassion I think we when we think of compassion we have all kinds of ideas about it but again we tend to think of it in terms of a feeling a sensation maybe like feeling sad when others are suffering feeling feeling pain when others feel pain that's the kind of compassion but it's more related to empathy and I think there's a difference between empathy and compassion empathy is is of course a good thing it's good to have empathy but empathy can be very draining because what happens when you experience empathy in terms of brain activity there's a sense of it's like a mirror mirroring occurs in the brain what I mean by that is you know how when you see somebody in physical pain supposing you see somebody break their leg you kind of feel it in your own body that is empathy somebody's in pain the brain the areas of the brain connected to pain also start to activate it's like a mirror we feel what they feel whether it's physical pain emotional pain whatever it is somebody is suffering and now I'm suffering too it's a little bit like somebody's drowning and I jump in to save them and now I'm drowning too we're both drowning so I don't know how much benefit that really has now two people are suffering really interesting thing they've done a lot of brain scans lot of brain research on people who meditate and they've shown the people who practice compassion based mindfulness have a very particular brain activity that starts to change the motor cortex in the brain starts to activate the motor cortex is the brain region connected with intention to act like any action you're gonna have you have to intend it first even in a very simple way I want to cook dinner I have to have the intention and then I go and do it the motor cortex is the region which is all about intentions and actions so when you're practicing compassion based mindfulness which I'll define in a moment you you're activating those intention a spur intention areas of the brain which will lead to action so this will lead us to do things that benefit not just ourselves and others so our life starts to transform we start to want to help people we also through our mindfulness practice start to develop the wisdom and the skills through which we can help people because just wanting to help them yeah but then what how in what way how what do you do so so we're activating the wisdom and skills through through which we can genuinely help others so it's a it's a situation that has benefit so what what is compassion based mindfulness what does it mean to practice compassion in the mindfulness and how does that relate to happiness so how do these seemingly separate subjects weave together okay so I think there are a couple of things for me one of the key points kiki--the elements is whenever I sit down to practice mindfulness which we're going to do in a minute by the way this is we are gonna get practical this is not all theory and we're gonna do some in a moment whenever I sit down to practice mindfulness even if it's five or ten minutes of say focused breathing or whatever technique I'm doing I will always start and end the session by creating a moment of compassion as an intention so I'll sit and I'll remind myself I am doing this practice for the benefit of all sentient beings all beings so not just humans but animals all beings I am doing this for their benefit through this practice may I help others it's like an affirmation a prayer a wish a commitment there's many ways of doing this for some people they really resonate with prayer so they use prayer some people don't that's also fine you can just sit there and make a kind of decision I'm gonna do this for the benefit of the world it's just a decision that you make or you might planting a seed at the start of your session then I do the session you just let go of that and do the session say 10 minutes or whatever of whatever technique you're practicing any any meditation and the any mindfulness or meditation or any spiritual exercise of any kind there's no limits to the range of exercises that are available but the key point is why you're doing it so you do the motivation you do the session and then at the end of the session I always take a moment to re-energize that compassion by taking a moment to just recommit Dedic I I dedicate I'm dedicating the fruits of this practice to the benefit of the world to the benefit of others it's just a decision it's like a reason for practicing now you are activating the motor cortex because you're making an intention so you're training again and again in the intention to benefit others and you're connecting that with meditation so the whole mixture of that creates a path of compassion which will become real we will get out there and help people in in a deeper way as time goes on ok that's one part so I'm trying out here I'm trying to give you a kind of definition of compassion based mindfulness that's one part the intention aspect why you're doing it ok the other part is going a bit deeper is that the the practice itself practicing meditation itself creates compassion creates love builds love builds kindness why because when you meditate there is a relationship with your thoughts and that is the key point that is the key point is how you relate to your own thoughts and emotions that's what it's all about because if we are relating negatively to our thoughts and emotions we're just getting more stressed we're just building more self disgust self-hatred pressure judgment on the other hand if we relate compassionately to our thoughts and emotions then we are building an internal training in love in kindness so what does that mean it means you're sitting down and meditating and then your mind wanders doesn't it then what happens self judgment I want to try this now let's just try this just as you are sitting there and I know people are watching this from home as well so you guys can join in with us just sit comfortably in your chair but I just want to invite you to not even like big deal oh I'm going to meditate it's a big deal no just very comfortably just sit there and try to be present and try to be in the moment and not in the past not in the future but in the moment and just see how that goes and see how it is just try that for a few moments okay maybe we need something to hold on to so hold on to your breathing breathe naturally without effort just normal breathing but use that as your present moment focus just be connected to your breathing not deep breathing or slow breathing just normal natural gentle breathing but let that be your present moment focus try that for a few moments okay enough just a quick quick experiment