I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Morning. Today our speaker is going to be Lori Sanaki. She's a longtime practitioner here. She was the head student a couple of years ago. She's a mother of two children and she's one of our practice leaders here. Thank you. Today I wanted to start with Zazen. Oh, it's a good place to start. I've noticed something lately about Zazen. Maybe you noticed this right away, but I've only noticed this recently. I've noticed that the more

[01:05]

The more I relax into the upright posture the more my mind settles by itself into the present moment. The more I relax into the upright posture the more the various trains of thought come chugging back to the station on their own and settle there. And this kind of makes me wonder about a couple of things. One thing that makes me wonder is I wonder if I completely relaxed into the completely upright posture would my mind completely settle into the present moment. And the other thing that makes me wonder is I wonder if I have to use muscles to think discursively somehow. Like maybe it requires some tension to produce discursive thinking.

[02:09]

Maybe, you know, if Buddhism is right in saying that subject and object aren't two, maybe I actually have to use some muscles to hold them apart so that I experience them that way. And maybe all I need to do to experience the oneness of subject and object is just to figure out which muscles those are and just relax them. I think that even for me, I think over the years, even a word like focus or concentrate, I mean, part of me is just thinking, okay, what muscle do I use to focus my mind? How do I hold my mind into the present moment? And sometimes I think even a phrase like let go and probably even the word relax, you sort of are thinking, okay, what muscle do I, how do I do this?

[03:14]

How do I use, what, where in here do I use, find a muscle that I use to let go of this feeling or whatever Mel's telling me to let go of. So, I think it's good to remind ourselves over and over that we just want to relax into what's happening. And if we can't relax into what's happening, then let's relax into that at least. Let's relax into the things that we can't relax about. Wherever we can catch ourselves and relax, let's do that. When I went to Tassajara, where you do these three-month sort of traditional Japanese practice periods, it starts with this thing called Tangario, which is like an intensive sitting, only it's really, you just, the idea is,

[04:32]

Well, it's sort of modeled on the idea that in the old days in Japan or China, people would express their sincerity by just sitting in front of the monastery out in the cold and rain and sitting still until they were let in. So the idea is you don't have breaks, you don't have kin-hen, you don't have the other things we have during sitting here, you just sit there And then it's a way to express your sincerity. And when I, I mean, lately, nowadays, for the past few years, I hear people, they'll even say they like Tongariro, like someone will say, I really enjoyed Tongariro. Well, when I went there, like, either people didn't enjoy it, or that was really not the culturally correct thing to say about it. It was like, it was sort of an endurance contest that you did to express your sincerity. People didn't talk about it. People talked about it like that. They didn't talk about it like a sort of like really intense sasheen or something. Anyway, I didn't enjoy it. And I had a really, you know, I was very, I was miserably in pain most of the time.

[05:35]

And, you know, just trying to get through it. It wasn't even trying to sit with it. It was just trying to get through it. And also when I was there, they had this system that you didn't know when it was going to end. Like nowadays, I think it's five days. But in those days, it was anywhere from five to 10 days, depending on how well you sat. And so on the fifth day, I was pretty much beside myself with, oh God, I don't know if I can do this. I really don't. And I knew that there was other people in my group were sitting, quote, better than I was. So I knew that I wasn't going to get to go first, that's for sure, because they took people out separately. Anyway, I don't need to go into the gory details. So in sort of the middle or the later part of the fifth day, they came in and they tapped the person next to me to go.

[06:40]

And I was so relieved. I mean, I knew that the end was in sight. It wasn't even like me, but I was, I can't even express the relief I felt. And every muscle in my body spontaneously let go just on a thought. And that's when you realize how many things you're holding, you know? How many different sets of muscles mean different things to you that they need to be held. So, and I've had a couple other times in my life, I've had some experience where just based on a thought, every muscle in my body just relaxed. In this practice, in Buddhism, to the extent that I understand it, for our minds to settle into the present moment is not the end of the story but really the beginning.

[07:44]

In fact, in Zen texts they caution you not to fall into a pit of tranquility. Somehow I think that might be more pertinent to people in monasteries than to than to us. I defy anyone to fall into a pit of tranquility if they read the San Francisco Chronicle every day. But it's the beginning of the story. You don't want to fall into a pit of tranquility. But the way I understand it, if you look at the truth, if you perceive the reality with a calm, settled mind, what you perceive will calm you down more deeply. If you try to perceive reality with an agitated mind you're likely to just get more agitated. So we first try to have a calm mind.

