okay, good times today is maybe my favorite thing as a teacher to do. My favorite thing as a meditator to do today is rest and flow. I believe these are the two most practically applicable themes we could work with, either and both together especially, can eliminate most suffering. And if someone comes to me and says, What is an equanimity practice? I go, Let's try some rest and flow. So, I'm just going to say a little bit about each of them, and then I will guide a journey. Rest, and you all know these. I'm just going to talk about them maybe in a little different way than what you're used to, maybe not. Rest is a chill we all need, and some rests are absences, some are a restful place to park. The more we practice rest, the more we practice release, the more we practice non-resistance, the more equanimity and the lubrication we have. Although that's flow, resistance guarantees it's going to hurt. If you resist something, it guarantees it's going to hurt. And if you're really

hurting. There's a really high probability you've got some resistance there. So, really learning to hone in on and release that with kindness is an incredibly powerful practice. It helps us selectively attend to soothing the nervous system. Rest also often usually leads to flow, so these two have an interactive component I'm going to talk about in a second. There are two rest states I want to just mention ahead of time of all we have. There's six categories CNC out here, and you're out feeling fill out each of those are spaces, domains, categories, and each one of those has a rest state. There are of those. There's two that I find to be particularly practically powerful. One is blank. That's when it's eyes closed, blank, when you just tune into the grayscale, blank. It's always there. You're looking through images. This, for me, is the most complete rest state because if you are tuning into a rust state to anything in your somatic physical experience, there's a high probability you have a

subtle visual image of what you're tuning into, whether it's a shape of a sensation, whether it's a part of your body. There's always a kind of accompanying subtle visual to it, which can even help you focus, but it's there in addition to what you're feeling. Auditory, I mentioned yesterday when we did it, most people get an image of what created, of what creates the sound. If it's on the outside, inside, they might have an image, they might see the words, but there is often with auditory a subtle, sometimes not so subtle, visual impression that goes with it. Blank, you're looking through that processing to what physically is there, so there is no subtle visual of blank, and thus it's a kind of deeper pure rest state. And I've heard Shenzhen many times refer to rest states as being his rewiring. What does he say, uh, redoing, reread something of the jonic factors, uh, restructuring. Can't think of his word for the moment, uh, that he says he's

he talks about it like it's his homage to the jaundice. Having done Jonas and having done rest states, I see very little similarity between them personally except for blank blank. Because I believe my personal belief is because of the purity of there not being this visual image. It takes you more completely and thus blank can be a portal to deeper states and transcendent states. And when I did a genre retreat with Lee Brazington, he a lovely John, a teacher. And in my first session with him, I think it was, I showed him blank. I guided him in it. I said because he was saying breath was the way to achieve access concentration. And I said, Well, I use something else. Can I show it to you? And I showed it to him. And he went, Whoa, that just took me right to the seventh genre. And I went, Right, cool. I go, so is that an okay thing to do? Goes, Well, for you, but I'm not going to share it with anybody. And I went, Why not share it away? And he's like, No, because

It isn't what I was taught. He was taught you only passed down what you've been taught. Uh, I come from Shenzhen. You try something, it works. You know, you show to Shinzo. He goes, teach it to as many people as you can. So, I come from a more scientific, like, what works, let's change everything and do that. And you've watched Shins and systems change everyone who's been here for a while. So, blank has for me is my quick focusing tool, but it's also a portal. And I want to really give an extra encouragement to let blank be your friend. If you don't use it a lot, I tend to put it in what I call a 10-minute chill meditation. I start people off with it, which is blank and relax. And, uh, it helps people. They go, people come to me and go, can you turn this off? And I go, well, you're going to want to change your relationship to that, but let's do this. And blank can unplug the thinking mind.

