Meditation Skill 02

During Meditation Skill 02, your meditation remains the same as Meditation Skill 01, except now you include a slow out-breath through your nose while relaxing your eyelids to calm any feeling of mental restlessness or agitation that may have built up during the day. As you mentally relax, you will access a deeper sense of comfort, ease and increased awareness of presence in your body and how nice it feels.

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• Set a countdown timer on your phone (set to DND) and place it behind you.
• Meditation Length:  Meditate for 30 min to develop calm & insight.
• Attention & Awareness: Allow your attention to focus in the foreground on the subtle pleasure & ease of relaxing your mind while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of the growing comfort in your body.
• Progression: When you feel confident with your ability to settle restlessness in your mind and so comfortable sitting in meditation that you don't want to get up.

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Simple Instructions:

Develop the foundation of Meditation Skill 01 in Steps 1 & 2:

1. Prepare: Sit for meditation, gently close your eyes, and reflect gratefully >
2. Body Breaths: Enjoy relaxing with slow full body softening breaths >
3. Calming Breaths: Repeat Step 2 and release a slow breath out through your nose each time your breath goes out to relax your mind effort>
4. Relax Eyelids: Repeat Step 3 and increase mental relaxation by allowing your eyelids to droop and relax in line with each out-breath >
5. Enjoy Relaxing: Allow your breath to flow naturally for the rest of the meditation. Rest in, smile into and enjoy any feeling of relaxation or comfort you feel in your body >
6. Insight: Develop insight into mental restlessness by noticing any agitation or unease in your mind. You will slip back into Hindrance 01: Physical Restlessness if you do not calm mental restlessness. Playfully, learn how to settle mental restlessness by relaxing mental effort using slow, softening breaths, developing ease within your mind.

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Detailed Explanation:

Step 1: Prepare your body & mind for meditation.

• To begin meditation, find a comfortable place to sit on a chair or the floor and gently close your eyelids.
• Always begin your meditation by sweetening your mind by reflecting on simple things in your life for which you can be grateful, including this opportunity to meditate.

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Step 2:  Develop Meditation Skill 01: Bodily Relaxation.

• Take slow, softening breaths in your belly, allowing your whole body to relax with each out-breath. Repeat until you feel comfortable and relaxed sitting in meditation.

Meditation Skill 02 Additions: 

Once combined, the skills learnt in Meditation Skills 01 & 02 will combine to create a softening breath that you can apply to relax and let go of effort in your body and mind.

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Step 3: Calm your mind by slowing each out-breath through your nose.

When you relax your body in skill 01, you will become more sensitive to agitation or unease within your mind. You can now begin to relax any effort held in your mind, that supports agitation and unease, with gentle softening breaths to develop a feeling of mental ease.

Try this now by adding this instruction to each out-breath in Step 2:

• Slightly slow each out-breath through your nose and notice the feeling of effort relaxing in the frontal lobes of your brain. This feeling can be subtle at first, so play around with it. 

Observe the effect: After taking slow breaths out through your nose, allow your breathing to happen naturally and observe any changes in your mind and body. 

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Step 4: Calm your mind by relaxing your eyelids.

Once comfortable with Step 3, add this instruction:

• Once you understand Step 3, relax your eyelids, letting them droop like you are falling asleep. Do this in line with each out-breath in Step 3.

Observe the effect: Be curious about how relaxing your eyelids affects your calmness of mind. Also, as you mentally relax, notice how you naturally become more clearly aware and present in your body.

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To enhance the growing calm:

1. Observe the relaxing of effort in the area of the frontal lobes of your brain.
2. Try Smiling into your eyes to both enjoy and increase mental relaxation.
3. Once you feel relaxed, allow your breathing to flow naturally, free from control. Relax your eyelids and let go of all effort with each natural out-breath.

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Step 5: Relax with your natural breathing.

• After completing steps 1-4, stop controlling your breathing and allow it to return to its natural rhythm and pace within your body. Observe how you can continue to relax and let go of effort in your body and mind with each natural, uncontrolled out-breath. Practice relaxing your mental effort without attempting to control your breathing. 

Observe the effect: Notice the growing feeling of presence in your body as you mentally and physically relax, the sense of increased comfort and ease. Allow your attention to focus in the foreground on the subtle pleasure & ease of relaxing your mind while keeping a background, peripheral awareness of your body's growing comfort and presence.

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Step 6: Use the process of relaxing your mind to develop insight.

