How Acceptance Builds Safety and Deepens Your Mindfulness Practice

Former Buddhist monk and Mindfulness Exercises founder Sean Fargo explores what full acceptance really means in mindfulness and meditation—meeting fear, anxiety, judgment, and resistance with embodied awareness and self-compassion.

https://mindfulnessexercises.com/podcast/

Drawing on years of teaching across prisons, hospitals, classrooms, and companies, Sean translates Buddhist psychology, trauma-sensitive mindfulness, and practical nervous system regulation into simple moves you can use today—without turning practice into performance.

Expect a grounded look at acceptance vs. resignation, how to work inside your window of tolerance, and ways to steady attention with noting and breath awareness. You’ll hear how body-based mindfulness (skin, flesh, blood, air, bone) restores safety, how to soften striving and “fixing,” and how fierce compassion supports wise action. Ideal for mindfulness teachers, therapists, coaches, and dedicated practitioners who want real tools for emotional regulation, resilience, and teaching with integrity.

✨ In This Episode, You’ll Learn

• What “acceptance” means (and what it doesn’t) in mindfulness practice
• How acceptance creates space before reaction or change
• Why gentle awareness and fierce compassion go hand in hand
• A guided meditation on sensing the layers of the body — skin, flesh, blood, air, bone
• How to bring mindfulness to worry, fear, and feelings of unsafety
• Practical tools like noting practice and embodied grounding
• Insights from Sean’s live Q&A on anxiety, safety, and the breath
• How acceptance connects with teachings from Byron Katie and Nonviolent Communication

Chapters

00:00 – Opening reflections on the word “acceptance”

02:00 – Why we resist acceptance and what it really means

04:00 – The practice of full acceptance

07:00 – Guided Meditation about Acceptance

56:11 – Working with worry, fear, and uncertainty (Leslie’s question)

01:02:31 – Using noting and embodiment to balance thought-based worry

01:08:38 – Working with shortness of breath and striving (Jean’s question)

01:10:10 – Creative ways to conn

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Alright, welcome everyone. My name is John Fargo. I'd like to thank you for listening today. We're gonna be exploring a really rich topic that I think most of us could use a lot of help with these days, which is the topic of acceptance. Over the years, I've kind of quite away from using the word acceptance because I a lot of people got nervous around this word. Like, why are you asking me to like something that I'm trying to get rid of? Or why are you asking me to condone something that's not right? Or why are you asking me to want more of something I don't want? What's word of topics? What were we looking for in the context of mindfulness and working with? What's the what's out of here? The knowledge of the course, the knowledgeable article of the topic of the core of a lot of people. Um up or the quality of the colour. Regardless of what I want to happen, I'll have to call it. I can accept the for what it is. Um do anything right now. Can I just practice opening towards here? I don't have to do anything else right now. All I need to do is just accept this or whatever. Allow the situation to be careful. Oh the cloud. Okay. How can I do something about that? What is it that I want to add? Um, how do I uh process that uh content to accept after I've accepted the reality of it? Most of us I think are the uh ahead. Okay. I don't want to be with it. I can't accept it at the top of the point of and so in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about uh what acceptance is in the context, what it's not, how to practice about the meditation with it, opening more fully to the lawyer of our code, and we're also gonna be featuring a powerful conversation program. How does someone in our certification program? Someone who um was uh bringing this topic up, um, we're gonna be featuring that explorer and how it was helpful for them. So wherever you are right now, if you want to take a moment to get comfortable, we'll get our practice together and explore a really powerful practice of acceptance. One thing to go more appreciative of is when we do come to a full acceptance and allow ourselves to feel fully and to accept those feelings and to feel the acceptance, but we can also communicate the other or maybe we can communicate with other people communicate with ourselves if we can process the non-factor communication, uh, what's here, like in an objective way, like objectively, what is here, what are the what's going on objectively, like what's happenable, what's going on, what's going good, what's not going to, how am I feeling about it, in a nonviolent way, like there's different words that are skillful, certain feelings that we can say that are unskillful, that are actually quite violent, or we can use a non-violent community what's going on internally for us, or we can make requests ourselves or other the community going through the process can be very helpful as a next step after full acceptance because there might be a possibility that we haven't quite considered from our previous book of your or the question. So in our sort of kitchen program, we have the cover, which I have to recommend. If you have a box, maybe what you mean or the car. Let's take a few moments now to settle into our practice. I invite you to follow along as we explore this meditation on acceptance together. Acceptance of all of these energies and all of these layers of the body.

