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Ajahn Sucitto's Dharma Talks
Ajahn Sucitto
As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
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2022-01-18 Q&A 41:11
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00:06 Mind in body or body in mind; 01:31 Citta voice and thinking mind voice – how to bring them together; 03:12 Mind storm leads to confusion, compulsive thoughts; 05:51 Sleeplessness, especially accompanied with anxiety; 08:02 how to ensure qualities like love are not coming from self-centeredness or craving; 11:09 Fear around upcoming surgery; 13:34 Losing the balance of mind when overcome with pain; 20:22 Others means of practice in addition to meditation; 21:59 Practicing meditation with the aim of attaining jhānas; 27:04 Getting a sense of pīti during meditation; 34:55 If there's no self who inherits the karmic residues from past lives; 36:51 discernment vs judgment.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-18 Presence and Sharing It 57:15
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Wherever you are, you’re always present. We tend to focus on what we’re present with, the sights and sounds, but what’s the capacity to be present with them? Remove the fear, agitation, craving, imagined hostility of other people – these block presence. Presence is a certain stability, freedom from regret and agitation, goodwill towards myself and others. This is the most peaceful abiding.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-17 Q&A 57:31
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00:30 Questions about meditation; 16:01 What is awareness of awareness? Difference in mano, manas, citta and viññāṇa; 26:00 How to deal with impatience and restlessness; 30:27 How to know if I’m cultivating well; 31:37 Obsessive compulsive disorder; 36:47 Meditation on the 32 parts of the body; 39:54 When thoughts stop and fade away; 41:10 How to deal with death and loss; 43:20 Standing meditation; 45:02 Easier to recognize some feelings but not others; 48:42 Conditionality, saṇkhāra and the aggregates.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-17 Aspiration Drives the Vehicle 50:52
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By and large we’re looking for the ending suffering, for the possibility of bringing forth what’s good. This is the realm of citta, it wishes to do good. This body is just a tool, to do good deeds with, to work with this person, rather than being it. It’s a vehicle to bring forth the good, the true, the beautiful. Don’t be deceived by appearances, this is a transformation. Bring forth your aspiration vehicle.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-16 Q&A 54:26
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00:53 Please explain the idea of the pāramī; 04:59 Letting go of thinking/expectation; 07:44 Using the sound of silence in practice; 15:58 How Qigong connects to practice; 24:47 Tension in tongue and jaw; 25:03 Remaining “upright and joyful”; 29:23 Family does not agree with my practice; 34:13 Dealing with pain; 38:10 Experience of a deep horrific fear; 43:45 Out of body experiences while meditating; 45:19 Relationship between release of somatic knots and releasing the citta; 48:55 Regrets and resentment; 50:13 Can you speak about the āsava? 53:37 Difference between peace, serenity and tranquility? Pīti and sukha?
Cittaviveka
2022-01-16 Return to a True Shape 52:31
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The natural shape of the heart when it’s not dragged out by the sense world has the quality of stable well-being to it. This is the highest happiness. Do what you can do from good intention, restraint and kindness. Keep returning to that because that’s your home base where your heart is naturally able to express itself, manifest its values and qualities into your life.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-15 Q&A 36:36
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00:40 Guidance on the reclining position; 08:48 Managing energy, not overexerting but staying diligent; 15:06 Samādhi process as a settling “downwards” of the citta; 16:17 How can we meditate on space in the body; 22:08 How to distinguish cultivation from craving to become; 24:27 What weakens resolve; 26:29 Feelings of disappointment and resentment; 31:25 Feeling like the “I” was inclining to drop but felt stuck in recent meditation.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-15 Psychology and Neurology 37:53
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The theme of mindfulness of breathing is to regulate so our bodily system comes into a moderated state. When heart-mind tunes into that it naturally gives rise to beneficial psychologies – simplicity, generosity, sympathy, warmth. When we begin to take in the qualities of our good actions, it helps to repair our nervous system so it’s no longer so tense, irritable, jumpy or feeling so guilty – things shift. That’s the process. Therefore, we should cultivate this way.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-15 Commitment to Integrity 38:34
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Heart-mind will be shaped by whatever we put our attention into, so aim to shape it with supportive influences. A commitment to integrity will shape the mind to be steady, strong, confident, reliable. Shape it around refuges and precepts, for your own welfare and the welfare of others.