can plug the verbal component of the thinking mind because you're putting all your eggs in the basket of visual and those use two different parts of the brain, right? That kind of thing. Um, and Shinsen then used that as easy rest for first-timers on retreats for, uh, oh, I don't know how many years, probably 12, 15 retreats, however many years that is. Um, so blank has a lot of pack for a simple technique, so I want to just make sure we appreciate that. The other one is relax now. Relaxes to chill the body, relaxes the nervous system. Isn't that great? But one thing I want to mention about relax is that when we're working with emotions, and I just mentioned this to somebody, and I thought, you know what, this would be a good thing to mention since I'm going to be guiding a purpose for this. We now have in the body feel in, feel out. It used to be [Music] touch and feel the forward, feel and fill out. Touch used to be sensations that

were not emotional in nature and feel was emotional sensations. And did I remember to record? I did. Okay, cool. And I said at the time, you know, there's something called secondary feel. And secondary feel was we get an emotional sensation in the body. And if you're here, you've probably worked with those a lot. And there's this other sensation. And I, because I went to Shenzhen, I said, is that touch or feel? These what I was calling secondary feel. And it's a kind of tension around the emotion. How to know if it's there? If you have any judgment, however subtle, in the mind that that emotion is not a good thing. And it's usually anger, fear, sudden shame. If you go, don't like it, there's a high probability your jaw, your shoulders, your chest, and your belly, one if not all of those, is tightened. And just by relaxing those, it's not the same as the anxiety in the chest. This is tension you can release, but it comes in with the judgment in the mind, and it comes in around the emotions, and

It holds them in place like a setting holds a jewel, and just like how a setting holds a jewel, you only need one to break away for the jewel to fall out. So, if you have an emotion, look to see if there's any tension around it. This is where relax comes in, but it's a specific way of using it for kind of subtle tensions that come in around emotions. And all you have to do is drop one of these, maybe just drop your jaw, maybe just let the shoulders relax back and down, and then the emotion starts to flow. So, rest and flow have a relationship. Like I said, rest tends to lead to flow, but this is a particular use of rest for coming in when you've got emotions, especially intense ones. Just relaxing the tension around that can help the flow. Now, I'm going to say something about flow. Flow is... I love flow. It's maybe my favorite aspect to explore. I consider it, you know, in Buddhism, they have you watch impermanence, and it's a rising and passing, and things are going

to be born and die, and it's like, is it coming, is it going? And I thought, what I love about flow is you don't care if it's coming or going, it's just the nature of it, it's moving, and you allow that movement to be a kind of massage. That, to me, remember I was talking about enjoy it, that, to me, is a lot more enjoyable than isn't going to die, don't get attached because it's going to die, right? This is like, let's just watch the moving, changing nature of things, and that helps us, that helps us have an agility, a flexibility, a fluidity, and adaptability of body and mind that is quite helpful. We can handle change better, right? Um, so, uh, and it leads to creativity, playfulness, enjoyment, and it's also key to processing emotions. I just mentioned how you can get the tension out of the way to help it to flow, but the emotions are there. Emotions are natural, it's part of the human condition. Uh, I believe Shinzon says emotions are

there to motivate and direct our behavior, but when we don't let them flow on through, they end up, you know, we stick them in the drawer. Like, I'm really good at compartmentalizing. My family just said that to me, like, Oh, he's good at that. And I went, Yeah, that's a good short-term fix. Long-term, it's going to give you atrial fibrillation or whatever, which is what he had. And I went, See, you know, you want to let it flow on through. That's the purification process. And he will say emotions are there to motivate and direct your behavior, but if you don't let them flow on through, they just, they're down there, but they're down there and still there. They distort your perception and thus behavior and happiness. So, I want to mention that. And the last thing I want to mention before I guide you on a ride, and then I'll, I see a chat, I'll go to that then, but rest and flow together are kind of a key combination. It's a one-two punch that

can just kind of annihilate and soften and process anything that comes up. Rest and flow are also, you know, someone said to me, What's an equanimity practice? I go, Rest and flow. Do I go there? But if you're guiding someone through the dying process, rest and flow are your friends. They're pretty good for the living process too. Uh, I had, and this is what I forgot to say that I thought, Why did my dharma talk be so short? I had a whole section I forgot about. I was going to talk about, I had panic attacks most of my life since I was a small child, actually. I didn't know I was having them until they left. But the key to a, this is a belief, although it's kind of my experience, that the energy that was the anxiety that created these debilitating panic attacks is the same energy I'm coming to you with now. It's just I took away the resistance, that secondary feel. I looked at that, let that flow, and so rest and flow for how I converted panic attacks to a productive creative