SPEAKER_02: 35:26

Breathing the whole body.

SPEAKER_01: 35:35

Breathing more deeply with bigger inhales and exhale. Thanking ourselves for accepting all of these sensations in all of these layers. Maybe wiggling your fingers or toe. Moving around a little orienting to the space around us. Sometimes we mistake gentleness with barely noticing or kind of sensing the superficial layer of experience. Anxiety grief trauma and or fear inside our body. Usually it's subconscious. Today I used a word that I don't normally use in a guided meditation.

SPEAKER_02: 48:41

Acceptance.

SPEAKER_01: 55:49

And now you'll hear an exchange from our live QA session in our certification program. Where we explore how acceptance shows up in our daily lives in our practice.

SPEAKER_04: 56:26

I have something. Okay, hi John. So this has to do so my main focus with this course now. Eventually maybe do the teaching, but I have a lot of self-healing to do. So I'm kind of keep taking a deep dive into meditation and mindfulness. And my main issue that keeps on recurring over my life. And now I'm 75, so I'm getting a little tired of it. Is a word problem that I have. So I always think about what might be happening or what she might be doing. And oftentimes after I'm meditating, I can sort of uncouple that sort of thing, you know, when you go down that rabbit hole, you think one thing and then another thing and then another thing, and then you sort of go into a panic. So I am, I'm just I'm curious about a couple things. Also, I've noticed that I'm starting and I'm a psychotherapist and I have had a lot of Jungian therapy myself. I've noticed that I'm also digging into Jungian thought because it seems to really comport really well with mindfulness meditation. A lot of the same sort of principles are applying. So I am just curious about your take on how meditation can help with the worry issue. And if you have any specific suggestions for how I can work on this more, it's like at the point of my life where I'm just tired of it. Most of the things that you think, 95% of them don't happen, but it doesn't that that logic that logic does not seem to penetrate when a new one comes up. Like you know, I'll tell myself things. I don't believe your thoughts. They're just thoughts, they're just a witness for your thoughts. But then I convince myself again, but this one could really be true. So it's there, I don't know if it's the ego kind of getting in there and like, don't tell us. We want to we want to be able to predict things. So that's probably the issue of being in the now. You can't you can't really know what's gonna happen in the future, but you want to know, you want to control it. So I'm just curious about your thoughts.

SPEAKER_01: 58:52

Um thank you for sharing that. That takes a lot of you know, honestly. Um Feeling unsafe.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:01

Consciously, like in the meditation, consciously brought that, or you are you saying, does it kind of float up? Does it, is it a thought that I have? How would I consciously bring it?

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:12

So could be in a quote unquote meditation, but to really pause for you know a couple hours and settle the mind, sense into the layers of energy in the body, acknowledging I don't feel safe, accepting.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:32

Well, that's when it came up when you were talking about the layers. This is a hard one to accept, you know, like I should feel safe. What's wrong? Nothing's going on here, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:41

Well, I'm not talking about a felt like a cognitive.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:00:45

I mean, part of it is cognitive, but I'm not asking you to rationalize it or debunk it or understand it. Like my sense is that you may be trying to rationalize or understand, like in your human body, dropping the story of Leslie, dropping the story of your profession, dropping your age. Maybe there's a five-year-old Leslie or a 20-year-old Leslie or some Leslie that is terrified.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:14

No, that's absolutely true because that that fits into the Nungian stuff that I've been, the inner child stuff. I think that's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:22

And so, you know, there's all these techniques and modalities for talking to that self and comforting her, all of which are valid. But it it sounds like you're saying there's a barrier to accepting the the terror.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:39

There can be. It doesn't feel good.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:41

Oh, totally.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:42

It's like bringing in something that's that's why I say it sort of comes in these waves. And when if I'm allowing it, then I'm feeling it. And there is a part of me that just doesn't want to feel it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:53

Well, that's that's the crux.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:55

I don't want to feel it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:56

Totally.

