https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=pBn_Sqv5N_g
Welcome to Meditating with John Vervecki. We livestream this every weekday morning at 9.30 a.m. with Mondays alternating between a new lesson, Dharma Day, and that’s why I’m in this unusual setup. Today we’re going to be learning walking meditation. And then we also, on the alternative Mondays, we review the whole ecology of practices, and that’s a Paya Day. Today is a Dharma Day. There is no stream this Wednesday due to scheduling conflicts. If you’re joining us for the first time, welcome. Don’t be put off by this. What I recommend you do is go for previous lessons and see the description in this video. Do the immediate, do the first lesson immediately and then keep meeting with us regularly. Join this Sangha, get involved and then go and do another one of the lessons, one or two of the lessons throughout your week. And then you’ll be very quickly integrated with the rest of us. Please like this stream, decrease visibility in the YouTube algorithm. At the end of every set, we have a Q&A. And please limit your questions at that time to questions from anywhere in this whole ecology of practices. For more encompassing questions, please come to my livestream general Q&A, which we do every third Friday of the month at 3 p.m. Eastern. We did it the previous Friday and it was amazing. We ended up going over because it was so rich. I really enjoyed it and I found it as always a very powerful experience. It keeps getting better and better, which is really impressive. All right, so let’s start. And so the point about this is we’ve already talked about this. We’ve talked about bringing in mindfulness into movement, engaging the cerebellum cortex loop, training physical balance as a way of training cognitive balance, the ability to integrate complex interactions between simultaneously changing variables. And that’s like, what does that mean? Well, you’re doing it when you’re moving and you’re going to see. So I’m going to do it a couple of ways. And the point about this is this is a very and this is the correct way of using this This is a very ritualized way of walking is taken from Tai Chi. I’m actually so that we’re going to have basically a couple lessons. I’m going to teach you today. I’ll do a significant review on Thursday, add in sort of a more mental component. And then Friday will actually add in arm arm movements. And you’ll be doing what’s called brush knees. But as I said, this is a very ritualized way of moving because it’s designed to put you into the flow state, get that demand on your attention to awareness, give you right concentration, soft vigilance throughout your body. You want to get an awareness throughout the whole of your body and then through the whole of your body into the whole of the world. And then you’re going to bring in, of course, more of the of a past the elements. And we’ll talk about that on Thursday. So let’s start and I’m going to be side on and what you want to do is you want to here’s your right foot. I hope you can see my great foot. I’m going to so if this is my baseline and this is 90, okay, so this is my baseline and this is a perpendicular of 90. I want my right foot at 45 degrees. I want my right foot at 45 degrees. And then I step with my left foot. Now the waves the way I just get something on the way in the way you step. Right is you’re always going to step heel to toe. So don’t go toe to heel because that actually does this. Okay, so you’re going to this called tiger paw. It’s like you’re a tiger, right? So you’re going to heel to toe. How far do you step? You always step as far as you want these characteristics to be the case that my back foot never comes off. Like when I’m moving forward, I never come off my back foot. Like I don’t go that far forward and I’m not leaning. I want my head over the center of my chest and all of that over the center of my pelvis. I don’t want to be doing this and I don’t want to be doing this. I want to be and this is not going to come as any surprise to you. I want to be centered and rooted throughout centered and rooted throat. So how how wide do I step? I step hip width. This is too wide. This is too wide. Okay, this is too narrow. You don’t want to be doing this walk like on a tight like on a tightrope. You want it about hip width apart between the heels of your feet. Okay, so what we do. We turn our right foot 45 degrees. We step the first foot out. Notice how my foot is going. My toes are straightforward on that 90 degree. I make sure that my knee is going over the center of my foot. This is wrong. This is wrong. I don’t go past my toes. This is wrong. Center of my foot to about here on my foot. Okay. And see how I’m sunk. Okay, so let’s do that again together. Right foot 45 degrees. I step I move my weight forward. So about 80% on my last 70 80% on my front. So I feel my weight coming into my front leg. You’re going to be able to pick up on that. I feel rooted and I feel centered. Then my weight goes back and as my weight goes back. I come up onto my heel. So I’m going backwards. Right. I come up onto my heel. Now, here’s the tricky part. I’m going to turn my left foot 45 degrees by turning my hips. Not my ankle. My hips 45 degrees. Do you see that? I’m putting my hands here. You don’t have to do this. I’m just doing this. You can see what my hips are doing. I turned 45 degrees. Now when I put my I start to put my weight down and I start to send my weight in that direction. And as I do I make sure my knee is aligned over the center of my foot. I align my knee and my weight starts to come on to my left foot. Don’t worry. I’m going to review all of this with you again. Now here is what is the special challenge here. I’m going to turn all of my weight onto my left foot. And that I’m going to turn my right hip put all my weight onto my left foot and it’s going to bring my right foot up like this onto my heel with no weight on it. See that no weight. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to slowly do tiger grasping with my right foot and my hips are going to slowly turn from the 45 back to the 90 as my weight comes forward. Okay, let’s do that whole sequence. I’ll talk you through it again. Talk you through it again. Okay, so first of all, think of it. Right foot. Feet about hip width apart toes forward knee aligned centered and rooted and come forward. About 80% back about 80% see how my left foot has come up. Pivot 45 by turning the hips align the knee. Align the knee. I’m going to send my weight onto this leg and I’m going to see what’s happening. My hip is coming. My right hip is coming up and that’s what brings my right heel up. No weight on here. No weight at all. We might make contact. It with now I straighten my hips as I go forward. I straighten my hips as I go forward. Here. Let’s do that again. And then we’ll do the next right and then I’m going to turn. I’ll do one more for the side and I’ll know maybe I’ll do this first. Let’s do one right now from the front so you can see what this looks like from the front the first step. Okay. So I’m going to step I turn I step you see here distance foot straight down my hips are I go back right? I turn turn align the knee and then I’m going to turn all of my weight onto this foot to bring this foot up. No seat no weight and then I straighten my hips slowly. It takes me the whole time. My weight goes forward to straighten my hips. You’re going this is hard. Yep. That’s the point. This is a very disciplined flow inducing concentration demanding soft vigilance affording way of walking. But it gets movement and mindfulness deeply wedded together. It really gets you to enact in movement. You’re being centered and rooted. Okay, so right foot 45 degrees step back pivot align the knee step hips coming forward. Now we’re going to do the same thing on the other side. I’ve gone forward. So I go back. I try not to cock your hips as you go back. I go back and I’m going to pivot my hips 45 degrees to the right along my knee and I’m going to I’m going to turn my weight onto my right leg to bring my left heel up. And then the same thing all the way back. Okay, let’s do that again. We’ll do those two and then we’re going to right learn how to turn. Okay, 45 degrees step see how both my knees that when I go forward I do not look at my right leg, please. I do not walk it like this. It stays bent stays bent back. Turn turn from the hips align the knee turn all the way on to the left right foot comes up back. I mean bringing your hips back to center and shift your weight back turn align step and forward. Okay, now I don’t have the camera space, but you want to do. You want to do three of these because you want to end the direction you’re going in. Oh, you do three or any multiple of three right three or six or nine. Because when you want to turn you want to have habits that your last step was your right foot was forward your right foot was forward. So this is your left foot forward right foot forward. Okay, so this is how we’re going to turn. And then bring my weight back just like I was going to do another walk, but instead of pivoting out to the right. I pivot inward to the left like this and as I do I shift my weight from my left hip to my right hip. I have to pivot this as much as I possibly can see how far I’m putting it. Okay, I shift my weight on to this hip. I bring this foot up and over and I step and as I step I push this heel back a bit and I get my alignment again. Okay, I’m going to do that two more times because the turning once you can turn of course you can then what you do is you just go three or six or whatever this way and then three that way and then three this way and three that way and it’s very demanding as you can no doubt. Okay, so right here again, let’s do the turn and here I send my weight back. But instead of pivoting pivoting out like I do when I’m going forward. I’m going to pivot right. I’m going to pivot the other way and then pivot to my left with my right foot. I pivot notice how I put my weight down because I’m going to shift my weight from left to right and then pivot even more on this heel. Then this foot comes up and over and push this hip. I push this heel back a bit. And I come forward into my forward and now I can just I’ve done my first step here. I go back I turn I turn go. Okay, so I’m going to do the walk. You won’t be able to see my feet on the turn here, but we’re going to do three steps and then I’ll turn and come back. Okay. And then we’ll talk about the breathing. Okay, put to the right step with the left don’t I okay. Sorry. I know that you’ll want to look at your feet initially, but as you have to stop looking at your feet as soon as you possibly can and feel it introspectively rather than looking at your feet. Okay, because this throws your balance off and it’s actually detrimental to what you want to be doing. So as soon as you can try to feel it rather than see it happening. So put to the right 45 degrees step. Back. Pivot a line turn forward back. Okay, so I’m over here. I know you can’t see my feet. I do that thing right come back. Now I pivot this way. I pivot even more as I shift my weight. I come up and over and then here and then I’m back and then I’m going to do it to this direction. Center. Centered and rooted throat. Okay, one more thing. Let’s add in the breathing. So the rule is whenever you’re going forward, you are exhaling and whenever you’re moving backwards or drawing yourself in your inhale. So inhale exhale. Try to do it loudly. So you can inhale and then exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale inhale exhale. So you want to try and make your you want to try and get the baby breathing from the past the meditation into the walking. You don’t want to be forcing your breathing. You want to be naturally flowing. And so you want your breath to be the metronome that moves you through the walking. Begin. Inhale exhale. Begin. Inhale exhale. Don’t worry about your arms right now by the end of the week. You’ll have something to do with them. I promise you. Okay. So that’s the beginning of walking will add like we’ll review all of this on Thursday will add in a little bit more of the metal component and then on Friday, you’ll be adding in arms. Don’t do this now, but you’ll be actually be doing arm movement with this. Okay. All right. I’m just going to get my mat and my pillow and we’ll do a sit and then we’ll do some Q&A. Probably run a little bit long today, but I forewarned you that would be the case when we do the walking meditation. Sorry, I’m a little bit back, but hopefully this doesn’t look too odd for you. So we will will set the timer. Please get yourself into your basic posture. You’ll find that chanting now, which we’re going to do is very conducive. Set your phones on do not disturb and we’ll begin when I say begin. Begin. Begin. One. One. One. One. One. One. One. Begin your silence. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Just waiting to see if Amar is going to put up any questions. Okay. Repeat. Repeat what? Do you want me to repeat everything? Everything. There’s no sound. There’s no sound. Is there sound now? Okay. Sorry for that. Okay, sorry for that. Did people hear to come out of the meditation? Yeah. Okay, good. All right, so with the sound cut out there, apparently for a minute, I’ll repeat everything I just said. So the question that first comes to the fore is, where does this go in the sequence of practice? It goes at the very beginning. So the first thing you will do then is do the meditative walking, the Tai Chi brush knees. They’re the same thing, basically. You do that first, then you do where you’re standing and you do the Chi Kung, and then you do the Siddha Chi Kung, the chanting, and then you go into the silent sit practice, whatever you’re doing, Medha Vipassana, Prajna, inquiring mindfulness, etc. So that’s the sequence that you would do. You’ll find that if you do this for five or ten minutes, the walking, that will really strengthen your centering and rooting, and it will energize your sit. So it’s much less likely that you’ll get into kind of a sleepiness. I know I’ve been promising this for quite a while, and here I am finally delivering on the promise. Are there any other questions? Here, so it’s a few questions. So now our tech is now working again. Karima, is it okay to do Prajna with Aum and One? Aum and Belly, One and, yes, exactly. That’s exactly right, Karima. The chant is designed to also take you into Prajna. Exactly that. So, One is the expansive out of Metta, and then Aum is the grounding of Vipassana, and you’re getting between them, very astute observation. With the two together like that, you’re working towards Prajna. The advantage of chanting for Prajna is the fact that the music of the chant is both inner and outer at the same time. The resonance gives you that sense of all at once-ness that is central to Prajna. Lynn Slater, it’s always a pleasure to have you here, Lynn. Thank you for joining this session. It’s good to be sort of with you again after all these years. Expensing resistance to meditation. I’m feeling a lot of frustration in my life, and it seems to be antithetical to sitting still and produces random counterproductive behavior suggestions. So like two things right away is to do stuff outside of the set, you know, the things that build up the three jewels, remembering the Buddha, learning new Dharma, participating more in the Sangha, perhaps also going on the Discord server. Then in the situation, making the resistance, sorry, it sounds like something from a movie, making the resistance what you direct your practice on. I recommend that you get a strong sense of resistance and frustration. First of all, direct Vipassana on that to get to a sort of right relationship with it, like inquiring mindfulness, and then do, and then flip to Mata on it. I think that’s a powerful thing to do. Also, generally, the moving practices, like the one I just taught you, are very good for when you’re experiencing resistance to the seated meditation because the moving practices tend to channel that sort of metabolic arousal associated with frustration and resistance and channel it back into the training cycle of the cerebellum cortex loop. So I hope that’s helpful to you, Len. I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing a lot of frustration in your life. I hope things settle out for you. Okay, everyone, so please practice this. I promise I will review it in this entire setup again on Thursday. Review, we’ll add a little bit more of the mental component in, and then Friday, in addition to reviewing it, we’ll add in the arms. And then you’ll have the weekend to practice, and then we’ll go over the whole thing again, and the whole ecology again next Monday. And then that will basically wrap up, for lack of a better term, the Eastern course, one that comes out of Taoism and Buddhism. And then we will start moving into the Western wisdom tradition and the wisdom of Hypatia. So thank you very much for joining. Thank you to my dear friend and technomajor Mara, who is wrestling with the technological gods that limp, and for Jason, who is literally behind the scenes making stuff work with the camera and everything, my beloved son, helping me out so so dedicatedly. Please subscribe to this channel to be notified of the next video. You’ll there on there, you’ll find links to the lecture series Awakening from the Meeting Crisis and to the D-logo series, Voices with Verveki, that explore these themes and related themes in depth and situate them into a more encompassing framework. Please invite others who might benefit by sharing this series. Please join the Discord server to chat with others. There’s other people sitting there doing the moving practices. I’m hoping they will home the Sangha on Wednesday. I will be on the Discord server tonight at 6 p.m. doing the live Q&A there. I hope to hear from many of you there as well. We’re doing this every weekday morning at 930 Eastern time. A reminder, there is no stream, no live stream on Wednesday. I hope you guys will go on to the Discord server. I think I will do a little bit of work on Friday. Sorry, I just came to mind. No, I’ll do it next Monday during the Paya. I’ll mention a bit about, again, what we need to get ready for the wisdom of our patient. Okay, everyone, remember that continuity of practice is more important than sheer quantity. There is no enemy worse than your own mind and body. And see how the mind and body are coming together in this new practice. There’s no friend, no ally, no true companion on the path better than your own mind and body. Be lamps unto yourselves and to each other. Take care, everyone. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.