kind loving energy, so don't underestimate rest and flow. That's what I'm going to say about them before I guide. That was my little spiel on that. Now let me look to see what message I have, if any questions come up. Oh, thank you, thank you, my dear. Okay, so now we're going to take a ride, so get in a comfortable position. Let me just move everything around here. Okay, so get in a comfortable position, get settled. This is going to be a longer meditation, maybe not as long as yesterday, but it's going to be a longer meditation. So, buckle your seat belt, adjust your tray table to the upright position, and before I ring the bell, and I'll start with three rings of the bell, and I'll end with one. Let us all together take a nice deep breath in, in a big luxurious sigh out, and just let go of whatever lets go, feeling the body in this moment, allowing the momentum of your practice already to continue, and allow the sound of the bell to flow into that settled body.

[Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] So take another nice deep breath in, and as you do, stretch up the spine in a way that feels good. And on the breath out, let everything else just hang down from that. So the spine's going up in the middle, stretching. Play with the sits bones, how they are in the chair. Maybe let them dig down and kind of dig forward a little bit, tilting the pelvis back just a bit. And from there, that creates more space in the small of the back, stretching up from there, just like when you stretch in the bed in the morning, a luxurious stretch. You're taller than you think you are, more space in the back of the neck. Let the head balance easily and lightly on top, almost as it's lifting upwards like a helium balloon. It's light, and let it just slide towards the wall behind you. Oh, a half inch, maybe an inch. And as it does, that's going to open up your shoulders. And if you arch your back when you do

that tuck that the sits bones down and forward again, creating that space and the small of the back. Notice if you're holding your breath, and can you soften the belly? Ah, just let the breath drop down into a soft belly. Let the jaw drop, just let gravity take the jaw. There should be a good amount of space between your teeth, between the upper and lower teeth. Take another nice breath in, breath out, and on the breath out, feel that spread of release throughout the whole body. We did yesterday, you'll feel a tangible release during the exhalation, and even after the breath is over, that release may seem to continue throughout the body, maybe even pushing the boundaries of the body in a soft way, letting that wave of release on every breath out be a kind of massage. And that sensation, that wave of release on the breath out, we're going to do it again in a moment, but that's feel rest, that's one flavor of feel rest. Dropping the jaw, what that feels like, that's feel rest, letting the weight

of your arms just hanging at your side. They kind of help pull the shoulders down, and you can tune into the shoulders releasing. Feel rest. You can tune into muscles that aren't having to work, that ease in the muscles that we rarely notice. We tend to only notice muscles when they're tight or sore or injured or in use. Do you ever notice your muscles when they're just hanging out? Your legs don't need to carry your body weight right now. What do those muscles feel like when they're not doing anything? And if that's too subtle and difficult to tune into, you can always tense something and release it through contrast. Sometimes we can see things more clearly. So just feeling the ease in the muscles that don't have to work, in the legs and arms especially, and the more we're able to allow the balanced spine to support us, we start to feel that ease in the neck and the belly and the face. We don't need to use those as much when we are forward. Those muscles have to engage, and the more we allow our spine to

support us. The more we can just let everything else hang down from that feel rest. So feel rest is tuning into ease that's naturally present. You just go ah my body feels settled to feel rest. The arms muscles and arms and legs don't work ah aren't having to work that ease that's feel rest. You can deliberately it's the only thing we can deliberately cultivate mindfulness is just kind of looking at your sensory experience without interfering but the one thing you have permission to to give a boost to is relaxation is letting go is feel rest. So we can drop the jaw we can adjust the posture so we can release more muscles feel rest. We can let the belly be soft letting the breath just drop down into a soft belly feel rest and I'm gonna guide my three breath exercise we did yesterday. I just referred to the third breath just now but we're just gonna do it in sequence because it's really a sequence of feel rest and they all involve taking big breaths in in big size out.

