This episode shares a guided meditation I created for the Resting in Restlessness course. 

The guidance will help you feel into sensations and sound. I recommend using this guidance as a starting off point, then exploring silently on your own.

The post EP354: Guided Meditation: Feeling What Is appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

Marie experiences extreme reactions to certain noises, sometimes referred to as misofonia.

This makes life very hard in many ways, especially at work and in close relationships. 

If this is neurologically-based sensitivity, can Marie’s experience of it change? 

Absolutely. Everything is made worse by our resistance and suppression. I’ll share how Marie can be in these experiences in “slow motion” as they arise. 

***

If: 

• You feel addicted to your phone
• You find yourself wanting background noise because silence is uncomfortable 
• You experience anxiety  or compulsive behaviors such as excessive snacking, picking, drinking, shopping, scrolling
• You rarely feel present. You’re often seeking – looking ahead, dreaming about or waiting for something other than what is, spiritual seeking, planning…

My newest 6-week course, Resting in Restlessness, is perfect for you.

Through a combination of teachings, experiments that we’ll do together and between classes, and group calls, you’ll be supported as you lean into this feeling we call restlessness. 

What if, in exploring the thoughts and sensations that make up restlessness, you find that you can actually rest in these feelings rather than compulsively distract from them? 

I am so excited to support you as we watch our comfort with What Is grow. Go to dramyjohnson.com/restlessness to see the full details. 

The post EP353: I experience extreme reactions to certain noises (misofonia). Is there anything I can do about this? Responding to listener’s question.  appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In this conversation with Piers Thurston, Piers shares how everything is a mirror. 

As he explains, this is particularly seen in other people and in our wants and desires. What we see as others is an opportunity to look at how the idea of me is showing up. Same with what we want – looking more closely at the “cleanness” of those wants reveals so much.

We also talk a lot in this conversation about feeling, as that looks to me to be the primary “way” we dip into the beneath-abstraction, subtle essence of life where these patterns can be revealed. Piers shares his views on this which are so helpful to hear. 

You can see more about Piers and find his podcast, Quality of Mind, at https://piersthurston.com/

***

If: 

• You feel addicted to your phone
• You find yourself wanting background noise because silence is uncomfortable 
• You experience anxiety  or compulsive behaviors such as excessive snacking, picking, drinking, shopping, scrolling
• You rarely feel present. You’re often seeking – looking ahead, dreaming about or waiting for something other than what is, spiritual seeking, planning…

My newest 6-week course, Resting in Restlessness, is perfect for you.

Through a combination of teachings, experiments that we’ll do together and between classes, and group calls, you’ll be supported as you lean into this feeling we call restlessness. 

What if, in exploring the thoughts and sensations that make up restlessness, you find that you can actually rest in these feelings rather than compulsively distract from them? 

I am so excited to support you as we watch our comfort with What Is grow. Go to dramyjohnson.com/restlessness to see the full details. 

The post EP352: All of life is a mirror with Piers Thurston appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

What is this feeling we call restlessness? 

It feels like something is off. There’s an agitation or irritation interpreted as something that can’t be felt; something needs to be different. . 

That’s part of it, and most of us live with that feeling much of the time. But then there is the movement away from that feeling. Jumping up to be productive, eating, buying, scrolling, researching, fixing…

The initial feeling + the resistance of it – seen in the attempts to solve it or distract from it– are indistinguishable. Before long, we simply see ourselves running. Running from what? We can’t remember. 

Restlessness is behind so much suffering. In this episode we’ll look at what it really is, I’ll share my experience with it over many years, and you’ll see how how feeling the raw sensations of it is all there is to do. 

If you’d like to explore restlessness in a very deep and supported way, please check out the upcoming course Resting in Restlessness: The solution to end compulsive scrolling, eating, buying, anxiety and constant seeking: https://dramyjohnson.com/restlessness/

***

If: 

• You feel addicted to your phone
• You find yourself wanting background noise because silence is uncomfortable 
• You experience anxiety  or compulsive behaviors such as excessive snacking, picking, drinking, shopping, scrolling
• You rarely feel present. You’re often seeking – looking ahead, dreaming about or waiting for something other than what is, spiritual seeking, planning…

My newest 6-week course, Resting in Restlessness, is perfect for you.

Through a combination of teachings, experiments that we’ll do together and between classes, and group calls, you’ll be supported as you lean into this feeling we call restlessness. 

What if, in exploring the thoughts and sensations that make up restlessness, you find that you can actually rest in these feelings rather than compulsively distract from them? 

I am so excited to support you as we watch our comfort with What Is grow. Go to dramyjohnson.com/restlessness to see the full details. 

The post EP351: Resting in Restlessness appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

I’d been wanting to create an episode that I was tentatively calling “They aren’t your thoughts – Revisited”. 

