Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a few months thereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
As of the time of writing this I’m compromising with Wendy’s request for no editing — since so much of our media diet is contrived — by leaving the video version untouched while doing minimal editing for the audio/podcast versions. Being unedited gives viewers a real time peek into varying skill ranges on how meditators handle technical difficulties (at least in this first session) while editing some of these moments out for the audio versions will save listeners time and better befit Insight Timer.
Join these Q & A’s when they happen live:
- via downloading the free Wisdom app in your app store or via: https://wisdom.audio where I’m @integratingpresence
- watch on my YouTube channel
To calendar add and directly join the next live “Meditation Q & A” on November 2, 2022 at 7pm Central: https://insig.ht/e/jxvolUs8zub or join via downloading the free Wisdom app in your app store or via: https://wisdom.audio where I’m @integratingpresence
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing up on Insight Timer live or Wisdom App to type/ask live.*
Past chat with Wendy:
Audio: Thoughts, Emotions & Trauma | 9/29/2022 “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash”
Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
going on [Music] okay so just for the recording I’ve um
on Zoom Winnie and I have um started this meditation q a and instead of just
starting it over again uh we’re just gonna jump right in here uh with all kinds of technical difficulties I guess
this is common for um for the first time I guess um so the question we have coming in
here is will you ever feel like you’re meditating right I don’t know it’s probably a bit like
can you ever feel like you’re getting a podcast right can you hear me
okay for some reason there’s an audio conflict um when I do that
um so just give me one more second here this I know this is frustrating we try to launch this
um mm-hmm I’ve got
um I’ve got a headset but I’ve also got a mic I’m going to change I’m going to unplug my mic and just go to the headset
okay make it’s a bit easier see if that makes a difference can you hear me
let me know
the audio is a little bit um different but it’s okay
um what I’m going to do do you want me to I can I can go back to the other one so we’re meditating here so this is
meditation so the person who is asking about can you ever get it right to be meditator actually I’m going to talk
about being right how about that would you rather be right or be happy let me
just go here all right since while Josh is just doing that and hopefully the
lady can hear me yes now we now now she can hear so yeah okay great okay so you
know like I had this this really clear understanding yesterday I was meditating
and I was going yeah the whole issue is really that we think that when we are
good we are right that we will be happy it’s a very conditional experience so I
what I would say is if you want to be happy you don’t worry about being good or being right just kind of
sit with kind of where you are and that’s hard actually now that I say that kind of it’s hard you’ve just got to
recognize that it’s gonna you’re gonna mess up what do you reckon Josh like there’s no there’s no right way to
meditate it just means like here you are I would say definitely and especially starting off this is what I tell my
You cant get it wrong
students and uh folks meditating with me is for a while they did have this kind
of fear that oh I can’t do this you know I just sit down my mind’s all over the place and I’m like you cannot mess it up
if you’re doing it especially starting off you can’t get it wrong there’s no way to fail and so just that starting
point where people are kind of conditioned that they have to go and compete things and if they can’t do it
if they can’t um meet their idea of it then they give up right away because they don’t want to
be seen as a failure so I just flip that around you cannot screw it up no matter what you do or don’t do especially when
starting out okay that is the starting point and then it just builds more
skillfully from there right so there’s more wisdom and skill that starts from there but if you if you have this
perception that I’m doing it wrong right out of the gate you’ll never even get out of the gate
yeah so I think it’s really important to cotton
tea lady Nat that is her insight timer uh handle yes tea lady net very nice and
as a big tea drink Drinker I just want to say thank you very much for being a tea lady because it’s like I live on
that stuff so thank you very much um and I I want to add to what Josh has
said because often teachers just talk about this thing about don’t worry about
it but it’s really hard we’re really conditioned to thinking we’ve got to get it right so um and then it’s sort of not really
helpful to just go just bum on cushion and then that’s just that’s good enough but I want to say something a little bit