[08:48]

So how do we do that? We relax into our upright posture and let our mind calm by itself. And then, now my experience isn't quite, I have some resonance with this thing about how if you see reality, it calms you more deeply. I relate to that, that sounds like something I've experienced, but I think more what I've experienced is sometimes if I'm in a calm, relaxed state and I see something about myself or something about the world, I do feel more calm. let go more deeply and I calm more deeply. But sometimes I actually see something that's hard to face. And then if I can relax with that, then I calm more deeply and then I can see more deeply where I'm holding something.

[09:49]

So So getting back to relaxing into an upright posture. When we do that, we're relying on, when I do that, I'm relying on some autonomic functions of my body. So I know everybody knows all this, but I'm just going over it again. I looked up autonomic means self-governing, which means not governing by the central headquarter self, but each thing governing itself. So our breath is autonomic. It goes in and out by itself. We don't have to think about it. And it also goes to the places that it needs to go to by its own knowing of that. And also our core muscles of our spine.

[10:57]

You might think that to hold your back upright, that takes some holding, that takes some tension. And I used to think that. I used to think you have to hold your spine upright. But when you do some exercise in how to strengthen your spine, What they talk about are these inner core muscles, which actually you can't strengthen by doing sit-ups and doing leg lifts and these various things. Actually, the core muscles of your spine are autonomic. They hold your spine erect automatically. And the way you, if you want to try to wake those up or strengthen those, the only way to do that is by doing, well, I mean, I don't know, but the only way. but one way they teach is by doing balancing. So you try, you do balancing, like standing on one leg or like the tree in yoga, you do these various balancing, wave your arms around while you're standing on one leg.

[12:06]

And that's how you wake up those core muscles of your spine, which, which are actually on their own. They're holding your spine up upright on their own. And the only way you can't interfere with them. So you can interfere by, if you're crouching, then you're tensing muscles and you're going against the autonomic function of your spine. So it's to resume the autonomic function. And also relaxing itself I think is an autonomic function of our muscles. So you use your muscle when you need it and then when you don't need it anymore it automatically relaxes. That's the way it's supposed to work. So in our zazen we just settle into resuming autonomic function of our body and mind.

[13:09]

I'm taking this Feldenkrais class, and the teacher said something I thought was really neat. She said that, I don't know hardly anything about Feldenkrais, so I'm not trying to talk about that, but she said that in Feldenkrais, you're not trying to re-pattern by repetition, and you're not trying to push your edge or stretch something to the edge and strengthen it that way. She said that it's about sensing Is there anywhere I'm holding that I could let go? Is there anything I'm holding on to simply because I forgot that I don't need that, I don't use that anymore? And it's about sensing, and I like her use of the word sensing. We tend to use the word noticing more, but I really like sensing. So Sojin Roshi often says, if you ask him what he does during zazen, he'll say, well, I give myself zazen instruction.

[14:17]

And for today, I would just add to that. I give myself zazen instruction and I resume the autonomic functioning of my body and mind. And I'm just going to sense, is there anywhere I'm holding that I could let go. Just gonna let my breath, my breath's just gonna go where it wants to go. My heart's just gonna beat how it wants to beat. My nerve, my neurons are going to fire at will on their own. And my blood is going to course through my veins and arteries according to its own schedule.

[15:26]

And my cell membranes are going to be permeable or impermeable. according to their own inner wisdom. I used to think, I used to have this kind of paradigm or metaphor that When we have poor boundaries, it means we're too relaxed. And when we have too strong boundaries, it means we're too tense. So some people have too strong boundaries. They're tight and too tight. And then people with poor boundaries are too loose. But lately, I've been thinking, I don't think it's that way. I think in the areas that we have, you might say, if you have an idea about some part of yourself where you have poor boundaries, or if I do, I think it's more like I'm holding the door open that would naturally swing shut. I think that, you know, we've got doors, the doors of our senses, our skin, we've got doors between each of us, and I think sometimes

[16:40]

we're holding them open or we're locked. Some of us are locking them. Some of the time we're locking them. Some of the time we're holding them open. So it's not to necessarily strengthen your boundary, but what about just, what about if I just let go of the muscle I'm using to hold the door open and just let the door swing shut and trust its own inner wisdom that the door knows when it needs to open and when it needs to close and relax into relax into that. And I think that one of the ways we work with pain is the pain is there as something that's hard to relax with, it's hard to relax with pain, it's the thing we sort of naturally tense up about.