Then, a series of questions along the lines of “How do I stop thinking about this?” started popping up, which led me to write something about that, which led to this episode. 

They aren’t your thoughts. You aren’t thinking them. So, the answer to “How do I stop thinking them” is that you don’t. You can’t. You aren’t thinking them or choosing them or influencing to begin with, so you can’t stop thinking or choosing them now. You have no influence. 

This is freedom. Or a huge step toward it, anyway. 

What’s left when it’s seen that there is absolutely no say in how thought arises? Everything is left. Life, aliveness, the senses. All of this is left. 

Everything but problems and suffering.

***

If: 

• You feel addicted to your phone
• You find yourself wanting background noise because silence is uncomfortable 
• You experience anxiety  or compulsive behaviors such as excessive snacking, picking, drinking, shopping, scrolling
• You rarely feel present. You’re often seeking – looking ahead, dreaming about or waiting for something other than what is, spiritual seeking, planning…

My newest 6-week course, Resting in Restlessness, is perfect for you.

Through a combination of teachings, experiments that we’ll do together and between classes, and group calls, you’ll be supported as you lean into this feeling we call restlessness. 

What if, in exploring the thoughts and sensations that make up restlessness, you find that you can actually rest in these feelings rather than compulsively distract from them? 

I am so excited to support you as we watch our comfort with What Is grow. Go to dramyjohnson.com/restlessness to see the full details. 

The post EP350: How do I stop thinking about this? appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

We can all tell our story and it can feel helpful to do so at times. We feel seen and heard, our experience recognized by another person as valid and real-to-us. 

But what seems even more helpful is sharing what’s beneath the story. Going to the simplest, most immediate thing. Something more like how it feels to be us or what’s here right now. 

This week’s episode uses the metaphor of a patient lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines that start sounding off alarms. The medical team rushes in the room and does what?

Do they go directly to the machines and start pressing buttons, trying to interpret what the alarms mean? Do they discuss those interpretations with each other? 

Or do they go directly to the human in the bed and ask them where it hurts? Do they go to the abstract interpretations or straight to the source? Where do you go? 

***

I’m excited to tell you about a new 6-week course coming in May called Resting in Restlessness: The solution to compulsive scrolling, eating, buying, anxiety, and constant seeking.

In this course, we’ll look at that ill-defined, somewhat subtle experience of agitation that keeps us doing and seeking. 

This feeling of restlessness is behind all compulsive behaviors, anxiety, and ability to simply BE without distraction. We’ll explore what it actually is we’re running from and in moving closer to it, see if we really need to keep running. 

Listen to next week’s episode for more details on this course.

The post EP349: Where does it hurt? Asking the simplest, most direct question appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

This week’s episode speaks to a listener’s questions about self-compassion and surrender.

Jay says they have a block to self-compassion. They want to know how one can access this self-love without talking yourself into it. 

There are so many threads in this question that lead to an exploration of feeling, expectations, blocks, what surrender is, the role of thought in all of this, and more. I know you’ll hear a lot in Jay’s excellent questions! 

The post EP348: I can’t surrender or feel self-compassion. Responding to a listener’s questions. appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

There’s a progression that seems to happen.You might say it’s from gross to subtle. 

Where attention shifts from being absorbed in abstractions, thoughts, representations, and relationships…to attention moving to much more subtle energies like sensations, sensory input, and maybe something like intuition or perception.

Identity is viewed in these different ways. From gross thought and beliefs being questioned, to more subtle physical and emotional reactions felt. 

As we sense at this more subtle level, the unraveling process seems to pick up some steam. Identity is seen through rapidly. Thoughts barely arise before they dissolve or fall away. 

Something like this is how the fabric of thought-based reality comes apart in the best possible way. 

The post EP347: Unraveling ego at the feeling level appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

This week’s episode is a portion of a Community call with guest speaker Shenan Charania.

This was one of my all-time favorite guest speaker calls and several in our community said the same.

Shenan and I talk about silence, presence, regret, thought, and much more. Shenan shares his past as a gang member and his experiences in “extreme presence”, or what I often talk about as feeling your way through life.

You will feel this conversation as you listen. Enjoy!

The post EP346: Extremely This with Shenan Charania appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.

In my recent silent retreat we explored the fact that nothing was happening. 

All retreatants had to do was show up when the gong chimed and be quiet. Literally nothing else. Their entire day from 10am to 10pm was scheduled for them. Meals were prepared and served. Life for 6 days was unbelievably simple. 

And so when it didn’t feel simple – and it didn’t, always – we knew there was one thing going on: imagination. The movement of consciousness we call thought, creating realities that weren’t in the room with us. 

All of life is this way. This isn’t only true on silent retreat. All of life is unthinkably simple, yet made dramatic and personal through willfulness and positionality. 

The post EP345: Willfulness and positionality dissolve into silence appeared first on Dr. Amy Johnson.