more so what I’ve really been looking at is that so can can Josh so if you can
just ask her is it because does she feel like she’s doing it bad because her mind
is wild what is it that makes her think that she’s not doing it right yes and uh
What makes you think you wont get it right
tea lady Nat or Natalie I’m I’m sure you’ve heard so what again to relay what
is the uh what makes you think that you’re not getting it right or that you’ll never be able to get it right
um and she says I love that you said that you can’t mess it up that gives me so
much more confidence and freedom knowing that okay so I think she was doing that typing so the question for Natalie is
you know what what makes you think that you’ll never get it right or that you’re not even getting it right right now
so that’s a very key question okay so I want to add something to that so what I
realized in in everything is that that wild mind
so there is the conversational mind which is just thoughts and it’s not that
those thoughts are bad or wrong or anything like that you know there’s that I was actually speaking to my partner
this morning I think therefore I am but actually I am therefore I think so it’s
kind of the other way around so thoughts will just arise and they will do that thing because that’s what thoughts do but we’re really hooked into that and
the reason we’re hooked into uh we get pulled and swayed it’s because that’s I
call it the ego part of the mind so there’s a lot of identification in that and the ego arises
because there’s an emotion that sits underneath that which is wanting to be
known so what I would say there’s a couple of ways to work with the really wild mind and one of them is to try and
come back to like just go oh wow I’m kind of off and I’m in the Bahamas or I’m in an argument or I’m reliving some
hideous whatever it’s a thing or I’m suddenly having sex with my partner or whatever it is
um just you know what commonly people say just come back to the breath but I I I want to kind of say try something try
something else um and just explore and become curious so when you find yourself getting you’re
like off doing whatever it is that you’re doing to just pause for a moment
and simply ask what is the emotion common to all these thoughts
and often what what I found is when I when I’m in that spaces I’ll go ah I
feel ashamed or I feel desire or I feel seduced or I feel angry or something
like that and then by simply going I feel
ashamed yes it’s true I feel ashamed or I feel angry yes it’s true I feel angry
or I feel hurt yes it’s true I feel hurt or sad whatever it is I feel joyful I
feel distracted whatever it is doesn’t matter and I feel confused or I feel I’m
failing like you’re talking about failing um
then just to allow that emotion to be
and then it’s and then that wild mind will actually slow down because what the
wild mind is doing it’s like a um a child having a temper tantrum it
has a temper tantrum because it’s seeking to have its need met it’s telling you something really important
that it needs but it doesn’t have the vocabulary and the capacity to
articulate that well so the ego has no emotion all it has is an image and a
concept and a story so by simply allowing the emotion that is kind of the
fuel for that it’s going I want you to feel this emotion and if you get caught
in the storyline which is not a problem but instead to focus on the emotion
that’s driving that that will allow it’s like that then you kind of can feel a
body drop and it opens out the space and then what
happens over time is the emotional hijacking in the distractions become less intense and less pushed and pulled
and they allow they just it means you start to get a bit more space with that
so tea lady Nat what do you say is please give me some feedback about whether that’s helpful
How long do you sit still
and then she also said about three minutes ago how long how long that I am doing it as in being still the other
thoughts that I can’t seem to get out of my head and so this is uh the the emotion thing is and I’m not really sure
I understand this exactly how long that I’m doing it as in being still I guess
um she’s asking is is that is she asking you know do I need to have a still mind
and and then I want to ask him do you think that’s what that means I think maybe or how long can if she’s judging
How long can you sit still
it by how long she can sit still because she did join me in a live set and you know since I’m a seasoned meditator and
I can sit 45 minutes no problem really without moving then of course it’s natural sometimes for us to compare and
judge like oh if I’m not sitting still for 45 minutes informal and I’m doing it wrong and that’s not the case obviously
right so um you go you go can I just speak to that
can I just speak to that so when I start so I want to tell you about uh venerable Robina courten who’s very very ex she’s
a tough cookie let me tell you she started because she just hated everybody and she ran out of people to be angry
