Okay, so, today, we're going to explore a new technique that we call Feel Rest. Up until now, we've been exploring all three sense categories: See, Hear, and Feel. Today, we're going to narrow our focus, both in terms of limiting it to one category, Feel, then also further, to the restful aspect of experience, the restful side of experience.
Let's talk a little bit about what we mean by Rest so there's clarity here before we begin to focus on it. So, most people, when they're drawn to meditate, they think about experiencing more tranquility. That's a reward that most of us expect to get out of meditating.
[The following is not in the audio. This is a suggested place to make it personal.]
Show of hands—who here got interested in meditation to experience more tranquility?
[Or, share an anecdote about how contacting tranquility has positively affected your life.]
In my own life, I’ve found that...
[Back to the audio]
By noticing restfulness in the body, you can develop a palate, develop a taste for restfulness. You can notice it more frequently and more deeply. But, we can also think of Rest more broadly.
We can think of Rest as the relative absence of sensory experience in any of the sense categories: See, Hear, or Feel. Also, we can consider that a given sensory event could be more active or more restful, and we'll get into what that means, active versus restful.
First is this idea that Rest is actually available in all categories. We tend to think of it as being available in the body—relaxation—that's the obvious association we have with Rest. But, your attention can be pulled into restful states in all of the three sense categories, which you've already experienced by now. But, we're just going to reinforce the learning.
Here are some clear examples: It's noisy outside and you close the door and suddenly, you hear the silent room. Well, in that case, noise is active and silence is an example of a restful state. Your attention may be drawn to the mental screen, but you notice that there are no images on the screen. So, if there were images, that would be considered an active state, but if it's the blank screen, you can consider that a restful state. You may also notice that the body is relaxed. When you are detecting pleasant or unpleasant sensations in the body, you can consider that active. When you're noticing the quality of relaxation in the body, you can consider that restful, physically restful.
The distinguishing feature of restful states is that there's less activation, relatively speaking. When you're focused on restful states, you're placing your attention where you notice less sensory activation. Just as another example: When your eyes are open and we do this soft gaze, your eyes aren't moving around as much. You're not taking in each object the way you would when you're just normally looking around. In fact, you're intentionally looking through the visual environment, rather than taking all the details in of the various objects. So, that's a simplified experience. It's comparatively less active.
You can also think about Rest in terms of spatial location. You could say that your attention is drawn to the space—the spatial location, where seeing or hearing or feeling occurs—instead of being drawn to a particular sensory activity going on in that space. So, your attention may be drawn to the space between the ears, where you hear mental talk. But, at that moment, what you're noticing is the quiet mind.
Just to clarify, let's distinguish between Relative Rest versus Absolute Rest. Everything I've just described refers to Relative Rest. But, you can make a distinction: There is Relative Rest and then there's Absolute Rest. Relative Rest is described in terms of the three sense categories; it involves finding or creating visual, auditory, and somatic rest. When you're relaxing, for instance, you can intentionally create relaxation. That would be an example of how you create a restful state. So, you could say that focusing on relative rest is the act of turning toward specific restful states.
By way of contrast, Absolute Rest is ever-present. You can have momentary or sustained contact with Absolute Rest, perceptually. You can experience Absolute Rest and get completely absorbed and disappear into Absolute Rest. Through that, you can come to know or contact Absolute Rest in any experience, including sensory activity. It is a peace that transcends, it's a Rest that transcends. It isn't relative, it's ever-present. If this is confusing, don't worry about it. It's just worth being aware of the distinction between these two kinds of Rest, Relative and Absolute. At some point, it may be relevant to your experience. You may discover how it is possible to notice a sensory activation, while also being in contact with Absolute Rest. That may, at some point, make sense to you as an experience.
Let's speak specifically now about the technique of Feel Rest. Feel Rest means that you are appreciating the restful side of body experience. So, when it comes to relaxation, you can find relaxation, you can create relaxation, and you can also detect neutral places where you're just not noticing much activity. A good example might be the hands or the feet; that's a common area you might detect neutrality in your physical experience.
The other side of Feel Rest is emotional peace. You're noticing that there is an absence of emotional activity. This is quite a common thing for people to contact when they practice meditation in general. It's often the case that your emotions go quiet, and you can detect that as a restful state.
The way Feel Rest fits into the broader set of Unified Mindfulness techniques is that it is part of the Appreciate quadrant of the techniques. It is there in the same place as the See Hear Feel technique. It's in that same quadrant. As the weeks go on, I'm going to introduce you to the other techniques in other quadrants. (UM classifies contemplative practices and organizes its standard technique options into four quadrants.)
The difference between See Hear Feel and Feel Rest is that in See Hear Feel you're focusing on any experience in any of the three sense categories, and in Feel Rest, by contrast, you're narrowing your focus range to just restful experience in your body.
What are the benefits? Well, as I mentioned earlier, many people are drawn to meditation to experience more tranquility. Rest is a reward state, that's why we're drawn to it. By focusing on body rest, you notice it more often. You get more fulfillment from the rest you notice, because you're applying concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity to your restful experience. You're really deepening and enriching your experience of it. You're encouraging rest to grow. You're nurturing your relationship to Rest. Rest may also lead you to contact other pleasant reward states, such as spaciousness. It's kind of a natural leap. When you contact less activity in a sense category, you might notice a quality of spaciousness. That can be very pleasant.