Bandar Utama Buddhist Society :  Well-being Is the Shape of the Heart
2022-01-12 Liberation Is a Careful, Everyday, Process 37:02
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Of all the things to be sensitive about, the most urgent and important, is to know how you’re activated and to calm the citta saṇkhāra. We get morphed by what we plug into, so unplug and let go of the unskillful, and plug into what’s necessary for calming and steadying. It takes time for citta to get it. Keep making an effort with friendliness, aligning everything in our lives to support this present awareness.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-11 Wisdom - The Intelligence that Leads to Stillness 40:07
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The cultivation of wisdom is not just a matter of intellectually knowing something, it’s a practice of handling, and staying in touch with what’s felt. Steadying citta so it can come out of its fixed gripped state, there’s a turning towards dispassion and right response. Stay in touch with the process, do the process and see where it goes – that’s how you learn.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-10 Cracking the Shell Is Pleasant 39:29
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The process of cultivation is a pleasant one of cleaning away the dross and delusions that cause us suffering and stress. Drop by drop the bucket fills up with skillful actions and overflows into something more deep, steady, reliable. Be a stable presence rather than search for it, ‘out there’ – gradually the chaos will begin to still. There’s a process there, and the result is purification.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-09 Careful Attention: Food for Awakening 41:52
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With careful attention we pick up those qualities within experience that are most supportive for liberation. It means we notice how things affect us and the results that follow. Mindfulness of body gives you something to rest in as you breathe through the rocky areas of heart and mind. Citta comes out of its restricted state and there’s a widening, stepping back, letting go.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-08 Stream of Liberation 51:47
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There is the nutriment for ignorance and the nutriment for true knowledge and liberation. Both are dependently arising on other factors. What arises, whether skillful or unskillful, is based on how one places attention, moderates attitudes, and relinquishes self-view. This is a transpersonal process – keep filtering experience in these transpersonal terms.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-07 Getting Out of the Concrete Jungle 44:15
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With mindfulness of breathing, subtle beneficial signs are picked up and suffused into the body. We can relinquish the signs we’ve picked up from the concrete jungle, the fear, the dread, the lack of heartfulness; we can purify the internal environment. Refer to what’s beautiful, uplifting, noble and generous. With mindfulness of breathing you’re taking in these messages.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2022-01-06 Gratification, Danger, Escape, Right View Regarding the Mind 37:39
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We all participate in this generated ‘me’ experience, which is of being ‘in here’ afflicted by the world ‘out there’. But we can come to understand this scenario as conditions with causes and effects. We can cultivate the basis for contentment, for love, tolerance, acceptance, gladness. There is a Path.
Cittaviveka :  2022 Winter Retreat Opening Group Practice
2021-12-31 The Network of Liberation 46:13
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Notice the web of conditions we all share, connections we take for granted – we are not separate from that, we are that weave. The decent human response is to cultivate virtue and goodwill, develop wisdom; such skillful causes and conditions purify the heart. This is the kamma that leads to the end of kamma. Connection to Dhamma via spiritual friendship leads out of suffering. It’s important to recognize such connectivity as a skillful quality, not a bondage.
Cittaviveka
2021-12-22 Guided Meditation - All Things Converge upon Feeling 49:28
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Establish mindfulness with the experience of a feeling body, the most fundamental source of feeling. Use a wide form of attention that covers the whole body. As phenomena are changing the mind is still with receptivity and deep listening. The nature of sati doesn’t react to feeling. The feeling can be felt, without blaming, criticizing or getting involved. When feeling isn’t given any more food, it becomes more equanimous.