SPEAKER_04: 1:01:57

And I and I know, I know I I can remember so well when I first started doing meditating and I was doing the John Cabot's in the body scan, and he's like, let me feel it. I remember him saying that. And I'm like, no, I don't want to. No, I don't want to feel it. Totally. It's not it's not fun.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:13

No. So why why would we want to do something that feels horrible? Or I'm saying horrible in quotes, because a horrible implies a judgment.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:25

Uncomfortable, uncomfortable, let's say.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:28

Exactly. And that kind of so I want to bookmark that because that's my next suggestion is noting practice. But but I do want to stay with this for a second, which is these layers of accepting. And like some of us, myself included, get caught sometimes in the cognitive accepting, like a head-based accepting. It's like, okay, I understand. But what I'm what I'm inviting is a few layers down. It's almost like in the soul, like in the core.

SPEAKER_04: 1:02:59

Feels deep, feels very deep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:02

And so kind of kind of going for it, kind of like trying to touch on like this gentle awareness. Okay, I get it, I understand it. It makes sense. This is here, now what? But like accepting, dropping all of this, like really just accepting this and allowing yourself to kind of just break open, break down. Like I am I'm scared, I am terrified. Like I am terrified, and it doesn't have to make sense, and there doesn't have to be anything that you're actually like afraid of like now, and it doesn't have to be 2025, just like like deep down, I don't feel safe. It's it's not clock time, like I don't feel safe, and this sucks. Like, there's this feeling that I'm not safe, and the acceptance part is like not judging it, not rationalizing it, not labeling it. It's just I accept that this is my experience now, and this is this is true. And I may not know what I'm gonna do in five seconds, but like in this moment, I accept this layer.

SPEAKER_04: 1:04:16

Do you think that would help to for dropping the stories?

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:19

I don't know. They'll be they'll be helpful for dropping the stories, but I think they'll be helpful for relating to them more lightly. That's one idea is like like really like exploring a full acceptance of not feeling safe. You could you could frame that in the negative, like I don't feel safe, or you could frame it like I do feel X, like terror, threat, violence, shame. You know, you can really explore what you do feel, and it may be surprising. And the fear and the terror may also be surprising in the sense that like I'm afraid of X, and and it may be death, unworthiness, being unlovable, not being good enough, not connecting with you know one or both of my parents or caregivers, you know, just humanity not meaning anything. Like it could be anything, but what's at the core? And can I work with accepting that day to day to day to day to day? Because this acceptance takes practice.

SPEAKER_04: 1:05:29

I feel like I'm in this process now and I can't I can't leave it. I have to continue with it, you know. It feels important.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:35

Absolutely. Another idea, you know, because a lot of what you're describing felt cognitive, getting to the noting practice of noting physical sensations. Okay, noting touch points of ankles on on the carpet, knees resting against the couch, like the touch points of where your body's touching something, okay, what your hands are touching, sensing the bones, like different bones, all bones, certain, you know, the bones and the layers of the bones, and the like the sensations of the skin and the weight of the body, the sensations of the skull, the space between the brain and the skull. Okay, like getting your hands in the soil, on the grass, on the stone, on the sidewalk, bare feet on the ground, touching, feeling, connecting with the soil, the grass, the trees, like really connecting with the earth, like physically bringing full awareness to the connection of your body on the earth. And and even sensing, this might sound wild, but sensing 10 feet below the topsoil, sensing into the undulations of the earth around you, and sensing like closing your eyes and sensing 10 feet below the ground, 20 feet below the ground, connecting with 20 feet below the ground. So getting into your body to find that balance when you're kind of lost in worry, and some of your worries are valid, and that's totally normal to have these fears. But I think what you're looking for is that balance. You know, I have concerns about my daughter too and the world, and but to remember to connect with the body to find that balance.