• Mind Wandering: Use this increased awareness of your body and how nice it feels to develop insight into mental restlessness and how it causes mind wandering. Take an interest in any time you notice your mind wandering toward thoughts or fantasies. Learn to physically and mentally relax with gentle softening breaths to bring your awareness back into your body and return mindfulness to your body.
• Other Hindrances: As in Skill 01, at this stage of meditation, your mind may wander to thoughts, become sleepy, or even forget that you are meditating. These are normal parts of learning to relax and let go and should not be taken personally. You are retraining your mind in different behaviours, and as your skill improves, all these things will settle down. All you need to focus on at this time is calming mental restlessness and developing enjoyment in relaxing your body & mind.

Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the 12 Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into and calming the conditions supporting the associated Meditative Hindrance.

Your second step in meditation is to develop Marker 02: Mind Relaxation (right column) to calm Hindrance 02: Mental Restlessness (left column).

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                       Meditation Markers.

                                                               01: Body Relaxation.

02: Mental Restlessness.        →     02: Mind Relaxation.

03: Sleepiness & Drifting.                  03: Mindful Presence.

04: Habitual Forgetting.                     04: Joyful Presence.

05: Habitual Control.                          05: Natural Breathing.

06: Mind Wandering.                          06: Length of Each Breath.

07: Gross Dullness.                            07: Breath Sensations.

08: Subtle Dullness.                           08: One Point of Sensation.

09: Subtle Wandering.                       09: Sustained Attention.

10: Subtle Distraction.                      10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.           11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                      12: Access Concentration.

Other Hindrances: It is important to note that although your focus is on settling the Hindrance of Mental Restlessness at this stage of meditation, all the other Hindrances listed above may also be present. It is essential to settle each Hindrance in the order presented in the above Map for Mindfulness of Breathing, as each Marker is the antidote for its associated Hindrance.

Progression: Once you can calm mental restlessness and feel comfortable and at ease in your mind, without the need to move around, you are ready to develop Marker 03: Mindful Presence.

Meditative Hindrances are signs of an imbalance in either your effort or the structure of your attention. It is skillful to view them as an opportunity for insight into your mind rather than something to overcome. 

Meditative Hindrances.

01: Physical Restlessness.

02: Mental Restlessness.

03: Sleepiness & Drifting.

04: Habitual Forgetting.

05: Habitual Control.

06: Mind Wandering.

07: Gross Dullness.

08: Subtle Dullness.

09: Subtle Wandering.

10: Subtle Distraction.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.

12: Fear of Letting Go.

Meditative Hindrance 

Mental Restlessness (02).

Unable to experience mental comfort, leading to mind wandering. 

Mental Restlessness refers to when you feel mentally unsettled due to high energy levels from excess effort, stress/anxiety, or overstimulation. This may be felt during meditation as a sense of mental unease with scattered attention, tiredness, and constant mind wandering. Withdrawing energy from your mind by softening your mind engagement plus simplifying your life will lower your experience of stress and weaken your desire to distract yourself with sensory stimulation.

Antidote

When developing Marker 02: Mind Relaxation, it is normal to experience mind wandering, becoming sleepy, or even forgetting that you are meditating. At this stage of the development of skill in relaxation and calm, your only concern is bringing relaxation to your body & mind. When you notice your mind wandering or forgetting that you are meditating, smile with your eyes to reward your mind for returning to mindfulness and to bring awareness back to your body again.

Consider the following technique to help relax your mind: take slow and gentle breaths out through your nose while focusing on the area of your frontal lobe. As you exhale, try to feel this area relaxing, and complement this by softening your eyelids. Observe the impact this mental relaxation has on your thinking.

Anatta (It happened by itself!): Take interest whenever your mind wanders toward sounds, thoughts, memories, etc. The key to insight is to notice how these wanderings of your attention toward distractions are habits within your mind that happen by themselves (anatta). When you notice that your attention has wandered, smile and take a few slow belly breaths to soften your awareness back into your body. Observing distractions in this way will teach your mind not to hang on to things and to let them go both during meditation and in your daily life.

You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 03: Mindful Presence when:

• You feel physically and mentally comfortable, with no desire to get up, enjoying just sitting in meditation. A sign of this will be that you become very aware of your body sitting in meditation, feeling very present and comfortably at ease.

Added Note: It is important to note that you will still experience thinking, mind wandering and forgetting at this stage of your meditation. These are signs of mental habits rather than mental agitation. You can always return anytime to refine your softening skills if needed. Your only focus for this stage of meditation is finding enjoyment in relaxing your body and mind to calm the Hindrances of Physical Restlessness and Mental Restlessness.

• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• Insight Timer: guided Meditation.
• You Tube: Video Instructions.

Your second step in bringing insight meditation into your daily life is to relax the effort within your intellectual mind to return awareness to your body. When relaxation of both mind and body are combined, awareness will naturally withdraw from your mind and immerse throughout your body.

Meditative Hindrance.                     Meditation Marker.

02: Mental Restlessness.      →    02: Mind Relaxation.

In Meditation Skill 02, you will learn four things that you can bring into your daily life:

1. To recognise mental restlessness.
2. To relax mental restlessness.
3. To appreciate how nice it feels to relax your mind & body.
4. To notice that whenever you relax your mind body, with clear comprehension of it, that awareness of your body increases, and mindfulness of your body develops.

Once you are familiar with Meditation Skill 02, you can integrate it into your daily life. The key is to check in on how you feel throughout the day, starting with when you hop out of bed in the morning.

• How am I feeling now? 
• Is my mind restless and inclining toward negativity?

If yes, take a few softening breaths to relax effort in your body, notice how nice it feels to relax. Once you feel more aware of your body, allow a few softening breaths through your nose while relaxing your eyelids to relax your frontal lobes. As you have been doing during your daily seated meditation, develop clear comprehension of what it feels like to relax your frontal lobes and notice the effect it has on the number of thoughts in your mind.

This simple act of taking a few softening breaths will withdraw your awareness from your intellectual mind and bring awareness more deeply into your body, therefore developing mindfulness of your body (grounding of awareness).

How to do it.

As in Meditation Skill 01, the key to being mindful of your body in daily life is not to try to be mindful of your body in daily life. 'Trying' will take you in the opposite direction, as your mind will see mindfulness as something else it has to do, with another problem to solve. 

It is important to make being mindful during the day something enjoyable for your mind to do rather than another job to complete. 

This is done by:

1. Enjoying noticing when you have forgotten to be mindful.
2. Taking a few breaths to relax your body and mind when you notice.
3. Finding enjoyment in the relaxing softening breaths.
4. Clearly comprehending awareness returning to your body as you do.
5. Being satisfied with creating small gaps in mind wandering and negativity.

It's all about the gaps.

Being mindful in daily life is not about striving and straining to be mindful; it is about making being mindful a fun and enjoyable thing for your mind to do. By checking in every now and then throughout the day and softening/relaxing your body, you will create small gaps in the habitual patterns of your mind and body. With repetition these gaps in 'mindlessness' will gradually increase, as will the appreciation and pleasure of mindfulness, and mindfulness of your body will begin to become a natural resting place, a place of safety from the stresses of daily life.

Question: I have a tinnitus which somehow gets very loud and distracting when I sit and meditate. It seems like it gets louder when I meditate. It's only on the right ear, which makes it even more distracting -- because I realize how nice it would be if my right ear was quiet like my left ear. Interestingly, the tinnitus also has gotten stronger when I learned that I have a tinnitus from the doctor (1.5 years ago). Thus, I suspect that there is a lot of mental adding to the tinnitus.

There are a lot of thoughts around the tinnitus, like "I wish it wasn't there.", "I can't bear this.", "This is destroying my meditation.", "I wish I had gone to a doctor earlier with it (before it became chronic)." Any advice on how to deal with this and be less distracted by the tinnitus?

Stephen: As I have gotten older, my experience of tinnitus has increased in both of my ears and added to that my inability to separate individual sounds of voices when conversing with someone in a busy restaurant or at a gathering. It can be very difficult to hear what anyone says when background noise is present.

I am listening to the sound of tinnitus in my ears right now; it sounds like the sound of cicadas in summer in Australia when I grew up. It is interesting that I hear the cicada sound just inside my ears, not externally or in my head. When I was younger, I used to love loud dance music. I would stand next to the speakers and feel their vibration. At times, at the end of the night, my ears would ring or even hurt. I also used many power tools, and the idea of wearing ear protection was something that I had never thought of.

While I realise this story itself may not be helpful to you, I thought I would share it. What I have noticed is that the sound of tinnitus can at different times of the day be in the foreground of my awareness, in the background or barely noticeable at all. But it is always there.

