Create Ease Around Thoughts

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about working with thoughts. So I had a student on a retreat many years ago when we had a one-on-one session. And she said, "You know, I've been doing all the meditation. It's helpful, but I'm kind of getting stuck, especially with thoughts.

Each time a thought arises, I'm noticing it, but I feel some tension. And so I asked her like, "What is your relationship to the thought when it arises?" And she gave a visual image. She said, "Well, I notice the thought, it comes up and I just go, okay, bye thought." And it was subtle. And it was said in a very gentle way. Okay.

Bye thought. But there was still this encouraging the thought to move away. So I said, what if we reframe that from pushing the thought with the hand to just keeping the hand like this. So she tried this. And then two days later she said, "This transformed my meditation practice.

I didn't realize how much I was actually resisting my thoughts with this imagery of the hand moving across. And by just holding it out like this, there was much more equanimity and balance with the thought when it arises." So, this is something you could take with thoughts as they arise throughout your day. And it's also something that you could take in your meditation practice. Notice if there is this gentle encouragement of thoughts leaving, and instead, what would it be like to shift the energy from this to one of this? Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.