with and so she just went oh well I gotta do something about this I’ve run out of people to be angry and I’m still
angry so I couldn’t do something took her seven years to get the Baja bum on
the cushion she was a she was a nun for seven years before she could get by my
cushioned so it’s totally not a problem to be able to to not sit for a long time
really I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately and how difficult it is so I
I learned sitting in a center and I don’t know about you Josh presumably you started sitting in a center so no no all
by myself actually yeah okay I’m a rare case yeah okay most people start in a
center and it’s much easier because there’s something about the group that holds you I would definitely say get an
app is another thing to do yes um that totally helps uh because that
will help you that’s kind of like having other people around you and when I started gosh I started and I was in a in
a class in a group and my body just wanted to explode and I
just I had to leave this set in the room before everybody it was like 10 minutes before the end and I was like 15 minutes
before the end I’d already been sitting for half an hour and my buddy was about to blow up and my mother was about to
blow up I I left and then somebody came back and said you can do another 10 minutes and I you know like I I had a
lot of support is all I want to say in that but it is difficult like run around
like a mad chicken like for 30 40 years whatever and now sit still and be you
know have a calm mind for 20 minutes like it’s nuts you can’t do it just start small start if you all you can do
is five minutes if all you can do is one minute start there like just bum on
cushion for one minute 60 seconds turn the phone on to airplane mode just try there and and do that for a week and
then expand to two minutes and then I’ve got one client for four for for four or five months she’s been at
four minutes she’s like I cannot get beyond that so it’s a process for sure and this is the
Restlessness
this is restlessness you’re talking about right you’re not talking about you’re in pain or anything it was just sitting just that momentum stopping that
train right and then because it’s been going and going and going so like people have to have constant stimulation right
and it’s not like the judge it’s just how we’ve been conditioned right and so when we take that away it’s just like
freaking out not knowing what to do right and not knowing how to sit still or or do anything because there’s no
there’s no reference point or no training it’s just you have to do it you have to just jump in the deep end but
it’s not really the deep end because you can leave whenever you know it’s not like you’re taking a heavy psychedelic or you’re being locked up or something
right you know if it gets too intense you just get up yeah just like Wendy was saying so it is a training and what I
tell people a lot of times uh with this hindrance of um uh restlessness is go
and exercise it’s like this a lot of this energy and walking meditation I can
find helps too or just regular walking because if there’s too much energy walking balances the energy system and
slows us down if there’s not enough energy well then walking will get uh you
know summons energy and give energy to and it’s a it’s a nice balancer um and
and I also want to go back I’m sure you have uh some or maybe you have some things to say about this too then I’m
going to go back to this emotion thing I found that really helpful about uh just
really identifying the emotion and feeling it and acknowledging it and
saying yes it’s true this is present and how important that is for people like me that are more cerebral how a lot of
times I don’t see the emotion I have to actually kind of bring that to mind to identify it and then they they feel each
other so the emotion can fuel the thoughts and the thoughts can fuel the emotion until they’re kind of seen
acknowledged and felt in fact developed by okay so that whatever we name is an
emotion where can we actually feel that in the body right so if it’s anger maybe
my head is a little hot or maybe there’s a there’s a tightness in my stomach if
if it’s sadness maybe I feel droopiness around my eyes or I feel sleepy you know
and sometimes sleepiness can feel like actually kind of pleasant and just kind of wanting to check out right but
um yes so this is this is a common these are common things but that the emotion thing I find is really helpful
especially for those oriented more around motions and thoughts too you know I I have a very intellectual
bench so I I’m quite conceptual and oh yeah yeah and by the way for anybody
Wendys background
that wants an introduction for Wendy because we just jumped in here at times please see our previous show uh that
we’ve done uh for Wendy’s background and uh to get a better idea who Winnie is
and what she does so I’ll just I will just say something um so just to give people a bit of a
