Hey everyone, my name is Rosie and I'm one of the new hosts of Radio Headspace.

I'm an author and a yoga meditation teacher and my new episodes are debuting February of next year.

I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, I'd like to let you know about a new show from Headspace Studios called Dear Headspace.

It's a call and advice show where Headspace teachers answer questions each week about anything and everything.

We talk about family, relationships, mindfulness and so much more.

You can find Dear Headspace on the Headspace app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Headspace Studio.

Hi everyone and welcome to Radio Headspace. It's Eve here.

I hope you're doing well today wherever you're tuning in from.

I went on a week-long silent meditation retreat recently. It was over Zoom of course.

Normally with a meditation retreat you would go to a retreat house so you would pack up a bag, go away for a week.

But this one was in my home and it worked really well actually. It was great to have that time to tune into my practice in a deeper way and actually put into practice.

Some of the things I was being taught in my home.

So the teacher on the retreat used a phrase not too tight, not too loose.

On a retreat you do a lot of sitting meditation combined with walking meditation.

And this particular schedule saw us get up around 6, start meditation practice about 6.30 and you would go through till about 5.30.

That's quite a bit of sitting meditation. And what they meant by this phrase was about creating the right conditions or wise effort as it's talked about in the traditional sense for the sitting and walking meditation.

Often in meditation it can feel like you need to create a certain feeling.

That the moment you sit to meditate you'll feel an immediate sense of calm and ease. All that it needs to be perfect with no interruptions and that can mean you maybe try too hard, you're too rigid with it.

Equally, sometimes you just don't feel like you want to do it. All that you feel really sleepy so you don't really put any effort in at all.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how in life we can sometimes try too hard and we can put too much effort into wanting things to be a certain way, being too stuck in our own ways.

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