there because I I'm hoping you discovered how kind of difficult that is and then this is whether this is where the compassion starts to work did you find that you kind of failed again and again I mean that's a harsh judgment to apply but let's just go there for a moment it kind of feels like failure doesn't it because with mindfulness or meditation I use these two terms interchangeably you know mindfulness meditation with these practices okay we are focusing on our breathing or I know there are also other meditations you might be interested in but they usually involve focus don't they or visualization or something something you're doing here we were just using the breathing within moments the plan fails I mean we had this really good intention to sit there for five minutes breathing consciously within about like five seconds we start writing shopping lists we start like what's for lunch planning revenge I don't know did I feed the cats today or not like what do I need to write that email I mean the mind goes all over the place one moment you are surfing in Hawaii the next moment you're worrying about the cats I mean it's really random how the mind just goes all over the place so in one sense we failed failed as in we had the plan to focus on our breathing now please understand that what I'm saying now applies to all meditations whatever you're doing visualization breathing anything we're trying to do this thing we're trying to be focused on this technique and yeah we kind of failed in that within moments our mind started thinking about other stuff or we fell asleep or whatever that is where many people judge themselves and that is where for many people meditation or mindfulness becomes quite harsh and quite stressful and kind of something you don't really want to do in fact I think this is the prime reason why people don't meditate every day because it's kind of a struggle and it's harsh and and difficult but it's only because of an attitude it's only because we feel like we've failed actually I think it's a really great thing to fail I really do because that so-called failure shows us the human condition it shows us how the human mind is really unstable in many ways it's very hard to get your mind to do what you want it to do it goes and does other stuff so this is compassion is to realize how the mind is really difficult to tame and we don't need to feel angry with ourselves or others about that we can just feel okay this is the mind this is what it is this isn't that why we're meditating ok that's one thing but at a deeper level the very fact that our mind got distracted is that that is the main thing that helps us get stronger because when your mind gets distracted you then have the chance to bring your attention back to your breathing and that is the training that that is the main thing to be doing is to to be returning so mindfulness is not about being in a kind of special feeling or trance or special experiences literally at this stage anyway like going to the gym and lifting weights you're training in this exercise of returning to your breathing again and again that's a really powerful thing to learn because the more we return to our breathing the more we are mastering our own mind because we are learning how to not get dragged away by the thoughts but instead coming back to the breathing gives us power and strength so that in our daily lives we can learn to let go of stress and negativity and distraction we can learn to choose to put our mind into a state we want it to be into for example to choose happiness to choose to be positive to choose not to be negative we're developing that mental flexibility every time we bring our attention back to the breath okay so if that's what we are trying to learn the the bringing it back the returning if that's the point then you've got to have somewhere to return from you know if you're if you're meant to be learning this repeated experience of returning will something needed to take you away so that you can return so those thoughts those distractions are really helpful they enabled the returning so in fact this thinking this way develops or helps us develop a very different relationship with our thoughts and emotions we don't see them as a problem we don't see them as we failed we've see them as the the the key element we need for success so this thinking this way helps us to feel more at peace with our own mind because for many people who meditate they get really stressed because they're sitting there trying to clear their mind I think there's a kind of like a cultural myth about meditation which is that people think you're supposed to clear your mind or empty your mind or blank out your mind that is not meditation at all that that is impossible it's like trying to push yourself into a kind of blank state and the more you try to push the thoughts away the louder they shout so meditation becomes really painful if on the other hand you understand that it's a it's a exercise of returning to the breath again and again then you don't feel that your thoughts were a problem they enabled that exercise so actually it's really helpful to remind yourself that in a meditation session there are really just three things three phases like three yeah there are three phases within the session the phase or the part where you are with the breath the part where you are noticing that you got lost and the part where you're returning so these three phases are breathing noticing and returning breathing noticing and returning so the breathing part is when we're aware that we're breathing that's the part that most people identify as meditation and they think that's all it is but they maybe don't know there are two other phases that are equally important so the second phase is noticing that means you notice that your mind got lost it's really interesting how that works because when we're doing the breathing and we're aware of the breathing it's not that we actually see ourselves going for a walk in our heads we don't see our mind leave the breath and go to this thought then that thought then that thought we don't see that it's more that we almost become unconscious we get lost and then a few minutes later we kind of wake up inside our thoughts oh where was I like that you know suddenly where oh I'm I've gone I'm supposed to be meditating that's the phase to noticing you noticed that you got lost that noticing is a powerful moment of awareness and that's meditation you've regained the awareness so that's really good and the more we can train in that the better so having the wandering mind enabled that noticing that awareness and