Dharma Seed - Dharma Talks from London Insight Meditation Retreats

Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management

In life, either through social conditioning, accident or being too busy, our sensitivities and responses get blocked. Faced with the equally unskillful responses of acting on afflictive emotions or suppressing them, most of us get into a tangle of regret. This closure of heart negatively affects our self-image and relationships.

This two-day online workshop presented embodied meditation and personal inquiry as means to clear the blockage and to manage our hearts more wisely.

2021-12-11 (2 days) London Insight Meditation

2021-12-11 Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Profile and Standing Meditation 52:58
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
Emotion is a part of our intelligence. But we can become overwhelmed by emotions, triggering reactive tendencies that create our emotional profile – and that becomes ‘me’/’myself’. It’s possible to moderate this reflexive system and manage the emotions. Begin with establishing a stable base in the body and coming into presence.

2021-12-11 Feel What You Think 48:52
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
To get a handle on what we feel, we need to get past layers of "self" and into the process that establishes it. When the "self" stuff falls away the original emotional trigger can be understood and released properly. An embodied spacious presence can do that. Let the body feel an emotion, breathe it – there can be softening and a releasing, and a transformation of your emotional profile.

2021-12-11 Guided Meditation – Embodied Sense of Support 15:18
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
Practice stepping back from the complexities and coming into the embodied sense of being supported; widen the focus to include ground and space. The problematic stuff is still problematic, but there’s a possibility to step back and inquire, "How’s that?" The heart that is balanced and free from pressure naturally experiences compassion, goodwill, equanimity.

2021-12-11 Q&A 51:20
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
00:12 Being at ease with suffering; 08:55 Time and space; 16:09 How to sit with constant pain; 20:23 Energy is blocked in the throat; 24:42 How to fully realize and penetrate suffering; 29:50 Hyper-tension; 36:44 Not taking things personally; 42:08 How to truly forgive; 44:31 Clearing ill-will; 46:10 Liberation through the deathless.

2021-12-12 Finding Your Own Pleasure 46:43
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
Practice is actually quite simple. It involves translating the complexities of your personal circumstances into simple emotional patterns. Breathing picks up the dominant emotional signal and transfers it through the system. We want to manage that signaling system, to stop afflicting ourselves with harmful signals and heal ourselves with affirmative signals, ones that make the body feel whole and settled. At 29:45 a simple exercise to generate healing signals.

2021-12-12 Advice on Walking 9:40
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
Explore how the body moves in space when there are no boundaries, no time pressures, no destination. Feel the swing of the pelvis and shoulders, moving through your environment with fluidity. Focused on your intimate environment, you’re not grabbed by the sense world. You can deal with the external environment more wholesomely and comfortably.
In collection: A Moving Balance

2021-12-12 Signs and Signals 56:14
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
The signs and signals in the sense world very often take us out of our core presence. So we cultivate carefully honed, carefully placed signs that calm and steady us, returning us to our core presence. From this place of stability and comfort we’re able to disengage from the unskillful and meet the difficult so it can be cleared.

2021-12-12 Guided Meditation – Being Loved by Your Own Breathing 32:15
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Holding on doesn’t provide you with the deep security of being held. That deeper security comes from trusting that something can carry you and you don’t have to do it. That’s what breathing does. Mindfulness of breathing sustains the right mode of attention – steady, not seeking anything, listening intently with no particular result. Relax into that and get the sense of freedom and love.

2021-12-12 Q&A 46:27
Ajahn Sucitto	Download Listen
00:00 Working with people who have suffered trauma; 05:32 Helping someone into feeling the body or breath; 06:54 Relationships with others who are not spiritual; 09:06 Relationship between energy, intension and kamma; 17:57 The felt sense of being held; 20:36 Feelings of negativity when verbally attacked by family members; 23:24 Feeling sleepy; 25:29 Disorientation when trauma recedes; 28:55 The thinking mind; 32:02 When something is stuck; 34:27 Samādhi and concentration; 42:00 Is chanting helpful to the practice.

2021-12-12 Experience of Being Trapped 3:16
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This Covid experience can give the felt sense of being trapped, corralled in. There’s a background sense of fear and uncertainty. That’s why it’s so important to generate lovingkindness, groundedness, steadiness – soothing the community atmosphere, internally and externally.