[17:43]

So, it gives us a way to practice that when we're in zazen. We relax into the pain, and if we have some pain we can't relax into, we settle with that, we relax into that. Maybe I have a dam with, you know, maybe I have a hech hechi inside of me with a whole river of feeling behind it, like maybe I'm not ready, that's okay. That's okay. So, inside the zendo, relaxing into the upright posture, and outside the zendo, Maybe it's relaxing into the precepts. I think that if I feel myself kind of wanting to break a precept, maybe I can temporarily hold myself back, like just tighten up and hold myself from breaking that precept.

[18:59]

But that is really not going to work in the long, for the long haul. So I think that the precepts are They're like my upright spine, they're the natural autonomic way we are. And I need to relax into that original expression when I'm relaxed and tranquil. The original expression is within the precepts or it looks like the way the precepts talk about things. So a baby's first words are never a lie. First you learn to talk, then you learn to lie, right? Your first words are never, my daughter Sylvie, her first word was this. And it worked really well.

[20:01]

She didn't have to learn the names of things because she just pointed and said this. It was really great. And it wasn't a lie. She didn't lie. This. So you almost have like a Zen dialogue, like, what? This! And it wasn't a lie. It was true. Maybe like reading the newspaper or listening to the morning news shows. For some reason, I seem to be beset by housemates that like to turn on the morning news programs.

[21:04]

This is my personal cross to bear. And also my children, for some reason, decided to, we never used to take the paper. Alan would listen to NPR and he would let me know what I needed to know. Now we take the paper and we listen to the morning news shows. And I find it very hard to relax when I'm, the paper, well the Chronicle is pretty bad. The Oregonian actually is easier to relax reading the Oregonian. I don't know why. The Chronicle, it's very hard. for me to relax. But the morning news is really, really hard. I just, that world view, I just cannot take that world view. It's just really hard, particularly in ABC. I don't know why, I don't mind, CBS is not as bad. We get... We get ABC better, so that's often the one that ends up being on, but somehow I cannot relax and listen to Diane Sawyer at the same time yet.

[22:09]

But maybe the paper and the morning show, they're like standing on one leg, doing the tree in yoga. It's like a balancing exercise. I need, if I could relax, if I could open up the Chronicle, And if I really, and here's what I think, if I was really convinced that the only way I could do anything helpful was if I could relax, would I be able to then? If I was really convinced that the only way I would come up with a helpful response to that, whatever that's being presented, I can't even put into words what's being presented there. It's so scary in a way. If I really knew, okay, I'm opening the paper and the only way I'm going to have a healthful response is if I can relax into this. Would I be able to then? Would that help me do it? Maybe so. Maybe so.

[23:10]

Let's see how I'm doing here. So I had a kind of vision a few weeks ago which I wanted to share. And it's sort of like this, it's a little bit like this way that I mentioned that Buddhism says that if you relax into, if your mind is calm and you see reality, it will help you relax more. So in this situation, I was in a situation where I really was calm and happy, and then I kind of settled into more, you know, I saw something and I settled in even more deeply. So I want to share it with you for what it's worth. So I went to Lee Hong's birthday party. Lee Hong is the daughter of Susan Marvin, who's a longtime member here. And she had her birthday party at Iceland.

[24:12]

And so I went and You know, I was around, my son went with me, I was around people who I care about, and it was a happy thing to be doing, celebrating her birthday, and I was in a very peaceful, calm state of mind, and I went out and I was gonna watch the skaters for a while, and watched them go around, and Alex was out there, my son Alex, and Lee Hong, and Susan, a lot of people I knew, I was somehow just watching, I noticed how harmonious it was. I thought, wow, this is amazingly harmonious. For the amount of difference that's being contained here, it's amazingly harmonious. And it goes without saying, all the different flavors and colors of people, but what I was really noticing was the different skill levels, because you have

[25:14]

people who are really, they need someone to hold their hand, and you've got people who are clinging to the side and they're going around, and you've got people who are, you know, moderately balanced, and then there's people who are really good and going around really fast and gracefully, and then you've got the space reserved in the middle for the people doing the tricks, and everybody is totally accepting each other, completely. I mean, there is really no, very little or no, problem. And I was thinking, huh, I wonder if this is what life is really like. And I wonder if our practice could be like this. You know, for starters, it's a slippery situation. It's always a slippery situation and there's no getting out of that. There's no getting away from that. So, it's really just to be slipping around out there.