but everything we do with a big breath in and big sigh out is available on every breath. It's just subtler. I use the bigger breaths to give us something more tangible to feel, but if your momentum of sensory clarity at this point in the retreat is present, you can just do this with a regular breath. But for now, if you want to follow me, you take a big pleasurable breath in, big sigh out, and notice what naturally lets go. Big breath in. You can do that as many times as you like. And for most people, what releases there is not the kind of thing we think to let go of. It's often a release in the front of the torso, just below the ribs, where the diaphragm is. We feel kind of a release there. It's nothing we thought of as tight, but when we breathe out, there might be something there. There might be a wave of something that comes up the body. A place of habitual tension may release, but just notice what lets go and where you feel it.

what that sensation feels like, and then the second big breath in and out. The second way of focusing on a big breath in and out is to deliberately let go of something. You pick, you choose whatever you think would be juicy or you'd like. It could be your neck, your shoulders, your jaw, your belly, your chest, a thought, anything. You pick something to let go of on this big breath in and out. Feel it let go on the breath out. Notice how that was different, maybe more satisfying. It was the same. Notice what let go and what that felt like. And then the third breath is the magic. This is the one I just stop and do at any time in the day, and I just kind of mentioned it as we were settling in, but you split your focus, holding two things at the same time, and 25, maybe 30% of your focus is on what releases on the breath out, whether it was what released naturally on the first breath, whether it's what you chose to let go of on your second breath, or

something but else third a fourth of your attention is on a tangible release on the breath out, and we'll notice this during the exhalation and even after. And then the rest of your attention is spread over the whole body to the outer boundary, holding all of body space. And if you're an old-timer, you'd recognize local-global as a phrase. It's like an egg. The yolk of the egg is local, and the white of the egg is global. The yolk of the egg would be what releases; the white would be the rest of the body, except the white's a lot bigger than the yolk in this case. And you watch the whole body and notice just, is there a subtle wave spread of softening out from that tangible release that waves out into the whole body? And yes, that's flow, but we're going to look at it as rest here because it's a moving rest, and a lot of rest is moving. That's why rest and flow are so integrated, and that spread out my analogy for that.

is like dropping a pebble into a pond. It's just a pebble; there's a tiny little splash, but there's a ripple or two or three out into the water, and you're the water. Allow this tangible release to create this subtle spread wave ripple out into the water of you, continuing out during the exhalation and after, and feel the restfulness of that. Feel rest so you can allow your attention to move freely in the body space, noting any instance of feel rest, any of the things I've pointed out. You can hang with one for as many labels as you want. We could move and just notice qualities of feel rest. You could spread out over the whole body and notice all these little places of feel rest and kind of get a global feel rest. And for the next couple of minutes, and I'm using double labels, I'm using feel rest since we're going to be doing two modalities. We're going to be doing rest and flow, so you can use the label feel, but for here today, I'm going to guide it as feel.

rest labels in a matter-of-fact tone with irregular rhythm. They can be vocal out loud. They can be to yourself in your head. Or if you already have a momentum of focus, you can drop labeling altogether. Feel rest fearless. And with every label, the body settles a little more, drops down into a deeper relaxation. Feel rest. Just surrender to that release, that letting go, that ease. Feel rest. And as you're tuning in to feel rest, there's no reason to not enjoy it. What feels good about the restfulness in your body? Maybe at a location, maybe over the whole body. Can you enjoy the letting go, the release, the ease? It's not an assignment, it's just to notice. Is it pleasant? Can you enjoy that settling of the body? Feel rest. Now add to the possible experiences in the body that you could notice. Feel rest. Add if you are emotionally neutral. In other words, if you have no emotional sensations present. Many of us always have something kind of churning in the background. It's a kind of low-level combination of pleasant, unpleasant. That's kind of always present.