of course over time we'll be able to notice more soon more quickly you know we're going to get better at this but that's the training and then the third phase is the returning so gently bringing our attention back to the breath the gently part is really important there was a neuroscientist in German whoo-hoo did a lot of research into mindfulness and she got two groups practicing mindfulness and she had two teachers and she told one teacher to teach it correctly and one teacher to teach it incorrectly the correctly teacher was told to simply say to the the students when your mind wanders gently bring your attention back to the breath the incorrectly person was told miss out the word gently just tell the people when your mind wanders bring it back then she tested their cortisol levels the incorrect group had way more stress because they were spending their whole session punishing themselves like oh you so naughty bring your attention back to the breath the correct group were told gently compassionately kindly just gently come back and it changed their their stress levels so that's an interesting aside okay so we've got these three phases in a meditation session sometimes we're breathing what we're always breathing but sometimes sometimes were aware that we're breathing the second phase is noticing that we got lost and the third phase is returning and a meditation session will consist of those three things happening again and again and again and you can you can replace breathing with whatever your technique is whatever visualization anything the technique yeah so sometimes you're doing the technique with full awareness sometimes you'll noticing you got lost sometimes you're returning a session of ten minutes fifteen minutes five minutes however long will consist of those three phases repeated again and again and again and it's the the practice of those three things that makes us stronger if you understand that then your relationship with your mind completely transforms because you stopped feeling like a failure for having thoughts you stopped feeling that you got it wrong because your mind got distracted so you don't mind in fact you're you're almost saying bring it on because these thoughts enable me to come back so this generates in the mind compassion compassionate acceptance of your own thoughts and emotions and that's that changes everything you're no longer at war with yourself so with that in mind shall we try another session let's try another exercise so this time we're gonna really try to just practice those three phases breathing with awareness getting lost and then noticing and then coming back but I want to encourage you to have a little bit more alertness I think sometimes when people meditate they tend to kind of zone out they lean back and they shut their eyes and they kind of just like drifting away and let dribble coming out the corner from her I think it's really good to be sitting up straight and having that real focus and presence and that's much more dynamic so basically sit up straight but comfortable don't don't be you know uncomfortable if you're trying this later at home or those of you now who are trying this at home through the live stream make make yourself comfortable by having a cushion behind the base of your spine for now in these chairs don't worry but later on you can sit up straight but have lower back support like a cushion just behind the base of your spine for now don't worry your feet are flat on the ground or if you're on a low chair like me you can just cross your ankles over your hands are palms down on the tops of your legs or on the tops of your knees you know we should have a long or short your arms are your shoulders are open everything is open you're not you're not hunched forward you're really open this is the a sense of total presence and courage and openness rather than shutting down or kind of sinking within you're really here your head is upright not leaning forward not leaning back but just upright you can in fact slightly lengthen the back of your neck so that you're really like just basically good posture but relaxed don't be held rigidly you're kind of disciplined and at the same time very it's a curious mixture they're disciplined and loose now have your eyes just gently open so they're not closed and they're not fully open you're not looking around the room and you're not even looking at anything but your eyes are just left alone gently softly open but looking at an angle downwards in front of you so you're looking into space but not at the back of the person in front of you or at a spot on the carpet you're just looking into space angled downwards slightly and blink whenever you need to and of course close your eyes from time to time if you want to so just be focused in that posture this is we're going to do like six or seven steps step one is to be in the good posture step two is established compassion which means to make a very deep intention or wish or even prayer deep in your heart may I meditate in order to develop more compassion and love for all sentient beings may this benefit all beings okay step three feel your body by feeling the surroundings as in the chair and the floor under your feet feel the contact between your body and your surroundings feel the chair under your body feel it under your backside feel it behind the base of your spine notice the contact between your body and the chair the noticing is very fresh very uncomplicated you're just sensing without thinking about it too much bring the attention up to your hands and feel how your hands feel resting on your legs notice the fabric the feeling of the fabric of your clothing under the skin of your hands connect with the sense of touch now bring the attention up to your shoulders maybe your shoulders feel tense maybe they don't it's okay either way simply be present and feel what you feel or don't feel but with full awareness okay bring the attention down to the front of your body your belly your abdomen and now the next stage is to notice how your breathing makes your body move breathe naturally without effort but feel how your breath makes your chest or your belly rise and fall rhythmically there's a movement in and out just feel that rhythm when your mind wanders gently bring it back to that feeling of movement now bring your attention up to your face feel the air traveling in and out of your nose your your the air is very natural you're not pushing it or making it deep it's just left alone but feel how it travels up and down your nostrils if that is not comfortable then breathe through your mouth and feel the air against your