SPEAKER_04: 1:07:31

And the noting is part of the meditation too. It's like when something comes up, just noting it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:36

And sometimes like it can you can have structure with it, like every 10 seconds, I'll note something. And if I note the same thing every 10 seconds, that's fine. But is my awareness at different parts of the body? And every five or 10 seconds, can I just make a little quick note? And it can be a out loud verbal note or an internal quiet note, and you can note different parts, body, or connection. But that can be a nice structure to help find help you find balance with the thought-based worries. And if you had shared a different challenge, you know, maybe it's a different kind of noting practice. But just given what you shared, I think like a straight physical noting practice could be a good antidote.

SPEAKER_04: 1:08:21

Okay, no, that's good. And I also wanted to say that I've seen all these chats, I haven't looked at them yet, but it looks like maybe there's some good ideas in there too. I have I just haven't pulled them up yet. But look at them. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:31

Is it Gene?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:33

Yes. I do have a quick question for you though. Okay, like and it doesn't have to be practiced many years, but um, it's still I think very superficial. But when I try in the practicing attending, I try to focus on the breathing, the inflating and the deflating of the basic was there. Because I feel like I'm feeling very basic. I also have to force it, basically, just notice it's easy, just see the inflating flavor. I feel like to really make it to feel it because my breathing, I feel it's so short. I can truly follow from the eating to really notice it. Just notice it, gentle shortness. But still, I'm still trying to find a way to still find a way to really just notice as ease, even when the breathe is really short, really barely a second, a nanosecond. So I I also haven't looked at the book book on anything yet, so I will go through it. But if there's a chapter specific for that, if you can point to it, I will go straight in.

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:58

Thank you, Gene. It doesn't mean it will always be like that, but you know, today it is the way it however it is. Gene, just to kind of like answer your question, that's really common when we're practicing like mindfulness of breathing or anapanasati to struggle with staying relaxed and noticing the breath, the experience of breathing. It's really common. I think someone posted something about that in our connect community last week too, and I haven't had a chance to respond, but this comes up quite a bit. So there's a few things you can try. One is kind of connected to Leslie, which is like, do I feel safe just simply breathing? Sometimes there's a fear which kind of disconnects us from our breathing, or we feel like we need to breathe deeper. Doing a quick practice before mindfulness of breathing can be helpful of gladdening the mind and sensing into what we're grateful for, what's what brings us joy, maybe a smile of a loved one, something that something funny that happened yesterday, you know, maybe a you know having our pet nearby helps us gladden the mind, and we can kind of settle into noticing the breathing a little bit easier sometimes. One thing that works for me is kind of being creative in what I notice about the breath. So, for example, like usually when people can't connect with the experience of breathing, they're usually trying to relate to the breath in the belly or the chest or the nose. And if you're having difficulty connecting with breathing in one of those places, maybe trying a different place. So, like if we're trying to connect with the rise and fall of the belly like a balloon, let's maybe drop that and come to the sensations of air moving in and out of the nostrils and see if that changes things. If you're relating to it like a balloon, inflating and deflating, maybe change the color of the balloon. Or maybe the balloon is actually in the shape of a heart. Or kind of visualizing the balloon from different parts of the body, like from the back, from the front, from the side. Maybe putting something in the middle of the balloon, like a bubble that prevents the balloon from getting too small, being the balloon. There's different ways of being creative that some of these are not obviously classic mindfulness techniques. The Buddha never talked about these, but like just as a way to get comfortable with bringing awareness to breathing, and then dropping the technique and just feeling breathing. You could start by sensing the breath in the whole body and then narrowing your field of awareness to the belly or the nose, noticing if a lot of awareness is actually in the head, where let's say you're relating, you're trying to relate to the breath in the belly, but you're relating to it from the head. So a lot of us will kind of think that this is the center of our awareness, and that then we're bringing, we're kind of looking at the belly from the head, where a lot of the energy is here, and we're trying to relate to the belly from here, from the head. And so, like things that we can do to feel more fully embodied, where the awareness is throughout the whole body and not really just centered here. We can do stretching, yoga, push-ups, tai chi, qigong, fellden Christ, just bringing awareness with our eyes open or closed into the hands. Okay, awareness is here now. It's not here so much, but like it's more here. Feet, you know, hips, belly. Practice kind of bringing awareness to different parts of the body or the whole body where you're embodied fully. Because you know, mindfulness is not brainfulness, mindfulness is not headfulness. The mind encapsulates our whole sensory apparatus, our whole body, and then some. So being embodied. Because if we're here, it's easy to kind of like tighten around breathing, but if we're more balanced throughout the whole body, it's easier for us just to kind of like for our awareness to be in the belly, relating to the balloon or to the breath from the belly. And if we notice ourselves getting tight or trying to control the breath, and we're not able to breathe naturally, not judging ourselves to be good or bad or wrong. It's like, oh, okay, like difficulty. Oh, now I can maybe there's some frustration or striving or just noticing whatever's here, allowing ourselves to feel that emotion, whatever that emotion is, you know, with gentleness, breathing with that emotion, letting the emotion do whatever it wants to do, and eventually it'll pass. That's okay. Simply breathing, okay. You know, not really trying, but just like receiving the breath, um allowing the breath, like softening around the breath and just receiving it. Maybe there's a gentle smile that comes with the simplicity of this practice. You know, Tignot Han talks about this really eloquently, like a simple breath, savoring this breath. So those are a few just ideas.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:51