[26:21]

I mean, the bottom line is just to be slipping around out here in this slippery situation. That's the bottom line. And then for some of us, maybe, we would like to find our balance a little more this time around than we did the last time around. Today, a little more balance maybe today than we did yesterday. But not everybody is like my son. Skating is one of the things he does best. And so I said to him, did you want to take skating lessons? And mom, I know how to skate. Like, yeah, that's fine. He's going around with the amount of grace that he has, he's happy with that. And maybe he is every time trying to be a little more balanced, but maybe not. And so... And the other thing I noticed is no one has to suspend their critical faculties. So you can be skating behind someone, you could be thinking they're the worst skater out there that you've ever seen, and you're not losing your balance, and they're not losing their balance.

[27:27]

So how is that? I think it's partly because That's not what it's about. I mean, you know that they're doing what they came there to do. They're slipping around on the ice. So you may be evaluating how they're doing, but you're not getting bent out of shape because they're not skating that well. Or because you aren't. I mean, maybe some people don't, and then maybe they don't come back to their rank. I don't know. But most people are just out there to slip around, have a good time, and maybe possibly find a little more balance today than they did yesterday. And maybe we don't have to suspend our critical faculties, you know, maybe it's really more about what is it about and how we get our emotions tied up with what we think it's about. And then the Part in the middle, that's where the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are, skating around in the middle.

[28:29]

And they lose their balance, too. They fall down, too, sometimes. I think I've come to the end of what I wanted to say. Does anybody have anything to add or subtract? Yes? I would like to add something to your muscle discussion. I looked around the room and I saw that most people have a faint smile on their face or the muscles in their face are relaxed.

[29:29]

I have found, from my own experience, my scalp muscles, which you always forget about. If the scalp is not relaxed, because we can do all kinds of things with muscles like you, then we cannot relax. And probably one of the situations that one should try to do Because, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh actually says that the half smile is the most relaxed face. He recommends that. Maybe for some people it is and some people it isn't. I think that the real muscles that you want to find out are the ones you hold yourself with, right? They could be any, but you have to find them out yourself.

[30:32]

Just let me add one more of my experience. I often wake up at night and have all kinds of things to think about. Night is when I can think, usually. But I get to a point where I must sleep. I know I need to sleep. So I relax everything. Stop smiling. Stop relaxing everything. And then I fall asleep. If I don't do this exercise, I cannot. Yes, Mary? Thank you for a very calming I went to a continuing education class for psychologists that talked about brain activity when the brain is at rest, which is the baseline, which is evidently very hard to measure because a completely quiet brain is a dead brain. So what is the activity where nothing has happened except being? And there's a poet at UCLA who has found this out recently.

[31:38]

His name is Iacoboni. And he says, what happens is that when we have let go of everything, a different part of the brain becomes active than is active when anything has happened. And it's the part of the brain, the sections of the brain associated with making connection. And as soon as I heard that, I went, that's why When you sit, you feel at one. Because the part of the brain that makes connections is doing its thing. It feels alive, and nothing else is happening. Okay, how about Mark, and then I forgot your name, and then Jake, and then Peter. Thank you, Laurie. Welcome. Say something else about settling into being unable to settle into. Well, I think it's about sensing, is there anything about this I can settle with?

[32:44]

Is there any way I could think about this that would enable me to settle? You know, if, is there any, it's just sensing. is where is the space when there's no space, you know? And part of it is just to accept that you can. I mean, I think a lot of the time we really do beat ourselves up for not being able to do something that of course we wouldn't be able to do. And so it's about connecting with what the causes are, like of course you wouldn't be able to. Of course I wouldn't be able to settle with this. That makes sense. And then that, that makes sense. That's the settling, you know, I think. So it would include moving? In Zazen? Yeah. Yeah. Pain is reached a certain place.

[33:45]

Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh. Yeah, I wouldn't, yeah. So how would you use this to decide whether to move or not, is kind of what you're saying. Well, when you can settle with moving, I guess, you know, when you can relax with, okay, I can move now, be okay. Try that anyway. Yes? I had a little experience this morning that I kind of wanted to share because it's about I was late. I looked at the clock when I was about to leave, and I was five minutes later than I thought I was. And I got all flustered. I said, I don't want to be late. It was 8 o'clock. I don't want to be late unless I go in. So all the way here, I was really flustered. And I was saying, you know, you were doing that, and you knew that one more thing. You were going to be late, but you did it anyway.