lips so either in the nose or in the mouth there's a movement of air brushing across skin as it comes in and out just connect with that and when you lose connection regain connection again and again we'll try that for three minutes remember to gently notice and return don't fight your thoughts just see them as the reason why you can notice and return to another minute okay now to conclude the exercise focus again on your body feel the weight of your body on the chair notice your hands and fingers feel how your hands feel resting against your legs feel your feet either in your shoes or maybe not wearing shoes doesn't matter either way just feel how your feet feel with your shoes and the floor feel the ground under your feet and the last step is a reminder of compassion take a moment to mentally dedicate your practice to the benefit of all beings make a wish or an intention or a prayer through doing these practices may I help others may my compassion grow may I bring peace happiness and love to the world around me okay so stop there and you may have discovered a few things in that session you may have discovered it a little bit easier because we've been talking about this more compassionate attitude that your wandering mind isn't your enemy it isn't a failure it's simply part of the process you may have found that you may not it's not like a instant thing but just trying to work on that attitude can be very helpful you you may also found that you fell asleep or wanted to fall asleep and that's really common it's really common when people are either new to meditation or they do meditate but not every single day it's not like a it's not like a natural thing for you it's something you're doing occasionally or you're very new to it then it's really common to feel incredibly sleepy simply because our body is not used to sitting there doing nothing normally if we sit still we're watching TV we're on our phone with all is doing something so to sit there and just undo you know what I mean not do just be is a new experience and our body isn't quite sure what to do with that our body associate stillness with sleep so just like when you leave a laptop alone for too long it has sleep mode it's not busy so it grabs 40 winks it's the same with our body but if you meditate regularly after a while that sleepiness starts to lift and you start I'll come to questions soon that the sleepiness starts to lift and you start to feel more present more focused and all of that so the quote that the answer is just keep going and that sleepiness starts to wear off so you may have noticed the session was a bit easier because of this new attitude around compassion you may have found the session made you sleepy you may have also found that you're now sitting thinking did it work did it not at work did I feel something did I do it right these are all just judgments it's not about getting an instant result or feeling different it's just about doing it so try to just let go of those judgments and just do the practice regularly but I find that breaking it down into segments is really really helpful when I first learnt meditation they literally just I was in the monastery they just sat me down and said don't move for two hours I mean I really nearly went crazy I didn't know what to do there was like a there was a carpet we were sitting on and I was just holding on to the pattern on the carpet so I wouldn't go nuts and then slow slowly they started to teach me the methods and what I found really helpful is to have a structure so what we did then was seven stages believe it or not there were seven very clear distinct steps in that session step one was we sat in a good posture step two was we established compassion the why why am i meditating be the first four steps are quite quick just a few moments on each step one was sitting in a good posture step two was established compassion step three was focus on the body just to get into the the situation of sitting we felt the chair under us we felt the ground under our feet you know we were with the body body focus is step three step four is notice how the breath moves the body notice how the breath moves the body remember there we were feeling the the chest or the belly just gently undulating like a wave in and out no big deal not deep breathing not pushing just letting it be but noticing it that's step four noticing how the breath moves the body Step five is the main step we spent longest on step five step five was feeling the air in our nose because what we're doing is we're honing the focus we're starting very general body movement and then we're really zoning in on this precise sensation of flow of the air in the nostrils so if your nose is blocked too then of course breathe through the mouth and feel the air against your lips so either the nose or the lips and that's step 5 which we spent the main part of the session on feeling the air in the nose or the mouth and of course your mind goes all over the place but you keep just bringing it back when we're ready to end the session we kind of warm down it's a bit like warm-up main exercise and warm down so warming down is step six which is focusing on the body again for a few moments and step seven which was compassion making that compassionate dedication I'm meditating for all beings so to recap step one is posture step two is compassion step three is body awareness step four is the movement of the body Step five is breathing in the nose or the mouth step six is body awareness and step seven is compassion so having that structure is really helpful and having a sense of kind of discipline around time really helps it doesn't really help if you just sit there and see how it goes it's more helpful to decide I will do 10 minutes and then you time it you have a clock or an alarm but the gentle alarm no not a stress the alarm but you know a little ping sound you can get a nap or something on your phone that does that or I don't use a alarm I have my watch next to me and I occasionally look over so I have a sense of what the ten minutes is because that gives you discipline otherwise you're gonna do like two minutes and think yeah this is boring I'm gonna make coffee so you want to have a little bit of sense of I will do ten minutes no matter what and that's that's very helpful I want to talk about more things I want to talk a little bit more about compassion and I want to talk about bringing mindful movement into your daily life but I want to pause now to see if there are any questions and I think we have a microphone that you can throw at each other but it is in a big foam box so just go for it hi hi