I just watched Byron Katie. Just watched her teacher, I don't know what you call it, like a guest speaker seminar. And you might really like to watch that. What you're describing in your process is very similar to some of the work that the work that Katie Byron Katie walks through. And she asks the question of who would I be without this thought? And Jean, oh, you've encouraged me. Thank you for sharing. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:22

Beautiful. Byron Katie is all about acceptance and loving what is. Love in what is exactly, exactly. Like to me, she models this fierce compassion. It's like filled with love, and she kind of cuts to the core pretty quickly. And it's like, you know, there are times for very gentle awareness, and there's times for fierce compassion. And again, they're not mutually exclusive, but they're they can be different approaches. I think a lot of people are really struggling now with resentment and resistance and blame and grief, and we don't want to face it. It's not easy, it's scary. And we do need this work of fierce compassion and loving what is and moving into these places that scare us and working with full acceptance, even though it's oftentimes the last thing we want to do, which is why most of us, you know, will watch way too much Netflix or drink too much wine or eat too much pizza or whatever it is, because we don't want to feel these feelings. So I just really grateful that we're able to have this conversation and kind of check in with ourselves, like, you know, what does this mean for me these days, or how can I help other people do this, or how can we explore this together? So powerful. Mindfulness is always a refuge because we can always come back to hear it now, and it's usually quite doable when we're really present for whatever this is, and we'll know how to process it, we'll be able to be with it, and it is a refuge. But like another um exploration could be like around uncertainty and like accepting uncertainty and accepting the layers of uncertainty and like what does that really mean to not be certain? And a lot of like, especially Tibetan masters will say that enlightenment is true comfort with uncertainty. By no means is this an easy thing for us to do, but you know, how can we find comfort in uncertainty or a sense of safety or a sense of riding this wave of unfolding uncertainty, you know? And so there's practices around AWE of like the the wonder of uncertainty, of like childlike fascination with this unfolding stimuli. It's like, oh wow. So maybe that's a mantra. Like, wow. Thank you for joining me for this session on acceptance. I hope the meditation and reflections offered a sense of space and compassion for whatever's unfolding in your own life right now. Acceptance isn't about liking everything that we feel or experience, it's about allowing things to be as they are, even just for a moment, with awareness and care, so that we can then move forward with more clarity and strength and resolve. If you'd like to take part in our future live sessions like this, where we meditate together and explore these teachings, I'd love to invite you to learn more about our mindfulness meditation teacher certification. You can find everything at mindfulness exercises.com slash certify. It's a space for deep personal practice and growth, mentorship and community, and really empowering you to share mindfulness and meditations with others with more confidence and credibility. And of course, if this episode resonated with you, please take a moment to give this podcast a five star review. It would really help us to share it with more people who might appreciate this. Thank you so much for your listening, and thank you for your mindfulness.