Cittaviveka :  At Home with the Homeless: Ajahn Sucitto Locked Down
2021-12-19 Enjoying Presence 40:53
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We become entangled in the creations and reactions that arise based on ignorance. Mindfulness immersed in the body is where we can experience release from the powerful reflexes and currents. Translate the complexities of thoughts into the simplicity of emotional drives, and feel them in the body. Tune into what’s given – awareness, presence, stability – this is comfortable, this is pleasure, this is our basic ground.
Cittaviveka
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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-12 Q&A 46:27
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-12 Signs and Signals 56:14
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-12 Advice on Walking 9:40
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
In collection: A Moving Balance
2021-12-12 Finding Your Own Pleasure 46:43
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-11 Q&A 51:20
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-11 Guided Meditation – Embodied Sense of Support 15:18
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-11 Feel What You Think 48:52
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-12-11 Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Profile and Standing Meditation 52:58
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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.
London Insight Meditation :  Feel It, Breathe It, Clear It - A Guide to Emotional Management
2021-11-26 Closing remarks – Refuge in this very body and mind 16:37
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This is a practice that bears great fruit. In the long run it makes you into a more wakeful, less tense person. Take some time to recollect it. Put aside what you don’t need and focus on what’s absolutely essential – presence and awareness. In this very body and mind you have the perfect system to practice, and to develop the boundless heart.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-26 Refuges and five precepts 6:19
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Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-26 Q&A 31:20
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00:13 Working with tinnitus; 03:06 ‘sensing a way home to what I am’; 04:42 Becoming more comfortable with non-doing; 06:57 Mention not-self/anattā in the suttas; 11:26 Focusing on one point with breathing; 14:45 Feeling I should be doing something; 16:12 Building more energy in the practice as one ages; 22:32 Feeling angst about ending of the retreat; 23:15 Recollecting one’s virtues as preparation for death; 25:01 Having lost our ability to express open steady presence; 26:13 Refusing to identify with someone or some movement; 27:10 Aches in my shoulder in long sits; 29:06 Arūpa jhānas.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-26 Guided meditation – Breathing regulates body and mind 45:12
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Aspects of energy can be steadied through sustaining awareness over the entire process of an exhalation, until the inhalation begins. Help breathing to regulate your energy. Energy will regulate your mind, quiet it, steady it, compose it, and over time it will consolidate into a steady quiet form.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-26 Bring your chaos home to be released 43:11
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The suttas can give us prompts for how to practice, but the agent is this embodied heart. It’s a process of calming and steadying shared between body and heart that reveals that stable constant presence beneath the activated energies. Withdrawing energy from the activations, just witnessing the changeability of phenomena, there is dispassion and releasing. Meeting energy, not feeding it, so it can be freed.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-26 Standing meditation - Unified energy 52:51
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Practicing in standing posture, it’s much easier to feel the whole body as an undivided object. Certain things then become apparent – an unbroken unity, an energy. Stay in your energy body as agitations well up, are received, and then dissolve – because they’re energy. This is the development of true insight, to know phenomena is changeable. Therefore one becomes dispassionate towards them.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Chant - Suffusion with the divine abidings 6:56
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Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Q&A 33:13
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00:12 Dispassion; 03:45 How do dispassion, disengagement and relinquishment reconcile with activism; 12:39 Body time versus clock time; 15:23 How should I teach mindfulness of breathing; 17:42 Joy and poignant sadness; 19:38 What is one then to be sensitive to in the third stage of the feeling tetrad; 25:55 Could you say that the citta is the deathless?
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Q&A 23:17
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00: How to suffuse; 04:40 Placing and sensing the thinking mind; 07:14 Does Ānāpānasati help prepare us for end of civilization; 08:42 Nimittas; 10:01 When one area of body is not suffused; 11:25 How can we suffuse pīti/sukha? 13:00 Softening the process of enquiring; 15:26 Generating joy with chronic pain and vicious personal circumstances; 18:17 Blockages make nostril breathing difficult; 21:24 Can you speak about death?
