UM

Feel Rest Talk

Okay, so, today, we're going to explore a new technique that we call Feel Rest. Up until now,
we've been exploring all three sense categories: See, Hear, and Feel. Today, we're going to
narrow our focus, both in terms of limiting it to one category, Feel, then also further, to the
restful aspect of experience, the restful side of experience.

Let's talk a little bit about what we mean by Rest so there's clarity here before we begin to
focus on it. So, most people, when they're drawn to meditate, they think about
experiencing more tranquility. That's a reward that most of us expect to get out of
meditating.

[The following is not in the audio. This is a suggested place to make it personal.]

Show of hands—who here got interested in meditation to experience more tranquility?

[Or, share an anecdote about how contacting tranquility has positively affected your life.]

In my own life, I’ve found that...

[Back to the audio]

By noticing restfulness in the body, you can develop a palate, develop a taste for
restfulness. You can notice it more frequently and more deeply. But, we can also think of
Rest more broadly.

We can think of Rest as the relative absence of sensory experience in any of the sense
categories: See, Hear, or Feel. Also, we can consider that a given sensory event could be
more active or more restful, and we'll get into what that means, active versus restful.

First is this idea that Rest is actually available in all categories. We tend to think of it as being
available in the body—relaxation—that's the obvious association we have with Rest. But,
your attention can be pulled into restful states in all of the three sense categories, which
you've already experienced by now. But, we're just going to reinforce the learning.

Here are some clear examples: It's noisy outside and you close the door and suddenly, you
hear the silent room. Well, in that case, noise is active and silence is an example of a restful
state. Your attention may be drawn to the mental screen, but you notice that there are no
images on the screen. So, if there were images, that would be considered an active state,
but if it's the blank screen, you can consider that a restful state. You may also notice that
the body is relaxed. When you are detecting pleasant or unpleasant sensations in the body,
you can consider that active. When you're noticing the quality of relaxation in the body, you
can consider that restful, physically restful.

© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC 1

 UM Feel Rest Talk

The distinguishing feature of restful states is that there's less activation, relatively speaking.
When you're focused on restful states, you're placing your attention where you notice less
sensory activation. Just as another example: When your eyes are open and we do this soft
gaze, your eyes aren't moving around as much. You're not taking in each object the way
you would when you're just normally looking around. In fact, you're intentionally looking
through the visual environment, rather than taking all the details in of the various objects.
So, that's a simplified experience. It's comparatively less active.

You can also think about Rest in terms of spatial location. You could say that your attention
is drawn to the space—the spatial location, where seeing or hearing or feeling
occurs—instead of being drawn to a particular sensory activity going on in that space. So,
your attention may be drawn to the space between the ears, where you hear mental talk.
But, at that moment, what you're noticing is the quiet mind.

Just to clarify, let's distinguish between Relative Rest versus Absolute Rest. Everything I've
just described refers to Relative Rest. But, you can make a distinction: There is Relative Rest
and then there's Absolute Rest. Relative Rest is described in terms of the three sense
categories; it involves finding or creating visual, auditory, and somatic rest. When you're
relaxing, for instance, you can intentionally create relaxation. That would be an example of
how you create a restful state. So, you could say that focusing on relative rest is the act of
turning toward specific restful states.

By way of contrast, Absolute Rest is ever-present. You can have momentary or sustained
contact with Absolute Rest, perceptually. You can experience Absolute Rest and get
completely absorbed and disappear into Absolute Rest. Through that, you can come to
know or contact Absolute Rest in any experience, including sensory activity. It is a peace
that transcends, it's a Rest that transcends. It isn't relative, it's ever-present. If this is
confusing, don't worry about it. It's just worth being aware of the distinction between these
two kinds of Rest, Relative and Absolute. At some point, it may be relevant to your
experience. You may discover how it is possible to notice a sensory activation, while also
being in contact with Absolute Rest. That may, at some point, make sense to you as an
experience.

Let's speak specifically now about the technique of Feel Rest. Feel Rest means that you are
appreciating the restful side of body experience. So, when it comes to relaxation, you can
find relaxation, you can create relaxation, and you can also detect neutral places where
you're just not noticing much activity. A good example might be the hands or the feet;
that's a common area you might detect neutrality in your physical experience.

The other side of Feel Rest is emotional peace. You're noticing that there is an absence of
emotional activity. This is quite a common thing for people to contact when they practice
meditation in general. It's often the case that your emotions go quiet, and you can detect
that as a restful state.

© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC 2

 UM Feel Rest Talk

The way Feel Rest fits into the broader set of Unified Mindfulness techniques is that it is part
of the Appreciate quadrant of the techniques. It is there in the same place as the See Hear
Feel technique. It's in that same quadrant. As the weeks go on, I'm going to introduce you to
the other techniques in other quadrants. (UM classifies contemplative practices and
organizes its standard technique options into four quadrants.)

The difference between See Hear Feel and Feel Rest is that in See Hear Feel you're focusing on
any experience in any of the three sense categories, and in Feel Rest, by contrast, you're
narrowing your focus range to just restful experience in your body.

What are the benefits? Well, as I mentioned earlier, many people are drawn to meditation
to experience more tranquility. Rest is a reward state, that's why we're drawn to it. By
focusing on body rest, you notice it more often. You get more fulfillment from the rest you
notice, because you're applying concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity to your
restful experience. You're really deepening and enriching your experience of it. You're
encouraging rest to grow. You're nurturing your relationship to Rest. Rest may also lead
you to contact other pleasant reward states, such as spaciousness. It's kind of a natural
leap. When you contact less activity in a sense category, you might notice a quality of
spaciousness. That can be very pleasant.

