Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going to talk

about eliminating barriers to meditation.

So a common thing I hear from

people is that I can't meditate.

And it's not that I can't meditate

because I have to take care of my

child or I have too much to do,

it's I can't meditate because I'm

feeling all these different things.

I have too many thoughts to meditate.

I feel too bored when I meditate.

I feel too much stress to meditate.

And it's a really interesting hindrance

in the context of meditation, because

essentially what it's saying is that

there's, there's a certain state that is

arising that would be getting in the way

of me being able to do the practice, when

the practice at its core is making space

for whatever state is actually there.

And so to say, I can't meditate because

my mind is too active, I'm too bored, I'm

too stressed is really to not understand

what the practice is intending to do.

And it's a very common thing that can get

in the way for even advanced meditators,

this idea of like chasing certain states

or that I need to be in a certain state

to get the most out of my meditation.

And I found myself caught in that loop

for years and a very big distinction and

shift in my meditation practice was when

I would feel that arising, that feeling

of like, ah, I'm too bored to meditate

right now, or I don't have the energy to

meditate and I would say, great, that's

what the meditation is going to be.

It's going to be me meeting sleepiness.

It's going to be me meeting boredom.

It's going to be me meeting stress.

So instead of that, being an obstacle,

it became the very thing that, that

the practice was going to be all about.

And the cool thing about doing that

is that we reduce a lot of the that,

a lot of the tension that we often

feel when we create an emotion as

an obstacle to an experience, or

we create boredom as an obstacle.

It's like, oh, in order to meditate,

I'm going to have to like, not be

bored anymore and push that aside.

And it just, it's just

extra tension in the system.

But when we say to the system, it's like,

no, you could just keep experiencing

what you're experiencing right now.

You don't have to do anything different.

We're just going to meet it.

Kind of like a soft hand on

someone's back or someone

putting a soft hand on your back.

Just like, oh yeah, I'm just here

to hold whatever's here right now.

That's meditation.

That's bringing presence and

awareness to what is arising in

this moment, learning to meet it

without resistance, without grasping.

And moving fluidly with the constantly

changing experiences of your life.

You're never going to get to a place

where there's a permanent experience.

So what we are training is learning how

to bend with this moment, moving with

the impermanence of life and meeting and

relaxing into what is here right now.

Of course, you know, there are some

more intense experiences like trauma

where, you know, if we're in a

traumatic experience, we don't want

to be meditating in that moment.

We may want to be inviting ourselves

to relax, but this is, there, I just

want to acknowledge that there are

some times where maybe sitting on

the cushion isn't the best thing.

But when it comes to these normal

experiences that we have on a day-to-day

basis, different emotions we might

experience different thoughts,

these don't have to be barriers.

These can be gateways.

So thank you for your practice.

See if you can take this

into today's meditation.

And let's settle in

for today's meditation.