might just be part of being alive, but you can drop into moments where you feel no emotion. It's absolutely neutral. You could note that as feel rest in addition to everything else we're noting: the release, ease, relaxation, letting go in the body, feel rest. And whenever we tune into rest states, particularly feel rest, there's a chance, a possibility of the mind getting sleepy. We're all a little sleep deprived. The Starbucks has such a good business. So if you're that sleep deprived, or sometimes we've just been conditioned, if we close our eyes and relax the body, that means go to sleep. And you've been meditating for a while, and you may have worked through that conditioning, but it can still sometimes happen. So if you find yourself kind of what we call sinking mind, where the mind starts to get a little foggy and the body starts to wilt forward a little bit, and sleep starts to feel really like a delicious option, a real wonderful antidote for that is that stretching up at the spine. When you stretch up a spine, an energy

goes up the spine that activates a part of the brain called the reticular activating system that wakes up your mind, creating an alpha state. So, if you find yourself getting sleepy, that stretch up and let that stretch feel good, but stretching up the spine will wake up the mind. And then on the breath out, let everything hang down from that and note that as feel rest or just keep noting feel rest from wherever you are, feel rest. And for our last moment here of feel rest, just scan through the body and see is there something you could let go of. Maybe it's something you let go of a minute ago, but you know what, the jaw is tight again. What can you let go of? Is there something that can be released? If not, fine, it just is a last little oh yeah, I can let go of that, I can release that. Good. Now allow any momentum of relaxation, release, ease, letting go in the body to continue naturally on its own. The body will like this, the body will say thank you very much, and just keep doing it.

and move your attention to your visual experience with your eyes closed. And here's where we're going to tune into that grayscale blank I talked about. So just allow your awareness to park behind your closed eyes into this blank field. Light from the outside may create a lightness on the lid from that direction. If images from the thought process come up, just look through them or around them to what you physically see and ignore color. Just let it be a gray scale, just noticing lightness and darkness. Maybe you park in a direction just right in front of you, regardless of what's there. Maybe you have these blobs and patches of lighter, darker areas that move and shift like a lava lamp. Maybe you just park in a light patch or a dark patch. Maybe you expand your awareness to hold the whole field in awareness. Whatever is most restful for you in this moment, do that with the label, with or without the label. See rest, see rest. Just park your attention in that gray scale blank. See rest. This is a resting place for the mind. See rest.

if your mind wanders or you get distracted, bring in labels, vocal labels out loud. One advantage of a zoom retreat, you can do all the out loud labeling you want. Labels are like the first gear of a car, helps you get up this most powerful, helps you get up this steep hill, and a distracted mind is like a steep hill. Pull out the vocal labels and just park, rest your attention in blank, see rest, see rest, good. We'll come back to this, but we're just gonna for a moment explore, see rest with eyes open. So gently open your eyes and notice how the world of color and form and shapes and objects comes in and pulls you and might affect an emotional response in the body to see it. And just the opening of the eyes, especially when you've gone deep, can be a little vulnerable. So take a nice breath in and let the relaxation in the body happen as you open the eyes. And then allow your focus to go soft so that you're looking through the world, not at it.

it's the way artists look at paintings to get a sense of the composition. It's a little kind of maybe blurring a vision, but it's a little soft focus. In some meditation traditions, they call this far mountain gazing, looking through the world, not at it. And as you do that, any response you had when opening your eyes softens. You can notice a kind of chill in the body when you open the eyes and soften the focus. In Native American traditions, they call this spirit eyes because after someone's been in ceremony with no food or water in a sacred way, they come back looking through you, not at you. They're with spirit. See rest with the eyes open, soft focus, see rest. Good, we'll come back to that too. Now close your eyes and move your attention to your auditory experience. Let's start with hearing out into sound space, this huge space in all directions, to the right, to the left, and front and back, above, below. You might think of it as a huge sphere of sound space, although it may not be a sphere.

and in this larger sound space, if you think of it as this huge space, there may be little pockets of activity that we'll call sound. My voice will be one, and then whole other areas are going to have silence. Now, can you hear silence if sound is happening in another direction? That may seem impossible, but you could just give it a shot. What's that like? It's kind of like how artists tune into negative space. Just be aware of where there are pockets of silence in the sound space around you as best you can, and sometimes a way to do that is identify where all the sounds are, in what direction, how much quantity of sound space they take, and then look everywhere else, negative space, hear rest, here rest. And if there is no hear rest that you can detect, you always have feel rest to go back to at any given moment. That's your when in doubt feel rest. We're just exploring auditory, if you can, hearing out hear us, and now include moving to your internal talk space, maybe just move our attention to talk space.