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Guided meditation - Gladdening the heart 38:37
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Tuning into where gladness is can be approached from different ways. One can recollect people or events that are gladdening, or one can tune into the energy of gladness that is felt in the body. Linger in its effects, the brightening, lifting quality that is agreeable.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Jhāna 56:48
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Jhāna is a condition that supports getting out of the conditioned realm. It gives the mind enough stability to step out of time and enough happiness to step out of the pull of sense pleasure. It makes turning away, nibbida, possible leaving an experience of something open, measureless, where the heart feels freedom from stress, freedom from pressure.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-25 Time, craving and where they stop 51:03
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Your intimate environment is not about time, it’s about kamma. Enter into this embodied world with patience, resolution, goodwill and mindfulness, holding it steadily. There’s an aware intelligence that gets stronger and wiser when you can let go of the stories; it will work for your welfare.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-24 Q&A Saṇkhāra, self, khamma, khanda 39:39
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00:48 You said, ‘I’m not a person who worries a lot, but a worry that persons too much.’ Can you say more? 02:07 I’m not clear about the term ‘volition’; 31:32 Are the suttas prescriptive (something to do) or descriptive (something that will happen anyway); 34:03 How to calm the bodily formation; 36:30 How to contemplate impermanence, dispassion, cessation and letting go?
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-24 Guided meditation – The craft of meditation 29:04
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Settling into direct experience, finding a stable place within the constant tidal wave of phenomena arising. Disengaging, carefully attending. It’s a craft, feeling out how this form is best sustained, smoothed out, appreciated, lingered in. This is the craft of meditation.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-24 Q&A 34:29
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00:11 Feeling dizzy with QiGong; 00:49 Difference between calming mental activity and calming mind; 14:33 How to calm bodily activities with searing bodily pain; 16:29 Do we work sequentially on calming mental, then bodily formations, or together; 18:09 Examples of ‘accept not adopt’ particularly around past trauma; 21:04 Q6 When the hindrances calm down, what else is there to be found as citta saṇkhāra? 22:56 What does vicāra mean; 26:09 In-breath is short and painful when trying to elongate; 28:25 Should I try to smooth out bumpy breathing; 30:18 Meditative experience in terms of this social existence.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-24 Returning to body and heart 59:30
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We get conditioned to be insensitive to heart and body. To return, enter the body as an energy form, staying with it, thoroughly sensitive to the entire body. When you can feel the presence of your own embodied energy, the heart finds a refuge in that. There’s something here that stays present, grounded, firm, accepting.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-24 Body regulates heart 39:32
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You’re born into a system that knows how to regulate and discharge emotions and energy. If the energy is right, distractions and unevenness fade away, and the harmony of body and mind acts by itself. Practice asking what is needed now to bring ease, clarity and joy into your life. Use cultivation to do what’s needed, to maintain health, balance, sanity, lightness of being.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-23 Standing meditation – Harmony of the elements 21:54
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Guidance to sense into the felt body, experiencing its elemental qualities. When the elements do what they’re supposed to do, energy moves freely, harmoniously. Heart picks up the sign and feels happy, comfortable
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-23 Q&A 24:06
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00:14 Doubt around ability to meditate; 19:05 Going through the sixteen steps vs. just being aware of breathing; 20:27 Significance of the quality of effort.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-23 Guided meditation - Breathing whole body 16:43
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Establishing a firm foundation and upright posture, breathing in, breathing out. Let the exhalation drain the tired, stressed energy; let the inhalation refresh embodied energy. Put attention where it needs to go to facilitate breathing in and out through the whole body.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)
2021-11-23 Q&A 38:29
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00:35 How to work with painful memories; 08:33 Difference between pīti and sukha; 11:06 Style and benefits of your QiGong; 15:51 Awareness of bodily energies and sensations; 23:27 Feeling body from the inside vs. outside; 25:40 Which practices are precursors of satipaṭṭhāna practices; 27:43 How to shift from (uncomfortable) sensation to energy; 30:51 Reflective capacity of citta; 34:51 Mindfulness with pleasant but faint sensation; 36:57 Drowsiness with samādhi.
Bodhi College :  Breathing to Liberation (Ānāpāṇasati)

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