When my attention is focused on it, it becomes louder. When I take more interest in relaxing and letting go in my body, giving the tinnitus sound no value, it moves to the background of my awareness. When I fully accept the tinnitus sound as just another sound, teach my mind that it is not dangerous, and then immerse myself into what I am doing, with no interest in the sound, treating it as just another sound, it becomes so faint that I barely notice it at all. As I type this, exactly what I have done, and the cicada sound of the tinnitus has quietened significantly.

Now for the insight meditation part.

Question: I have a tinnitus which somehow gets very loud and distracting when I sit and meditate. It seems like it gets louder when I meditate.

Stephen: One of the insights that we develop in Buddhist insight meditation is how our mind channels energy into experiences. There is a simple law within the Dhamma:

"Where attention rests, energy goes."

I have learnt over the years that if any experience, be it a sound, thought, memory, fantasy, opinion, emotion or pain, becomes louder to me, it is because my mind is focusing attention in on it. When this focus is accompanied by craving or aversion, as in the case of your tinnitus, then your mind habitually focuses on the danger and makes it louder to keep you aware of it. To protect you.

It is the aversion and fear that has built up around it that makes your mind focus on the tinnitus sound again and again, not the sound itself.

Question: It's only on the right ear, which makes it even more distracting -- because I realize how nice it would be if my right ear was quiet like my left ear. Interestingly, the tinnitus also has gotten stronger when I learned that I have a tinnitus from the doctor (1.5 years ago). Thus, I suspect that there is a lot of mental adding to the tinnitus.

Stephen: Yes I agree. When this diagnosis was made, it was possibly at this point that your mind took a stance, "I don't want it to be this way", and began to become hypervigilant about the sound.

Question: There are a lot of thoughts around the tinnitus, like "I wish it wasn't there.", "I can't bear this.", "This is destroying my meditation.", "I wish I had gone to a doctor earlier with it (before it became chronic)."

Stephen: But of course, none of this is true, it is just a story. What disturbs your meditation is not the tinnitus; it is your resistance to and preoccupation with it. The tinnitus is just another sound in the world. It is your aversion to this sound that has grown and needs to be deconditioned.

Can you see this tinnitus as an opportunity to reveal and weaken craving and aversion within your mind? Can you see this as an advantage on your meditative path because it directly reflects the ability of your mind to let go and provides an opportunity for you to be free from dukkha?

In MIDL, we are not concerned with what we are experiencing, as it is produced either by the world or our mind and, therefore, is not under our control. MIDL meditators instead progress by being interested in their relationship toward what they are experiencing; now.

Am I attracted, averse, indifferent, content or equanimous toward this experience now?

When we look at the relationship of your mind, both attraction and aversion are present in your mind. You mentioned you are fluent in the first three Markers and developing the fourth. This means you already have the skill to decondition your mind's resistance.

When these thoughts come up: "I wish it wasn't there." "I can't bear this." "This is destroying my meditation." "I wish I had gone to a doctor earlier with it (before it became chronic)."

1. First, notice the experience of resistance in your body. This will bring awareness away from the sound. Its elemental qualities like tightness, tension, hardness, heat, etc. This is kaya: body.
2. Then notice the flavour or taste of unpleasantness and unease around this experience. This is the vedana: feeling tone.
3. Finding the underlying feeling of unpleasantness will clarify the experience of "I don't like, I don't want" in your mind and heart. This is citta: heart-mind.
4. Use slow, softening belly breaths, as learnt in Skills 01-03, to gently soften and relax your mind's interest in tinnitus and its resistance to it. Soften, relax, let it go, and allow it to fade into the background of your experience. As you do, your awareness will withdraw from your mind and immerse within your body, grounded.

In MIDL this is called GOSS: Ground > observe > soften > smile > repeat if needed.

The smile part is the reward for your mind relaxing and letting go. This is learnt in Meditation Skill 04. It is important when softening your interest in something, letting it go, to be happy with creating small gaps in the habitual cycle. As MIDL meditators we never soften to make an experience go away, but rather to relax our relationship towards it.

It is the repeated practice of exposing your mind to what it resists and relaxing, enjoying it, which will gradually decondition the aversion within your mind, and the sound will fade into the background, no longer disturbing you. I encourage you to see this as a learning opportunity and also as an opportunity to deepen your insight meditation practice.

Question: I got a flu and honestly, my awareness has been the dullest I can ever remember.

Stephen:  I am sorry to hear that you are feeling unwell.

Yes, this is how it is and an opportunity for you to develop insight. While your awareness is dull, are you able to be aware of how unclearly aware you are? It is just knowing your state of mind, regardless of what it is, to learn about its natural nature, that you are developing as an insight meditator.