there's either words or mumbling, some kind of activity, or there's not. And if there's no activity, you can note that as hear rest. You can also note if you have a low-level hum, like a white noise that doesn't shift or change. It's kind of a steady, kind of not unpleasant white noise that can be very restful for some people. And since we're tuning into restfulness, you could call that hear rest. So hear rest will be silence on the outside, even if sound is present, or lack of internal talk, or maybe you just hear a low-level, very restful white noise. So play with hear rest, just noting it, any instance of it, and hear rest, rest in here, whether in or out. Unlike see and feel, it's something that isn't always available to everyone. So whenever you're working with hear, you want another option. I could give you hear hear rest, but I want to just keep us in with restfulness today. So if there is absolutely no hear rest, the mind is chatting, there are sounds, and no silence on the

outside then just allow feel rest to be the default. But after every label of feel rest, look up to see is there any instance of hear rest. [Music] Now some people, even if there's talk in the head, they can listen through or around it to a kind of quiet, kind of parallel to how we can look through and around mental images to blank, except this might be a little more difficult for some people to do. Blank is pretty easy. Many people described doing what we call blank when they were small children before they went to sleep at night. But hearing quiet in and around and through internal talk, everyone can't have that experience. So just notice if that experience is available to you as you explore any instance of hear rest, here rest, and for the next couple minutes, and allow your attention to move between feel rest, see rest, hear rest, however feels good for you, whatever is available for you. You can do this with eyes open, eyes closed, feel rest, relaxation, ease, letting go in the body, maybe absence of emotional sensation, see rest with the eyes closed, the blank.

field with the eyes open, a soft focus in both cases, not attaching to form or meaning of any visual experience, and hear rest where we're noticing an absence of sound or internal talk, or maybe an always-present silence, even if sound or internal talk is present. So whatever is available for you, allow yourself to do as many labels in one as you like. Feel rest, see rest, hear us good. Allow any momentum of restfulness in the body to continue, and take a moment to stretch up again, maybe just wiggle a little bit. As we shift our focus, we're going to look at the same areas but with a different light. Big breath in, big sigh out, feeling that wave of release that we've been noting as rest. We can now tune into that same wave of release, except we note it as flow. It's the same experience. The first time, we're appreciating the restfulness of it, the release of it. The second time with flow, we're appreciating the movement of it, the massage of it. So notice at this moment because we just did a lot.

of restful exploration that sometimes naturally creates a particular kind of flow in the body, like vibration or undulation. So, if you have anything we might call energy or vibration, undulation, wave-like movement, any kind of spreading, collapsing, the body might not feel very solid; it might feel fluid. If anything like that is present in the body, we'll call that feel flow, and we might be looking at the exact same thing we looked at with rest, except now we're appreciating the moving, changing quality of it as a massage. And the one place where flow in the body is always available is the breath, just the movement of the breath. You breathe in air, and there's an expansion in the torso, and you breathe out, and there's a lovely collapsing. That movement of the breath as it fills the lungs, the diaphragm goes down and pushes the internal organs out, and when you let go, the diaphragm releases to its dome shape, pushing the air out, and the internal organs come back in. So, the movement of the breath

naturally massages all of your internal organs. So when you breathe deeply, you're helping your internal organs function better. They're getting a massage to help them be healthy. You digest better, you process food better, your kidneys, your liver, everything functions better with this massaging movement of the breath from the inside. And here we can tune into that massaging movement. It's a pleasant massage that we feel, allowing ourselves to be massaged by the breathing process. It happens naturally. It's a wave of release from the inside, and allow any movement associated with the breathing process to be a kind of massage. Softening, feel flow, feel flow. And you might detect the movement of the breath coming in and out of the nostrils or the mouth, depending on what you're breathing out of. Cool air coming in, warm air cooling out, coming out. But you feel that movement. Let that movement of the breath flowing in and out of the body. It's a kind of massage. So you may have energy flowing through the body. You may have the movement of the breath or any other sensation in the body.

