Diego Perez

I started feeling a new ability to like slow down and not just immediately react.

And I went into meditating for my personal healing and my wife,

felt that same sort of like internal push to go meditate as well.

And what we didn't really expect was that it was going to have such a big impact on our relationship.

I went into it for healing, but I had so many positive externalities from it.

Not only creativity started coming up, but I started seeing, accepting that

My relationships were quite shallow, like my relationship with my parents, my relationship with my friends, with my wife.

They were very surface level, and that was because I was really disconnected from myself.

And once that connection started growing, the ability to listen to my partner more, the ability to really start owning the way I was reacting in my mind and realizing that it's not always her fault.

you know, and so many other sort of emotional, the emotional skill set started building.

And it really began with just being able to close my eyes and sit with myself.

I mean, absolutely.

I love that you brought it back to the Satipatthana.

That Pali line, Atapi Sampajano Satima is one that like, I'm always sort of leaning back on whenever, you know, when you're sitting there and you're meditating and

Whatever's coming up, it's like a line of clarity that can help you remember that, you know, you're coming back, back into the body, back into your awareness and trying to maintain that awareness as long as possible.

But what's really interesting is that you can develop these skills to become more aware of yourself.

but they're not just for you.

You can take them and you can easily transfer them to other aspects of your life.

And I think in the darkness of the meditation hall, sitting and meditating for hours, I started seeing that I was developing a new ability to just feel my own emotions, to be able to sit with

whatever turbulence or disharmony or whatever sadness or anxiety would come up.