my name is Maya I find when you were talking about focusing your eyes down and semi-open for me it's very difficult yeah to do that I can do it for a few seconds but I feel like I have to close my eyes so so so yeah it's okay it's okay I just think that if you train yourself to eventually leave your eyes open it promotes greater awareness let me explain this a bit more I totally appreciate your question it is at first difficult like you want to close your eyes you feeling how am I doing this I don't know how to keep them open but actually it's without effort our eyes are open all the time without effort like right now you're not holding your eyes open with effort they're just open to me it's a little bit like when you're on a train and you're sitting on a train and you're looking out the window but you're not seeing what's outside your eyes are open but switched off the the trees move by the traffic you're just not really looking at it in I live in London in London we have the Metro the subway system with like in New York as well you're sitting opposite each other you're kind of like looking not at the person in front of you but just like switched off you know what I mean you're staring in front of you but not even seeing their face it's a little bit like that in meditation your eyes are open but switched off angling the gaze downwards helps at first because you can just not be too distracted the reason for it is that it promotes awareness closing your eyes will make you more sleepy and if even if it doesn't make you sleepy it tends to make you go into a kind of like a more the awareness is more dull dullness do you know what I mean that's slightly like fog-like mist not so not so much clarity because when you close your eyes you tend to go into a kind of slightly subdued sleepy mode whereas having the eyes open is total awareness you're really here mindfulness means to be in the present moment without judgment without changing it just to be there with total acceptance now if you close your eyes you are kind of judging the present moment you're saying to yourself Here I am in this room but actually the things around me are a problem for the mindfulness I'm going to close my eyes to make it easier so that's a huge judgment from step one I'm coming back to you in a second so to just leave your eyes open means that you're in a total present moment without changing it the other reason why having the eyes open is so powerful is because it will become easier to then bring your mindfulness into daily life if you practice mindfulness with the eyes closed you start to associate the meditative state with darkness so you become very dependent on darkness to be in that state if you practice every day with your eyes open you can generally find it easier to let the meditation appear throughout your day which I'm going to talk about in a moment mindful moments because you're learning to meditate in the present moment so I appreciate that at first it's a little bit difficult but in the long run it's a really powerful shift to just be present without shutting anything down it makes the meditation stronger more present more vibrant did you want to say anything else about that yeah like I completely agree with all of that I've been married 18 and I have a tendency to close my eyes yeah it's not a bad thing it's not bad it's just here's another suggestion and he makes sense like to be able to bring it to the reality with the eyes a little open yeah but I also found myself judging when I was trying to keep my eyes open that normally I feel more comfortable having being close so I have to allow myself to go there you know like not to feel judged sure and then I guess it's a process it's a process otherwise you get into a whole trip about that I'm so bad I'm doing it wrong no no just do it how you do it but slowly let it evolve thank you any more questions hi take advantage of having their mic right next to me my name is Jared hi thank you so I have a or I've had a daily transcendental meditation practice a number of years very similar in terms of thoughts come in gently just refocus we use them up with cars as a mantra based so that peace I've become somewhat accustomed to without judgment the focus on the body and different sensations throughout the body is very difficult for me how difficult how in terms of recognizing a feeling so feel your feet on the ground what does that feel like are you adding a lot of ideas like does it feel like this does it feel like that are you getting into a lot of concepts is that what you mean or you can you not feel anything is that I don't recognize you can't connect very much a short connect sure so then judgment will come in oh I'm doing this wrong in terms well that's what I'm doing it wrong but I don't have the ability to connect I can okay I don't have the sensation and I'm curious just with the TM yeah I have been doing it for a long time but um I can do it very easily without judgment even if the mind is very hectic at times okay there's acceptance to that but the body recognition piece which I do understand is a big part of mindfulness I just struggle with so I'm curious how you well thank you for your question and I I think it's not about having to feel anything it's about being aware of feeling or lack of feeling in fact there's an exercise called the body scan which is a very common well known mindfulness exercise where you're usually lying down or sitting in a chair and you're scanning from the toes up to the head and down again through the different parts of the body and there are definitely parts where you may feel something like you might have aching shoulders or tense legs but there are parts where you won't feel anything like why would you feel something in your left small finger or in your right elbow so it's actually about scanning through the body and just registering presence or absence of feeling and leaving it at that you don't have to feel anything you're simply paying attention to sensation or lack of sensation so maybe maybe your question is based on looking for a sensation and not finding one and then thinking oh where is it is that does that resonate for you yes but I also think it's twofold it's where the questioning of why don't I have a sensation or how do I get the sensation or yes and I think just let go of that and think well I don't need to have a sensation I don't need anything I'm just being aware awareness is non-judgmental like a scanner like an MRI machine it's only the person reading the medical report who judges the actual scanner just photographs whether they're sickness or no sickness in an MRI