be moving or changing in any way. Whenever we tune into the body, there may be pleasant sensations, unpleasant, neutral. Try to have no preference but just notice if there's movement in any of those and get fascinated by the movement. All movement is a massage. Just open to it. The restfulness helps us open, relax, and receive the massage of flow. Feel flow and add to this any movement of emotional sensations. When we relax around them with that relax, that tension around them, emotions naturally flow. So if any emotion arises, notice how it's moving or changing. And the prime directive with any sensation in the body, actually the prime directive with anything, is to let it move however it wants to move, like it's a living creature that needs to dance its dance. Let it and feel that movement as flow. Feel flow. Let yourself be massaged by any movement in the body. You always have the movement of the breath, and any wave of release is flow. Feel flow. Good. Now move your attention to your visual experience, and there's a lot of phenomena you may see. We have blank

and if you're hanging out in blank before we notice, there may be blobs or patches moving, kind of like a lava lamp. Let that be a kind of visual massage. We watch fish in tanks and lava lamps for a reason; there's something intrinsically pleasant about that. Maybe the whole fabric of your visual field is like a grainy film, kind of twinkly, vibratory. Let that be a kind of massage. Or if you have colors, shapes, geometric patterns, even if images come in and out, rather than noting what the image is of, rather than identifying an object, it's just colors and shapes moving. The image comes in, the image goes out. Images tend to rarely be stable, and often the edge of the image will flicker in and out. So just notice the movement of this visual component of the thinking process and let it be a visual massage. There is something intrinsically pleasant to us as human beings in watching visual movement with no meaning. It's why we like looking at fires, sparkling light on water, stars. It kind of relaxes our nervous system.

so just let yourself be fascinated and massaged by any visual movement that may be present for you at this time. Sea flow, sea flow. And if no flow is available visually, you can always go back to the movement of the breath as a feel flow. But then after each label, go back up and look at the visual and see if there is any flow plus present. Usually, flow in the visual field is available, but just explore, see what's present for you, letting any movement be a visual massage. Good. And now move your attention to your auditory experience, both out and in, in any movement happening, including the sound of my voice. So sound, in a way, is vibration, but we don't always tune into the moving, changing quality of it. We're usually identifying what the sound is, what it means. What if we listen to sound the way babies do? It's just movement happening. There will be pitch, there will be duration, rhythm, frequency, quality, timbre. You'll notice that, but we're just tuning into the moving nature of sound on the outside as a kind of

massage for now. It might just be my voice or any voice in your head, even if it's just that kind of rumbling. In fact, especially if it's that kind of rumbling, mumbling. Something's percolating, don't know what. What if you tuned into that as an auditory massage? And if there's nothing available, you can always go to see flow or feel flow. But for now, explore hear flow. Any movement, changing something might get more intense, volume might get louder, lower, arise, fall, change direction, change quality. Any movement or change in your auditory experience, hear flow. And now allow your attention to move between sea flow, hear flow, and feel flow. Although flow is a unifier, so distinctions and boundaries may melt a little bit with flow, and that's fine. You can just move into a kind of all flow. Normally, we just pick one and let everything else be in the background, but with flow, just let anything that wants to move, move however it wants to move. And as best you can, experience it as a massage, allowing yourself to be massaged.

by feel flow, you always have the movement of the breath, sea flow that's available to most people, and you can pick one and just park in it. You can move between them, or you can kind of spread your attention out and maybe hold all three fields at the same time, just allowing any movement to be a kind of massage, allowing yourself to be massaged by flow, feel flow, see flow, hear flow, or all flow. So now, the flow fest does not have to end. There's no reason it needs to. You can allow it to continue for the rest of your day. Even though we're bringing this meditation to a close, that doesn't mean you stop flowing. We're experiencing all movement as a massage, and I invite you to allow the sound of the bell to be an auditory flow that comes in and dances with the flow fest you have going now. [Music] uh hmm

RESTFULNESS & FLOW MEDITATION ~ Stephanie Nash

RESTFULNESS & FLOW MEDITATION ~ Stephanie Nash