heads up about who is this nutcase at the other room yeah including me though too
so I just I just want to say I’ve got about 20 years of practice in a couple of different Traditions all in the
Buddhist stuff that and I started because I was basically so wound up like a clerk of my psychotherapist said you
need to chill so that was my starting point I had heaps of trauma and meditation is not the cure for
everything I’m definitely not a believer in that it’s just one part of the puzzle
um and I did a psychology degree four years I did my honest thesis on loving
kindness meditation because I found that because I had so much anger it was really really angry and I found love the
loving kindness meditations to be the most beneficial and
um and I also have a Psychotherapy training a somatic Psychotherapy training so and I’ve been meditating for 20 years so just to give people a bit of
a heads up and I also have just and I’ve also just
been I’ve got a diploma in meditation teacher training which I’ve just finished and I’ve got the next one
starting which is um with Tara Bracken Jack cornfield meditation mindfulness uh
teacher certification program so that starts next year two years so that’s cool yeah so we remember us talking
Thoughts in meditation
about this previously so yes Willy has some cred to say the least here so yeah uh so let’s see and then I I want to
finish up T lady Nats here’s comment and then I also sense that you’ve had experience with uh trauma I want to uh
get into how um we ought to approach those with
trauma in meditation versus kind of you know I not I guess maybe to draw a
distinction here but I think it maybe might be an important distinction to to to delineate here of those with
really severe trauma and how they might approach meditation differently in how you coach them but before we do that the
other thought um tea lady Nat says here the other thoughts that I can’t seem to get out of my head so now this is a
classic meditation question right if um basically saying thoughts are the enemy
is what it kind of comes down to right and which is not the case at all thoughts aren’t the enemy um and it even
goes so subtle a lot of teachers that I hear that they’re like they say the same thing and then they proceed to go on and
on and on about how um to kind of do substance
subterfuge why can’t I pronounce this word now it’s up to fuse yes with
thoughts or just kind of like underhandingly saying that um oh they’re
not a problem but yes they are and here’s how you deal with it without really really saying there so it’s like
this double-edged sword right it’s like this almost hypocrisy in a way maybe but it’s a really tricky
thing I’ll just put it that way it’s uh it’s a tricky sticky situation and I see
so many different techniques and so many ways to approach this but I want to hear Wendy Nash’s uh approach on thoughts in
meditation oh well I think they’re probably a bit like breathing if I didn’t breathe I
wouldn’t be me and if I didn’t think I wouldn’t be me and if I wouldn’t exist so I think that it you know we can have
I think some I think you know I I think what tea lady net and I like her name
tea lady I’m just so because I have a I’m so partial to cup of tea
um in fact I have two t-pains out the back so um I’ve got a cup on my table by the way
so so I think is the issue that a thought
arises or is it that it hijacks I think it’s more there because actually if you
when you meditate I want I want tea lady net to try this next time you meditate I
want you to get to the end of the meditation and try and remember all the
thoughts you had so get you’re not allowed to use pen and paper so just at the end of that
maybe five ten minutes just sit down even for five minutes after this show and just go I’m gonna meditate and then
try and remember every single thought everyone of those thoughts within five
minutes or 10 minutes or one minute and you’ll see they just go and they just they dance they’re like
fish in a tank you know or like the butcher birds at the back which Sweep with the back and try and
clip my hair it’s breeding season here yeah it’s scary so and and actually
that’s not not a bad analogy because the wood you know we do get scared by the thoughts so it’s more that they are
unsettling and at that point I want to just say like imagine that any images that you
have or any experiences or emotions they’re like a little baby imagine you have a little puppy in your arms that’s
a little bit wild and ratty and you’ve got this little puppy and it’s trying to Squam and it’s trying to bite you and
everything you know you want to handle it really gently you don’t want to whack it over the head nor do you want to step
on it nor do you want to kind of ignore it you know it’s a little puppy that’s a kind of wild and isn’t used to human
handling so you want to be super tender and notice that it’s that it’s there and
just um sort of look and observe what does it really want actually this little puppy