[34:45]

And I get here, and I think, relax, relax, relax. I kind of run in, and I grab my cushion, Oh, I'm disturbing everybody because I'm not relaxed. And if I don't get my knee just right, I'm going to be in terrible pain, and that's going to be my whole Zazen. And this is all going on in the bell rings. And I remembered what Peter said last week about you have to take everything with you. The other shore is here, and you have to take everything with you. And suddenly, I said to myself, I'm flustered. I am, and the first thing, or maybe a bunch of things happen simultaneously. One is this little knot in my belly just kind of, and I heard the bird that always sings, and I realized that I just, for this whole time, I'd just been in this little, little knot, and just saying, this is the little knot I'm in, is the first step.

[35:53]

One other thing I had thought of to say, I was thinking about this point which I couldn't quite figure out how to make about how we hold ourself, that there's some set of muscles we use to hold ourself because since we don't have one, we need one, so we have to make one by tensing some muscles. And I was thinking, Sometimes during Zazen I can do something, move, it's usually my hands or something where I really have this feeling like I'm losing control. Like I'm just sitting there, I hardly did anything, but I feel the control kind of slipping away. And I thought about how you know, you're looking at me and you see, you can see completely that I am just this person occupying this spot in space and time. And no matter what I do up here, you're gonna still see it as me, you know? But for me, if I let go of them, I'll feel like I don't know who I am anymore, you know?

[37:02]

So isn't that strange? It's like you know that I'm, Just right here, whatever happens over here is going to be me, you know? Whatever it is, you're going to know it's me. But for me, there's some things that are me and some things that aren't. Very strange. Yes, Jake? Did you put on skates? No, and I thought the only way this story would really work is if I had been out there skating when I had this insight. But that just shows it never happens the way And it's also, it's kind of five-ish for me to see it kind of happening outside. But I've been working on it, I've been thinking. Slippery situation, slippery situation. And Peter. Thank you, Laurie. Thank you. It's really great, you know, and then I was listening to the radio and somebody was talking about Buddha and they used the word where instead.

[38:29]

Oh, where? There was so much more there. Whatever a weight is to me, it is, you know, it's a little bit sharp and a little narrow. Uh-huh. And aware is this kind of much broader sense. Uh-huh. You know, and I feel it in all these different parts of my body. Uh-huh. It's hard to think of a way to tense yourself into aware. I mean, it's hard to think of any muscle. I mean, it doesn't even make you think that way. It's sort of like a word like this. But awake just has a little bit of, wake up, get yourself up, get out of bed in the morning, you know? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. And Micah and Paul? I mean, Adam. Sorry. Thank you very much for your talk. You're welcome. I'm not really sure what my question or my comment is, but I just remembered this one time I was, I don't know, lying down or relaxing or something, and this thought came to my mind, fingers on a blackboard.

[39:44]

And I went, ooh. And I thought, wow, I'm gonna do that again. And so I, no matter how many times I repeated that word, I had the same physical sensation, even though it was only So then I thought, well, couldn't I produce a thought that would give me a more relaxing sensation, which I couldn't, I think. But other times you have, right? I mean, which is, I think it's like, because I'm so kind of conditioned and living in the city for so long and just, it's hard to produce that. having not spent a lot of time in the wilderness in recent years, though having quite a lot in the past. But then I thought, well, maybe this isn't really the practice to take on, or maybe this really isn't the way to go.

[40:46]

So I was just wondering if you thought that was kind of a bogus practice to start producing thoughts to relax yourself, or is it really about I think if you're agitated then yeah. I think that the thing is step one is to calm. If then, you know, so it sounds like one way you could say it with him is you were calm and you experimented with this little thing about, oh, this is interesting. I just think fingernails on the blackboard and then I get, so like that was like insight. So first you had calm, then you had insight. You saw how just a thought could, but then I think think not thinking is sort of like, that's the next step, which we can't even say anything about. It's sort of like calm and then you have insight and then you think not thinking, which is, I can't even say anything about that. So I think that if you notice you're agitated and then you could produce some thought that let you let go, that would be good.

