Tackling one of the best known contemplative clichés: being in the present moment and “inhabiting the now.”

Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD, teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers.He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy.  Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science.

In this episode we talk about:

• What being present actually means 
• What to do when Buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach
• What to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially a difficult one 
• The brain's, at times, exhausting, evolutionarily wired tendency toward constant prediction
• The benefits of going on meditation retreats
• Distinguishing between true alarms and false alarms

Related Episodes:

Why Self-Hatred Makes No Sense | Matthew Brensilver

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