dog what is it hungry is it cold is it tired so go from that perspective what
do you think Josh and what does tea lady Nat think yes tea lady not please chime in with uh your thoughts our response to
Meditation as an intellectual exercise
to these things and I think that’s wonderful advice you know um and it’s it’s interesting for me
because sometimes I have kind of the opposite Dynamic where I kind of derive
self-worth and respect and honor from actually amping up some of the thoughts
uh you know and so I know it’s it’s constantly reminding myself that you
know this is not an intellectual exercise this is meditation okay so a lot of times I will start with this fat
the underlying emotional at times this fascination with just phenomena and what’s happening in meditation and
that’s actually can be a very good thing however it can also spin off in to things that have you know I could be you
know who knows what the mind can be doing and then I will just have no idea that I’m actually sitting there
breathing and I’m just off in this kind of like virtual reality uh planning and brainstorming and you know just oh my
God this is so fascinating this genius machine of the mind and it’s just like I’m starting to worship this thing and
it’s just like okay what the hell is going on here um wait a second um seduction you know seduction causing
many forms and I you know there’s a whole thing about uh you know well when
I get really so in Australia we say some really up yourself you know like full of yourself conviction or something you
know you’re like wow I’m really the best okay
yeah so yeah really up yourself you know it
is to kind of like cut yourself down but I actually think it’s better to go wow look at the seduction and this is what
the trend chance that we’re in and and really really sort of see the trance for
what it is I really I think that is a very nice thing because then it stops being the enemy and it just is you know
like my you know my foot is itchy or something it’s just the mind is doing
its thing it’s just a matter of um allowing it to be but not getting
really uh hijacked I I one of my teachers he says you know when he’s
doing the planning thing or whatever he says is this useful right now because
sometimes it’s really useful to Think Through you’ve got something on your mind you know I was at Uni and I was
um university college and I was writing essays and so I would write essays in my mind and my partner he writes policy
documents so he’s often thinking about policy and how these texts and all that are coming together and sometimes
there’s really useful parts to that you know because he goes I know what I’m going to say in that actually
and and that’s fine sometimes that’s
actually the best thing so it’s a good question to go is this the best use of my time right now I find that’s a really
helpful question it is and this even boils down more to priorities like okay what’s important right now okay am I and
and then also to um to give myself a lot myself other times of the day to give myself to
whatever seems so pressing you know I’m saying so if something really comes up that needs addressing then I can if it’s
possible to set aside other part of the day to address that and then say okay well this is actually meditation time
now and then look at the kind of what we’re prioritizing in meditation or art is our if we’re doing an object are we
prioritizing that that object what you know what else is coming up and yes a
lot of important things do come up that do need attention and then how do we kind of manage when we should give those
attention and when we should not yep and and actually I realized I didn’t
answer the question about um trauma yeah so what meditation is not
a cure for trauma and ruminate like it took me a long time to realize that I
was ruminating out of trauma because I thought if I just did more loving kindness for one particular person I
just did more loving kindness more loving kindness eventually it would shift a dynamic in the relationship but
actually all it did was keep me traumatized and in a really bad space so
that I it took me a long time to realize that these kind of really intense thoughts actually was
trauma and it was rumination and that was so I’ve been meditating for 20 years and I’ve done all this training and it
was last year that I went oh my goodness that’s rumination that’s how long it took me to
realize so because I just kept and I still you know I still have these thoughts that arise
and and it’s like it’s there’s something about the locked nature of it that becomes
problematic so when it feels like you’re just saying exactly the same thing over and over and over and over and over and
over in and it’s quite violent in the mind I want to say and it’s evoking
shame and humiliation and guilt um then it’s it’s worth going to a
psychologist or a psychotherapist to work with that and the best trauma treatment that I personally have found
is EMDR that’s the one and you can look up EMDR on the web on the website and