[41:50]

But if you're already calm, then you don't have to worry as much about trying to generate a condition, you know, create some condition that would calm you down. That's just what I thought right now though, Adam. I noticed that there's very rarely a visualization in the body, including the chakras, in my experience of the body in this... Here, in the zendo. That's true, that's for sure. And I'm wondering if you can say something about that, or do you know why? Why we don't talk about the chakras? Well, I know why I don't talk about them, because I don't know anything about them. Um, Mayla used to talk about the chakras sometimes, but I don't think she did. It's not very Zen, is it? I mean, they're, they're sort of Tibetan.

[42:57]

I think, I think I've had some experience of the chakras, but not enough to say anything about. I'm sorry, I don't. Linda and then Susan. Just a little bit. It just puts us in mind that there are simple systems and ways of using language that become useful in traditions. So it's not like there's anything that Zen Buddhist tradition thinks there's something wrong with the chakra idea. But it's not the one that's been developed in the tradition that we inherited. Of course, in California, we make a mishmash of everything, so we could do chakras. Or we're the children of all these traditions. We can do them all. We can do any of them. But anyway, it makes sense to me that the chakra symbolism, which may be more of a symbolism, you know, it may be actually something that... They're kinetics associated.

[44:08]

They're what? Yeah, I mean, that's something that works if you decide to be a nutrition that uses that sort of set of images and language and techniques and skillful means. But it isn't surprising if it didn't happen to become highlighted in China and Japan when we got most of our style. That's all. Susan, then Alan. Really, thank you so much for this talk, because there's so many things that I go through, and it's reassuring to know other people experience some of those, the slipperiness and so forth. And I was reminded about a talk I went to for working parents, or about working parents, and the presenter was saying, you know, we're told a lot that we have to balance our lungs.

[45:11]

And we're working at this. But actually, it's kind of more like navigating. And the ice rink is sort of, I mean, sometimes I can feel like I'm balanced, but a lot of times it's sort of back and forth a little bit. And so your image of the posture stuff that helps the autonomic deep muscles is sort of like that. Just lately I have experienced, I think it's from sitting, that in a situation I'll notice that I'm tense and relax. It can become an automatic response. It's very reassuring. Oftentimes, as soon as you feel that you're holding a muscle, it relaxes. I mean, oftentimes that's almost all it takes. Just, oh, I'm holding this, and why? And then it just lets go by itself. balance?

[46:16]

In other Zen places, and I think this is in the Chinese tradition, they talk a lot about chi. And that's a system that's more used in Zen. But not so much in Soto Zen, more in Rinzai. We have this difficult practice where we concentrate on everything. But I just remember one of I think it was last year or the year before I gave a meditation instruction on a Friday afternoon. Sojan Roshi was here. And he just added this little corrective at the end of the Zazen instruction. And it's not like I didn't know it, but I felt like I actually hadn't quite been doing it. He says, well, lift yourself, extend yourself from your pelvis. right and that was actually the piece that made the whole postural thing click into place and i think it's also i don't think i could have it's like for a while i couldn't do it you know and then all of a sudden when he said it at that moment of receptivity i could do it and i've been able to do it ever since and it actually changes your sitting so we work with these things

[47:42]

you know, not in some scientific way, but also in some very precise way. And we don't categorize the effects, you know, but it changes us in the very way that you were, you know, talking about changing your, like using some muscle to change your mind. Yeah. That was really, it was just like, And that's part of why it's okay to say the same things over and over. And you learn how to say them. You keep saying them differently, you know. What are we doing? Oh, I guess we'll end after him. Another thing, which I don't recall learning when I learned to meditate here, but was in the book that, I think it's, I can't remember, Zen Training.

[49:01]

I can't remember the guy's name. Sakida. Pardon? Sakida? Yeah, yeah, that's it. I always get it confused. Anyway, he talks about as you exhale from the belly, you also exhale kind of from the lungs and you force the diaphragm down. And the process of forcing the diaphragm down is what opens and relaxes. And that made a huge difference. when you kind of do that one deep exhale, it comes back. Right, sometimes. Yeah. I mean I think that's true and what Sojin often says, you prime your breath. And I think you can prime your uprightness too. So you can actually lift sometimes as a way to remind yourself, this is what I want to do now, core, spine, muscles, I really swear I do, I know I don't act like I do most of the time, but this is really what I want to do, and then they'll say, okay, fine, I've been waiting.

[50:13]

So yeah, you can prime your, and you can prime relaxation too in a way, you can remind yourself that you want to relax. Okay, thank you everybody. Beings are numberless.

[50:33]

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