Rest can also create a positive feedback loop, because it's a reward state. So, the more you
concentrate on Rest, the better you feel, the more you want to concentrate. It encourages
your skill development. Of course, to that point, when you focus on Rest, you're going to
experience more fulfillment overall as a result of developing Concentration, Clarity, and
Equanimity, generally.

You're building your concentration by focusing just on Rest, you're narrowing your focus
just to Rest. By teasing out that quality of restfulness, you're strengthening sensory clarity,
distinguishing Rest from other qualities of experience. Contacting Rest can actually help
induce equanimity. For example, if you have a discomfort and you relax around that
discomfort, that can help you induce equanimity.

The flip side of that, and what to maybe watch out for, is that sometimes when you relax
around experience that is uncomfortable, it can spread. So, there's no resistance. You're
dropping the physical resistance of the tension around discomfort and no resistance
means that you're allowing discomfort to spread initially, so that it can dissipate.

It goes against the way we habitually relate to discomforts, but that habit has long-term
problems. Over time, that resistance impedes the flow of energy in the body. When you
relax and allow discomfort to spread, you are releasing it, you're helping it to release. So, if
you find that, by relaxing, discomfort spreads, just remember to recycle any reactions you
may have to that.

What I mean by that is, any reaction you have to the discomfort spreading is going to come
up as See, Hear, or Feel. It might be an emotional response such as fear, it could be a

© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC 3

 UM Feel Rest Talk

thought, like, "Oh, this feels even worse. Why am I focusing on relaxation when this feels
worse?" That's something you might say to yourself. Or you might have an image that
corresponds to the discomfort.

You can recycle those reactions by having background equanimity with them while you are
continuing to focus on restful states in the body. You are having equanimity with any
reactions that might come up. If discomfort is happening. If you need to because it gets so
uncomfortable that you're unable to concentrate on restfulness in the body, then you can
choose to switch techniques. Let go of the Feel Rest Technique and turn toward the See,
Hear, Feel reactions and work directly with them.

What are the practical applications of Feel Rest? Well, it's easy to use in daily life. You can
access it for a moment here or there. Rest in the body is always available, because you can
create it. You can relax your muscles, any time. So, it's a very easy thing to contact and you
can take care of yourself anytime, anywhere.

Many people use breath focus as a way to contact restfulness, but there are certain
situations where it's difficult to focus on your breath. But it isn't so difficult to just relax a
little bit and experience that, be aware of that. So, you can take care of yourself anytime,
anywhere. When your schedule's busy, you can get your self-care in and it can also help
prevent burnout, to encourage and nurture restfulness.

What's unique about the Unified Mindfulness approach to focusing on Rest in the body?
Well, focusing on the breath, as I mentioned, is a common rest technique. In Unified
Mindfulness, you can incorporate breath, or you could even specifically keep your attention
local on the breath, if you're finding it extremely pleasant. But, you're encouraged to work
broader, and there's a few good reasons for that.

A significant amount of people find focusing on the breath uncomfortable.

Make it personal: How many of you find focusing on the breath uncomfortable?

For those of you who don't find it uncomfortable, you can still focus on the breath, if you
choose. But, you don't have to; you have more options about how to work. As I mentioned
earlier—going about life activities, interacting with other people—it may be easier to
concentrate on relaxation than to focus on your breathing; as you're talking to someone,
just for instance. We also include these other physical experiences beyond
relaxation—emotional peace and neutral body experience.

So, how can Feel Rest help you experience the kind of happiness that's independent of
conditions? How can Feel Rest help you to know happiness that is there, regardless of
whether you experience tranquility or not? Well, by infusing Rest with Concentration,
Sensory Clarity, and Equanimity, you're increasing your overall baseline of the kind of
happiness that is independent of conditions.

© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC 4

 UM Feel Rest Talk

You're also relaxing around physical pain, which is one way to deepen the skill of
equanimity. And detecting Relative Rest might help you develop a palate for Absolute Rest.
It might help you really contact that complete peace, that complete rest.

So, how do we practice Feel Rest? Well, we find Rest in the body, and there are lots of ways
to do that. You can intentionally create it by relaxing your muscles. You can discover
relaxation anywhere in the body or across the whole body. You can notice that you're at
peace, emotionally. You can focus specifically on a local area, such as the exhale; that's a
really common one for people who enjoy focusing on the breath. On the exhale, you notice
muscles relaxing. That can be pleasant.

You can also notice areas of neutrality, like I mentioned before, such as maybe the hands
or feet. Then, you just apply Concentration, Clarity, and Equanimity to Feel Rest, wherever
you detect it. So, that may be across the whole body. It could be in one local area of the
body. Or, you could freely float between locations in the body. Any of these is fine. It's
whatever you're drawn to; whatever is going to maximize your appreciation and experience
of restfulness, at any given time.

Now, if discomfort is strong and Rest is subtle, do your best to focus on Rest. This
strengthens Concentration,Clarity, and Equanimity. Despite the loud calling of discomfort,
you're strengthening your skills by focusing on this subtle experience of Rest. But, if that
gets to be too much, feel free to switch to different techniques, such as back to the See
Hear Feel Technique, if you need to.

You can start to be the author of your experience and decide, at any given time, what is the
best approach for you. Just be careful not to channel surf. Don’t do too much hopping
around with your techniques. Try to stick with it, if you can. And if you absolutely can't, well,
then you make the decision to switch to a different technique that's more appropriate for
what you're experiencing.

So, any questions before the guided practice?

© 2022 Unified Mindfulness LLC 5