Ep. 61: Vinny Ferraro - Is Your Nervous System Hijacking your Life? - Mindfulness & Self Compassion Expert
Vinny Ferraro has been a practitioner of insight meditation (vipassanā) since the mid 90’s and he is the co-founder of the Dharma Punxs. He's been the guiding teacher of Sangha in San Francisco for 15 years. He is also a nationally recognized leader in designing and implementing interventions for at-risk adolescents and is a senior trainer for Mindful Schools.
Ferraro explains that our nervous system is trying to protect us from danger and it often becomes hyper vigilant. This can make us very uncomfortable in our experience. It can also cause us to check out - run through addiction, relationships, food and a thousand other things. Your mind can literally highjack your life.
Ferraro explains that mindfulness is almost a silver bullet because for most all people it can put us back in relationship with ourselves and our bodies and direct our attention to a different dimension of our experience. Then we are freed up to place our attention on things we feel are worthy. Our awareness becomes almost a super power.
In this podcast, he also explains that self-compassion and letting go of the tyranny of perfection is critical. Life is not something you can do wrong. Once we're able to see obstacles as doorways, then we see that whatever we think was IN the way IS the way. We can literally turn curses into blessings using the alchemy of presence.
More From Vinny Ferraro
Official Website: https://vinnyferraro.org
Facebook @vinny.ferraro
Other Links
Websites: Mindful Schools, Mind Body Awareness Project
Twitter @Mindful_Schools
Facebook @mindbodyawarenessproject @mindfulschools @AgainstTheStreamMeditation
Instagram: @againstthestreammeditation @mindful_schools
YouTube: Against The Stream Meditation
Linkedin Mindful Schools
Podcast: Against the Stream
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Show Notes
[01:01] What to Remember When Waking Like David White. You are not a troubled guest on this earth. You are not an accident amidst other accidents. You were invited from another and greater night and the one from which you have just emerged. Now, looking through this slanting light of the morning window toward the mountain presence of everything that can be what urgency calls you to your one love, what shape waits in the seat of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky.
[02:25] I grew up like everyone with my own difficulties. And mine might be more dramatic than some people's less dramatic than others. My father did a lot of time incarcerated and addiction was a big part of my world growing up, seeing family members addicted. I guess my greatest hope was that I always grow up and go to prison so I could be with the other men in my family.
[03:09] But at time I was 20 years old. Things had shifted and I started seeing different possibilities and that was life changing for me.
[03:22] How did you face your own pain and how do you teach and encourage others to face their own pain?
[03:29] Mindfulness is the best answer. It's not a silver bullet, but I have found that it helps most of us. A really high percentage of us come back into relationship with our selves, with our bodies when the mind is not offering up anything helpful. We have to direct our attention to a different dimension of our experience.
[04:15] Our nervous systems are hyper vigilant, always tracking for danger, always trying to protect us in some way. What happens is we end up cutting off from life because we're so enamored and inundated with the thinking mind. A lot of what mindfulness taught me how to do was to let those things come and go and not take them too personally and rest in a dimension that was deeper than thought
[05:14] So first it was a choice mindfulness gave me. Do I have to be hijacked? Second, it was another choice. Where am I putting my attention? Is this a worthy place for my attention? And then we get into what are we can do with this huge awareness that we have this great. It's almost like a superpower.
[06:29] I believe in the alchemy of presence.
[07:13] Because I was able to not take my experience personally, know not judge myself for having it, and to say no to what is this feeling in my chest is fluttering that what are the constellation of sensations and feelings that are happening that are leading me to this label called anxiety. Once we're able to see things as a doorway instead of an obstacle, then we see that whatever we think was IN the way IS the way.
[08:05] Now my anxieties are my gratitude list so we can take things that we think are curses and turn them into blessings in a certain way through this alchemy of presence.
[08:34] I would say our awareness is so fragmented.
[09:07] So I feel like before I came to practice us going through the motions, skimming the buffet of my life, never quite as real as advertised, any of it. I think if everybody spent a little bit of time just connecting in with themselves, we would live in a different world. I believe that.
[10:06] To come into right relationship with what is.
[10:17] I knew would have felt like to be very uncomfortable in my experience. And so that set me running through addiction, through relationships, through any way I could run and even food. There's a thousand ways to check out.
[12:06] Home, I mean coming home to our experience, just as it is not when I get better, not when I lose this weight, not when I find a teacher or get the practice or, you know, there's so many ways we postpone arrival.
[12:25] I'm not willing to cheat on today because of my fear of tomorrow or my hope for tomorrow.
[13:16] All paths have the same aim, and that is to save us from the calamity of a separate existence.
[16:01] It's not enough to just be compassionate to the world and leave ourselves out. So I feel like the self compassion piece, which is the hardest for many of us.
[16:18] It's because many of us have learned how to actually tend to pain. You know, it's counterintuitive to move toward what's painful. And that's what compassion asks us to do.
[17:50] Forgiveness is giving up the hope for a better past. Can we finally let go of wishing that hope was different? Really discerning between the actor and the action. You know, some actions are totally unforgivable. But the actors always forgivable.
[20:47] Where is my heart needed most?
[25:23] Get away from this tyranny of perfection that so many of us try to live in and actually give ourselves a pardon for not being perfect.
Thank you for joining us on HealthGig. We loved having you with us. We hope you'll tune in again next week. In the meantime, be sure to like and subscribe to this podcast, and follow us on healthgigpod.com.
“Mindfulness is the best answer. It's not a silver bullet, but I have found that it helps most of us. A really high percentage of us come back into relationship with our selves, with our bodies when the mind is not offering up anything helpful. We have to direct our attention to a different dimension of our experience.” - Vinny Ferraro
“Our nervous systems are hyper vigilant, always tracking for danger, always trying to protect us in some way. What happens is we end up cutting off from life because we're so enamored and inundated with the thinking mind. A lot of what mindfulness taught me how to do was to let those things come and go and not take them too personally and rest in a dimension that was deeper than thought.” - Vinny Ferraro
“I believe in the alchemy of presence.” - Vinny Ferraro
“Once we're able to see things as a doorway instead of an obstacle, then we see that whatever we think was IN the way IS the way.” - Vinny Ferraro
“Now my anxieties are my gratitude list so we can take things that we think are curses and turn them into blessings in a certain way through this alchemy of presence.” - Vinny Ferraro
“I'm not willing to cheat on today because of my fear of tomorrow or my hope for tomorrow.” - Vinny Ferraro
“All paths have the same aim, and that is to save us from the calamity of a separate existence.” - Vinny Ferraro
“It's not enough to just be compassionate to the world and leave ourselves out.” - Vinny Ferraro
“Forgiveness is giving up the hope for a better past.” - Vinny Ferraro
Keywords
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