The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

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As you're practicing today, something to keep in mind is, how is your posture?

Just this recognition, right, that there's such a connection between the mind and the body.

In so many ways that we don't even recognize that the body influences the mind and the mind influences the body.

Some might even say making that distinction between mind and body is an extra we don't need to, but for the purpose of this conversation or this discussion, I'll make this distinction.

So what do I mean? Pay attention to the posture. For example, if you're walking, is there this slight leaning forward, just a little bit above the forward of the center of gravity?

The sense of like, oh, I'm going somewhere. Maybe there's this little sense of rushing or maybe the sense of anticipation or wanting to get there.

This can show up in a really subtle way how we are with the body as opposed to just being present for each step.

Just here, and with kind of like this, not from the center of gravity, but maybe just like on the balls of our feet, if you want to think about this physically.

So just in this centeredness, uprightness, it's not energetically toppling forward, but just being here in this moment.

In the same way, if you find yourself standing, is there a way in which you're standing like just because you can't think of anything better to do or you're waiting for something else, or is there a way that you're standing because standing is happening?

Because that's the thing to be doing at that moment, whether well today probably won't be standing in line, but you might find yourself, you know, in other aspects of your life standing in line, can be a way to just be with the experience to be in the standing posture.

And then, of course, sitting, sitting posture. Is there a way that we're sitting with some sense of settledness and groundedness and connectedness?

And then finding the balance between alertness and ease, it's not so easy always to find this balance between both alertness and ease.

We tend to think alertness is stiffness and ease is somehow a collapsedness, but so much a part of practice is finding this alertness and ease, because we might find that if we're not in that posture, we might notice what is the mind doing?

The mind sometimes can be collapsed and then that shows up in our posture as maybe a collapsed posture, or you might be trying to force the mind to be a particular way, and that might show up as a certain amount of stiffness.

So whatever posture you find yourself in, might just notice, oh, what is it like to be in this posture without insisting that it'd be different, but just feel into the experience?

Right now, it feels like this. And then a gentle inquiry, what's going on in the mind? Because there's this connection between mind and body, maybe there's something we can learn about ourselves.

And maybe there's a way in which we can bring some ease and relaxation to whatever posture we find ourselves in.

So with that, I wish you a good morning of practice, and I'll see you back here at 11.45. Thank you.