machine so similarly with body awareness you're just registering the body at that place feeling or no feeling and then can you talk at all about just the distinction between a mindfulness based practiced and other forms like Transcendental Meditation sure and in fact I'm a Tibetan Buddhist monk and in Tibetan Buddhism we use mantra most of my practices our mantra based but actually in terms of the the technology of it or the technique it is doing the same thing whether you're focusing on your breathing or a mantra or a visualization you're doing the same thing actually you're being present you're using something to anchor yourself and your mind will definitely lose focus and you're bringing it gently back to that focus breath mantra or whatever it's actually the same thing sure people tend to maybe some people like to use mantra because it has more of a it's richer deeper there's a more spiritual energy than just the breath in in Buddhism we actually have whole what's the word categories of this is called using an object using no object within the category of using an object there are mundane objects and spiritual objects mundane objects are the breath spiritual objects and mantras so it's all categorized in the in the teachings but whatever you're doing its focus on the moment and I think it's just that different people gravitate towards things that suit them some people like mantra some people prefer breath thank you one more question and then I'd like to continue and then come back to questions at the end throw the thing thank you hi I wanted to ask you a question about when you come back yeah from this gravitation yes sometimes there have been a couple times where I have a very hard time coming back you mean you're totally lost in the thoughts do you mean coming back to reality oh ends in your session are you okay so about the timing because like when you you have a timer yeah okay of course it's not time but sometimes for example when it's guided yeah or you're in a yoga session and then it's yeah yeah the timing or the process in which that happens for me sometimes it makes ya anxious on it's too long I I really need more time to are you meditating with your eyes closed or open sometimes closed sometimes hope I can you see why that would make a difference yeah what technique are you generally using I mean I'm asking you these questions cuz it will maybe help me I think certainly the times that that has been longer is maybe when you're focusing on your third eye on the third eye do you feel that you are getting lost in the meditation and then it's very hard to come back to reality so maybe to combat that problem do something much more simple such as breathing because it's more connected with ordinary life what I love about meditation is that it's it's completely normal it's completely ordinary it's just you and your breath so going into chakras and internal energy can be more like you'll go into another space and it's very hard to come back I find I prefer breathing because it's so normal and I can take it with me wherever I go literally okay thank you I want to say some more things and then at the end we're gonna stop for some questions and I believe there's also a chance for people watching online to ask questions so we'll try and incorporate that okay I want to talk a little bit now about integrating our meditation into daily life I call this mindful moments or micro moments of mindfulness because of course it's great to meditate every day but what many people forget is that how to then bring that into their day otherwise they're meditating at home and then they're stressed at work you know they're not taking their meditation to work with them or into the rest of their day so it becomes like two people who never meet never meet the meditator and the non meditator and especially people who do slightly more esoteric practices using mantras yoga chakras visualizations it's it's even more of a risk with those types of practices because the practice is so divorced from ordinary life and you go into this kind of internal temple and do this great spiritual thing but then the rest of the day there's no contact with it and you feel a bit like you're trying to hold on to something that you don't know how to bring with you so I think it's really really important to practice tiny microscopic moments of awareness throughout the day in any situation wherever you are and this is about letting meditation become your default state I see it a bit like drip feeding the practice throughout the day and this is something which can be done very simply you don't have to make a big deal out of it it's something very natural very simple usually just using your body or visual objects or sounds or anything in the present reality so I love to do this in airports maybe because airports are my natural habitat because I travel a lot so I'm often in an airport and an airport is a strange situation because it's like being in a vacuum there's nothing you can do you are there you have to stand in line you have to be herded from one place to another there's all these rules I mean you can't just do what you want that it's a very unnatural situation but I love using mindful moments in those situations because I feel like I'm rewiring my system in a creative way for example I'm standing in line at security or at check-in or whatever and everyone's checking their phone or feeling frustrated or the line is too long I mean there's a whole thing around stress that comes up was what I will do is I will try and practice little moments of awareness by feeling the ground under my feet or being aware of my shoulders or picking out visually a spot on the floor and just looking at it I just use little moments of awareness like that as I'm standing in line or sitting on a plane or in a waiting room in an airport or wherever feeling the chair under my body or if I'm working in an office I would feel the chair onto my body maybe 10 15 20 times a day for a few moments each time literally just a few seconds it's really hard to remember to do this because we get so carried away by the stress of life and the busyness of life but what makes it easier if is if you choose to deliberately do this with specific actions for example brushing your teeth mindfully or washing your hands mindfully that's a very specific actions or eating you know things you can do very specifically in a mindful way every day all it means is for example washing your hands normally we're washing our hands distractedly aren't we you know we're we're a hands are moving but our mind is also moving our hands are moving around and our