It feels frustrating because no stress event happened before, just many people being sick around me.

And yet it is happening because it is its nature, and it has one message:

"You don't own me, control me; let me go".

Question: I watch my frustration of course and try to apply the same principles as usual (softening, breathing, letting go) but it feels like nothing works. 

Stephen: Your message: "it feels like nothing works", tells me that you are softening to make what you are experiencing change, to make it go away. If you are negotiating with what you are experiencing: I will soften. relax, if you change or go away to something that i want", then you are not letting go.

Softening is about noticing and relaxing the effort it takes for you to be frustrated with what you are experiencing. Softening is not concerned with what you are experiencing, but rather with your relationship towards it; always.

Look how much effort it takes to struggle and fight against reality. The universe if just as it is, what you are experiencing is also just as it is, how could it be any other way. The meditative path is not to try to change reality, but rather to embrace it by putting down all fight, all struggle with it.

It is our fight and struggle with illness that creates suffering, it is our fight and struggle with anything, when our expectation and reality don't match, that all suffering arises. 

Question:  I am currently waking up with an intense gut wrenching anxiety in the morning....). 

Stephen: I am sorry to hear what you are experiencing and understand how unpleasant it is to be caught in an anxiety loop.  

I can only comment as an insight meditator who has deconditioned their own anxiety and depression, and not as a health professional, so anything that I recommend here should just be seen as a sharing among friends.

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Your mind has an immune system.

I find this a helpful way as an insight meditator to understand anxiety.

Our mind, like our body, has an immune system. When our body senses a danger, the immune system of our body turns on and fights the invader.

What was helpful to me was noticing that my mind also has an immune system and that what I was experiencing was not personal but rather an immune response.

When my mind senses danger it turns on the stress response and revs up the functions of my body and mind in preparation for fight or flight.

Seeing the experience as a natural survival response rather than something personal problem to be solved was helpful to me.

I tried to change this pattern in many ways to escape from the anxiety but didn't realise that my trying to fix it was creating a fear-based feedback loop where I became anxious about being anxious.

As understanding of anxiety being an immune system of my mind developed, I realised that what I was experiencing in my body and mind wasn't broken, it was working as intended.

There was nothing to fix, it was my very desire to escape from it that kept it going.

My path was therefore not to fix the problem but to learn how to help my mind and body to feel safe and it would all turn off by itself.

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This is what I found helpful.

Our goal is to create gaps in this stress cycle, and gradually increase those gaps. This will significantly lower your symptoms and if followed through desensitise the sensitivity of your stress response.

There are three steps in MIDL to decondition this anxious response in daily life:

Step 1: In week 1-4 we will retrain your natural breathing patterns to diaphragmatic breathing. This means following very specific diaphragm breathing techniques that remind your body how to breathe in a non-stressed way.

Currently your mind keeps tricking your body into thinking it is in danger, so it responds. then the response in your body keeps tricking your mind that it is in danger, so it also responds.

You now have a self-feeding anxiety feedback loop, especially when your body habituates its stressed state.

This is practiced laying down on the floor (yoga mat, not bed) daily for 3-4 weeks until your breathing patterns change. (anything that is real takes time).

Retrain your breathing patterns: https://midlmeditation.com/meditation-for-anxiety

Step 2: On week 2 you will learn to use diaphragmatic breathing to relax, let go while sitting in a chair and how to re-engage your diaphragm when you notice it lock and stress breathing engage, in daily life.

This is also explained on the above webpage.

Reengagement of diaphragmatic breathing, with 5 gentle belly breathes in the way explained here, will create gaps within the habitual stress cycle throughout your day (starting with your morning) and will begin to weaken the cycle.

Use diaphragmatic breathing and softening to create gaps in your stress/anxiety response during your day.

Step 3: Optional: In week 3 or 4 you can begin to target painful past memories that are triggering your mind to feel unsafe, now, and deeply softening against unpleasant memories (trigger points) in a precise yet gentle way.

This will permanently remove the unpleasant feeling (vedana) from these trigger memories and bring anxiety to an end.

Caution: This is an advanced MIDL insight meditation technique and should be approached with caution. If you have not done the earlier training and developed your mindfulness, concentration and softening skills then you are likely to become lost within the emotional charge and resist the unpleasantness.

In this case you either need to commit to the MIDL systematic training or have someone skilled in this technique to guide you to develop this skill.