Hello, and welcome back to Practicing Human, the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I'm your host, Corey Muscara.

And in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about why the moment before release is often when we grip the hardest.

More to come on that in a moment.

But first, I am so excited, why am I excited?

Because it's 2 Bell Tuesday.

No other podcast in the world.

Do you get 2 Bell Tuesday?

So, I'm going to ring the bells twice.

All you need to do is listen and let this serve as an extended mini meditation, dropping you a little more deeply into the present moment.

2 Bell Tuesday, you make the world go round.

Thank you very much.

Okay, the moment before release is when we grip the hardest.

The first time I saw the truth of this came as many of my insights have come from my time in Burma.

It was a period in the retreat where my teacher encouraged me to extend my sitting meditation to about 2 hours at a time, 7 times per day instead of just the normal 1 hour.

So, at this point I was doing 2 hours of sitting, half hour of walking, another 2 hours of sitting, half hour of walking.

Now, sitting for that length created a lot of pain in my body that was often difficult to tolerate.

And to get through it, I'd need to shift my posture and sometimes I'd need to get up before the 2 hour mark.

It was just too hard.

And the more the pain increased, the more I would often try to grip my teeth through it.

It was kind of like a knee-jerk response.

But the gritting my teeth just led to further tension, resistance, and a general sense of gripping.

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