mind is all over the place so mindful hand washing means to simply be fully present with the sensations of the movement of the hands the soap the water the the the movement it doesn't mean that you are physically doing anything different you're not slowing down or anything you're just washing your hands but you're fully present with that moment brushing your teeth your whole your brush the toothbrush the mouth the taste the the sensation of the toothpaste the whole thing you're just feeling the moment for a few seconds anybody who has to do anything in public public speaking giving a presentation at work being onstage like this if you do it in those moments it revolutionizes the whole situation I used to be terrified of speaking in public the first time I had to speak in public I was so frightened I started to cry I found it terrifying I used to be an actor but that's very different when you're an actor you have no fear because you're not being yourself you're being somebody else that's really easy because you are you are not you you are completely protected by the situation you're in but when I had to be me speaking as me in front of people I was absolutely terrified now because I've made a habit of going into a mindful state while I'm on stage I find it incredibly relaxing for me it's like having a free massage because I'm the more the talk goes on the more relaxed I become because I'm going into that mindfulness moment to moment like right now I'm feeling the chair under my body and the ground under my feet and it's bringing down any cortisol so it's making me more present more aware more focused it means I don't have to prepare my talk because if you go into a calm state what is in you already will just come out so so it revolutionizes any kind of public speaking but also any situation being at work being at home with the kids whatever you're doing also enjoyable things I mean so many people are on holiday lying on the Sun Lounger by a pool but they're checking their phone or worrying about what's at home they're not really there and I think as a culture we've really moved away from the present moment and we've become so absent so plugging into that moment to moment mindfulness throughout the day brings joy it brings real joy to your life because you're fully there and what's so precious is when you can learn to do that when you are uncomfortable because otherwise we think of joy and happiness as just feeling good but I like to do this when I'm in discomfort if I'm physically unwell I find it very powerful to go into a mindful moment with the sensation of discomfort in my body I will relax into well I will lean into or dissolve into I'm finding different phrases here to describe it sinking into relaxing into meeting it with awareness say it's a headache or a backache or whatever sure seek medical treatment I'm not suggesting throw away your medicines I'm just saying when you have discomfort that you can't get any help with you can learn to accept it physically and emotionally and be with that moment calmly what it does is it teaches you that happiness is a trainable skill happiness is a trainable skill you are learning to be with the moment without pushing it away happiness is not a bars a feel-good a high it's about being with the moment with love love and acceptance so when you can start to do this with discomfort it's incredibly transformative so maybe in my story around public speaking that's what has happened in that I used to feel terrified to be onstage that's discomfort I hated it but then I learned to be mindful in those moments and it's now transformed into something pleasurable and relaxing I like to do this when I'm standing in a queue or stuck in traffic or in any situation where I feel I'm waiting or stuck or late for something because then you're meeting your edge or you're in that kind of discomfort zone but you go into the mindfulness just feeling the the moment feeling the car seat under your body as you are stuck in traffic feeling the ground under your feet whatever it is using physicals feeling or sensation is the very easy way to do it or you can use the sound that you hear the sound of the train or the traffic or a visual object anything really with your senses because what you're doing is rewiring yourself reprogramming yourself to instead of going into stress and impatience you're going into the moment and being okay with it so I think doing that whether you are in discomfort or not just generally many times a day brings the mindfulness into your day so that it's not something separate from your life it's something that is with you many not many times a day then it becomes you're more like your default state and then you start to discover that happiness is actually within you it's available within you in terms of meeting the moment with acceptance and not pushing it away so you start to feel as if it's in your wiring I like to talk about how we are hard-wired for happiness it is within our wiring we think it's outside but it's inside and these mindful moments help us to connect with what is there already within us so maybe time for some more questions we have just over five minutes left where's where's the thing okay hi does it have a name it's like a mic box or something I call it the thing I I've been struggling with the concept of meditation since I was seven seven yeah we started with TN with my family yeah because I understand that it's about pieces every step and that it is mindfulness is bringing it into everyday actions and everyday so the idea of taking yourself away into a state of focus feels more and more as time goes by controlling or false like and so this set up of sense of failure is almost implicit even if I'm not judging and I'm doing the whole mind thing of an onion and it has become a real confusion test I've stopped meditating I do the whole mindful thing wherever I am ease into it and I'm just wondering because I'm teaching children to run with the flow of their mind to run with their thoughts and to create so we don't control and become robotic so there's a real conflict in me about when I listen to monks and great teachers like teach not Han and yourself I'm thinking yeah that sounds great at the same time I'm thinking yeah we're all gonna how are we gonna do this I mean what is really the good in reigning the mind back in if we know it's gonna rain back out oh simply because we are learning to exercise choice see we we we normally without meditation we are at the mercy of our own minds and this is why we suffer sure the mind can do beautiful stuff imagination running free thinking up great ideas