then find a practitioner local to you that’s definitely that very cool and so that’s that’s a a
Exposure therapy
wonderful Insight great Insight um now I’ve heard things like um sometimes when
uh the trauma gets kind of brought up again it can actually trigger the same kind of chemical response in the body so
like reliving it like this huge flood of internal chemicals coming and so
um I guess maybe the equivalent might be to um someone who’s never experienced this
is like it’s like taking a really strong heavy drug uh potentially I mean
um so I don’t know where I’m getting with this is that um
so so some people talk about exposure therapy so can’t sometimes when some of these
memories come up and get triggered can that it I guess what is helpful around that and
what’s not I mean do because usually in regular uh meditation kind of at least I
know in my experience let’s just talk about my experience I had I just heard this psychological term called splitting
and it it uh it it puts everything to a t so when I face a situation in life
that I’m not really able to handle or I don’t want to then that splits off and it kind of goes into the unconscious or
whatever and then I just keep going about my way and so when I was finally set down to have all this stuff catch up
then this stuff started surfacing these memories that I totally had you know
didn’t didn’t even realize were kind of below the surface coming up and so I you
know I tell people this in meditation context um every once in a while but you know I wept a lot for the first I was able to
do that because I was by myself you know so it was it was socially appropriate but it was it was really it was um
it wasn’t necessarily re-traumatizing for me and maybe in a way it was but it was kind of like a release a healing now
I can I can definitely understand though that if some of these traumatic memories get triggered in certain uh situations
that they’re so intense that they could possibly um not be appropriate right so I I guess
I don’t know um like you’re like you’re saying like a lot of it can’t be um done in meditation right so
um so I guess like if maybe the question here is what happens if something does
get re-triggered that’s not ready to to handle with um how can it be addressed then or I
don’t know help me out here Wendy what uh what what can else can be said about this
um so so I think uh I would say Seek some kind of trauma therapy of some kind
meditation is not the fantasy you know there’s a whole thing about it’ll cure cancer in the morning and heart disease
in the afternoon you know so it’s supposed to cure everything and it just it’s it’s just not it’s not good to do
that you can break the mind I I was on Retreat very early on and with for a month and and a woman had a psychotic
she had had some psychotic episodes and stuff and she went on a month-long Insight Retreat High concentration and
she flipped and she had to go into her sister had to come and collected from and put her in the psych ward you know
she she was in a full psychotic episode so really trust your your kind of wisdom
your inner knowledge that you are at an edge that is your
mind is saying this is something you need to look at and meditation is maybe not like really listen to your inner
voice um I would also one of those things that I find really I have found really
helpful is um when I’m in that space what am I not seeing about this
um and that that’s a question often when I’ve got a big problem what am I not seeing about this that really helps me
because something will emerge because it’s like there’s two parts of the mind there’s the ego mind which is that very
conversational one which is just going and then there’s this other one which is
like more wise and Discerning and and clear but you need to in when your mind
is kind of when the conversational mind is like going on steroids then you need
to have you need to invoke it because it’s a softer quieter sort of more
patient one we’re at one minute left I know this is so great because we need
wisdom and to to meditate to even begin with and then it cultivates wisdom too
the great thing too is you can just get up right you don’t have to like stick with it you can immediately come out of
it so thanks so much for everybody for joining never did hear uh t-lady now for that but I’m looking forward to our next
one I think it’s uh November 5th no third is it sick oh I have this written
down it’s it’s the November 2nd I think it’s uh two um 7 P.M Central yeah this week we moved
it we moved it yeah we originally planned to do the end of the month and well thanks everybody so much for
joining looking forward to doing uh several more if not many more of these all right it’s so great Josh let’s jump
back on after the time has stopped sure okay all right thanks everyone thank you
all right bye
Integrating Presence 
65 thoughts on “Thoughts, Emotions & Trauma | 9/29/2022 “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #01”