Rest can also create a positive feedback loop, because it's a reward state. So, the more you concentrate on Rest, the better you feel, the more you want to concentrate. It encourages your skill development. Of course, to that point, when you focus on Rest, you're going to experience more fulfillment overall as a result of developing Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity, generally.
You're building your concentration by focusing just on Rest, you're narrowing your focus just to Rest. By teasing out that quality of restfulness, you're strengthening sensory clarity, distinguishing Rest from other qualities of experience. Contacting Rest can actually help induce equanimity. For example, if you have a discomfort and you relax around that discomfort, that can help you induce equanimity.
The flip side of that, and what to maybe watch out for, is that sometimes when you relax around experience that is uncomfortable, it can spread. So, there's no resistance. You're dropping the physical resistance of the tension around discomfort and no resistance means that you're allowing discomfort to spread initially, so that it can dissipate.
It goes against the way we habitually relate to discomforts, but that habit has long-term problems. Over time, that resistance impedes the flow of energy in the body. When you relax and allow discomfort to spread, you are releasing it, you're helping it to release. So, if you find that, by relaxing, discomfort spreads, just remember to recycle any reactions you may have to that.
What I mean by that is, any reaction you have to the discomfort spreading is going to come up as See, Hear, or Feel. It might be an emotional response such as fear, it could be a
thought, like, "Oh, this feels even worse. Why am I focusing on relaxation when this feels worse?" That's something you might say to yourself. Or you might have an image that corresponds to the discomfort.
You can recycle those reactions by having background equanimity with them while you are continuing to focus on restful states in the body. You are having equanimity with any reactions that might come up. If discomfort is happening. If you need to because it gets so uncomfortable that you're unable to concentrate on restfulness in the body, then you can choose to switch techniques. Let go of the Feel Rest Technique and turn toward the See, Hear, Feel reactions and work directly with them.
What are the practical applications of Feel Rest? Well, it's easy to use in daily life. You can access it for a moment here or there. Rest in the body is always available, because you can create it. You can relax your muscles, any time. So, it's a very easy thing to contact and you can take care of yourself anytime, anywhere.
Many people use breath focus as a way to contact restfulness, but there are certain situations where it's difficult to focus on your breath. But it isn't so difficult to just relax a little bit and experience that, be aware of that. So, you can take care of yourself anytime, anywhere. When your schedule's busy, you can get your self-care in and it can also help prevent burnout, to encourage and nurture restfulness.
What's unique about the Unified Mindfulness approach to focusing on Rest in the body? Well, focusing on the breath, as I mentioned, is a common rest technique. In Unified Mindfulness, you can incorporate breath, or you could even specifically keep your attention local on the breath, if you're finding it extremely pleasant. But, you're encouraged to work broader, and there's a few good reasons for that.
A significant amount of people find focusing on the breath uncomfortable.
Make it personal: How many of you find focusing on the breath uncomfortable?
For those of you who don't find it uncomfortable, you can still focus on the breath, if you choose. But, you don't have to; you have more options about how to work. As I mentioned earlier—going about life activities, interacting with other people—it may be easier to concentrate on relaxation than to focus on your breathing; as you're talking to someone, just for instance. We also include these other physical experiences beyond relaxation—emotional peace and neutral body experience.
So, how can Feel Rest help you experience the kind of happiness that's independent of conditions? How can Feel Rest help you to know happiness that is there, regardless of whether you experience tranquility or not? Well, by infusing Rest with Concentration, Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity, you're increasing your overall baseline of the kind of happiness that is independent of conditions.
You're also relaxing around physical pain, which is one way to deepen the skill of equanimity. And detecting Relative Rest might help you develop a palate for Absolute Rest. It might help you really contact that complete peace, that complete rest.
So, how do we practice Feel Rest? Well, we find Rest in the body, and there are lots of ways to do that. You can intentionally create it by relaxing your muscles. You can discover relaxation anywhere in the body or across the whole body. You can notice that you're at peace, emotionally. You can focus specifically on a local area, such as the exhale; that's a really common one for people who enjoy focusing on the breath. On the exhale, you notice muscles relaxing. That can be pleasant.
You can also notice areas of neutrality, like I mentioned before, such as maybe the hands or feet. Then, you just apply Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity to Feel Rest, wherever you detect it. So, that may be across the whole body. It could be in one local area of the body. Or, you could freely float between locations in the body. Any of these is fine. It's whatever you're drawn to; whatever is going to maximize your appreciation and experience of restfulness, at any given time.
Now, if discomfort is strong and Rest is subtle, do your best to focus on Rest. This strengthens Concentration,Clarity, and Equanimity. Despite the loud calling of discomfort, you're strengthening your skills by focusing on this subtle experience of Rest. But, if that gets to be too much, feel free to switch to different techniques, such as back to the See Hear Feel Technique, if you need to.
You can start to be the author of your experience and decide, at any given time, what is the best approach for you. Just be careful not to channel surf. Don’t do too much hopping around with your techniques. Try to stick with it, if you can. And if you absolutely can't, well, then you make the decision to switch to a different technique that's more appropriate for what you're experiencing.
So, any questions before the guided practice?
© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC