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

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And then to say a few words, some little words about practicing meditation, walking or sitting today.

There is a art to doing meditation seriously without being serious.

In a way of giving it some gravitas while keeping everything light.

We give it as some importance so that we are not giving importance to the mind that wonders often thought and is thinking about.

It can be almost anything. And some people can spend a lot of time meditation just drifting in their thoughts.

So there is an art to kind of giving some emphasis to really being here, but without it being straining, without it being forcing yourself for.

And one of the ways that might be interesting, if this but I'm going to say makes sense, it's maybe like a metaphor.

And that is imagine or feel that your sense of embodied presence, sense of being here and with your inner senses awake to really feel like you're here physically embodied here.

Imagine that embodied presence has a weight and let the weight rest in your body.

It kind of like brings you down and centers you here on your seat wherever you are.

As you walk, centers yourself in each step that you take.

And often when people kind of, we call it saving, sometimes going up into your head, meaning our person is too much in their head, means that there's somehow we're up there, we're thinking a lot.

And so there's a kind of sometimes and if we're really alarmed with some strong emotion, that a sense of alarm also tends to bring an upwelling upward movement.

People who are chronically anxious, it's got a little bit like they're a little bit maybe up, you know what's going on.

And so they feel the weight of embodied presence and let it settle with gravity here.

Or I sometimes for myself will imagine that the weight of mindfulness, I don't think mindfulness has any weight.

It doesn't matter if I just imagine, like, weight of mindfulness, weight of awareness, settle.

And that's enough for me to, something settles, something let's go, something kind of begins to relax downward and release.

And so to do that with a sense of this is important, to do that with a sense of this is valuable and like this is a serious thing to do.

It really kind of reorganizes so much of our being here, our mind, heart, body, to not be up there in the head spinning our thoughts and whatever the emotions that are driving our thoughts, to not have that in charge.

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