that's great but the mind often doesn't do that the mind often gets caught up in anxiety worry sadness judgment the mind runs away and so through meditation we're not controlling that but we are learning to choose so I don't see it as reining the mind in or controlling the mind I see it as choosing the breath over the thought only during the ten minutes though just lately like if you go to the gym nobody said two sit-ups all day but you do some sit-ups in the morning then you have your stomach muscles it's the same with meditation is that it's a training that will help you but maybe the issue comes from expectation from expecting it to feel a certain way I do find that sometimes people who practice mantra based practice can be a little bit pushing themselves for it to work I also practice with person on many many types of again in Vipassana also that can happen which is almost like searching for it to work so I would wonder if you could just the suggestion is just rewind all of that and do the breathing and feel that it's something very natural there's nothing more natural than to breathe with awareness don't add anything just breathe with awareness so my the practice the talks I give the practices I present a really boring there's no glamour to it there's no bells and whistles it's incredibly boring but that's so transformative does that make sense of course thank you.thank anything else just behind you thank you for being here and thank you for teaching us thank you so so for my question every time I meditate I get this really uncomfortable feeling of stress yeah actually even when you guided us through it I had to go outside I had to do okay push-ups I'll get back to feeling myself and like I've had a practice in the past where I would meditate everyday and and still this this uncomfortable feeling of stress you know goes out through in my entire body do you know why that would be the case and I've seen people run out of sessions a lot I've seen people run out of temples slamming the door it's quite normal actually I've often wanted to do that not now now now it's different but in the early days when I started meditating I did feel I just wanted to run screaming into the hills what changed it for me was when I learned how to okay the stress comes up like a feeling of I've gotta run outside I've got to do something else is to then use that as the meditation is it you don't need to see that as a problem you just say oh this is what's happening now so let me use this and then feel all that stress in your body and just feel it with full attention and just let it be completely and say okay I I'm here's this is it's like being with a friend I'm gonna be with this like a friend and just being with that sensation without judging it without saying it's wrong changes it so try that we'll try that so my next question don't think like I'm not gonna try that because I will try that but my next question is you just talked about how be mindful no matter what you're doing yeah whether you're washing your hands yeah public speaking or you know I wrote some other things that I might not say right here but if you are being mindful in all these other times of the day and you have a long period of presence what is there a real necessary point of the ten minutes in the morning right yes if you're getting an hour later in the day does the ten minutes in the morning really make a difference it's like two wings of a bird we need both the formal meditation and the informal meditation the the informal meditation really brings that mindfulness into daily life many many times a day it integrates the meditation throughout the day but it's the formal meditation that changes our relationship with our thoughts because the mindful moments are really easy to do I mean remembering to do them is another story but to do them you just drop it into that awareness throughout the day it's in the 10 minutes that the mind starts doing all its stuff going everywhere and you can bring it back and that's how we start to change the relationship so it's a deeper training so we I I think we do need both like a bird has two wings if it has one wing it would fly around in surface here we wouldn't want that thank you so much thank you thank you who's next hello do we have time to do some livestream questions after okay cool so time for one or two more questions okay I'm here hi where are you hello thank you for this thank you this is regarding my niece actually good news for eight months has had severe anxiety and she hasn't been able to like go to school and leave the house or even see her parents yeah and then she has been to hospital and they've made like a program of her to come out of this condition but that doesn't contain mindfulness and I know that you probably can't put that up on someone hmm but if but I believe it would be super helpful for her and she's just turned to 13 so my question is how to introduce someone hmm like who already suffers from anxiety to mindfulness well that's what my mother did to me for me is she she didn't force me but she left it lying around in those days there was no internet so she left books lying around but I mean the whole point of mind valley is that they're at so many online tools in within MindValley and of course other organizations too to make that available to her using the apps and using little videos and stuff and just show her stuff and say do you want to watch this and see if she gets inspired but you have to do it I think in a really non forceful way because sometimes when our parents you know they tell us then we immediately go the other way so I think it has to be done quite skillfully but just make it available and embody it yourself if you embody mindfulness that can help her to be calm thank you I think we have to stop I'm really sorry but we seem to run out of time but I really really enjoyed my time with you and maybe we can continue the conversation in other ways thank you very much thank you thanks [Music]

Channel: Mindvalley Talks

Views: 343,899

Rating: 4.8223391 out of 5

Keywords: Mindfulness meditation for anxiety, How to meditate for beginners, Meditation for positive energy, anxiety meditation, compassion meditation, healthy habits, Self hypnosis, Positive thinking, Buddhist meditation, How to meditate, Happiness, Compassion, Mindfulness, Meditation, Guided meditation, Morning meditation, Instant Relief From Anxiety & Stress” Peaceful Meditation Music, Deep Relaxing & Healing Music, The Big Lie Of Positive Thinking | Robin Sharma

Id: ehvXmGTwhSs

Length: 94min 15sec (5655 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 13 2019