Meditation 101
I invite you to find a quiet time and a quiet space for yourself as I teach you the practice of deep relaxation and scanning your body. You’ll want to turn all the ringers off, instruct your family members to please be quiet, turn off the television and forget the doorbell if it rings. You may want to lie on the floor on a mat or on a blanket. The objective is to be relaxed, yet alert. Sometimes if you lie on a bed, sleep comes too easily and you lose your alertness.
Yet, as you relax deeply, your body may not be able to stay awake. Don’t worry. It’s okay. We often deprive ourselves of enough sleep by running from one activity after another, so if you need to sleep your body may just get so relaxed that staying alert is just not possible. Tomorrow’s another day for you to attempt the body scan.
Please wear comfortable clothing, or just unbuckle or undo anything that may feel constraining or restrictive. You may want to cover yourself with a lightweight blanket and have a pillow under your knees for comfort. If you need a pillow for your head, be sure that it is relatively flat so that your neck is not elevated too high.
The quality of your attention is important. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in your mind or body. Your job is just to pay attention to whatever is happening. Just bring your attention back when your mind wanders...and it will wander. We all have about 60 thousand thoughts a day and it is impossible to turn your mind completely off. Merely, resist the temptation to get involved with your thoughts.
It may be helpful to imagine that your thoughts are like leaves falling into a stream of water. Just let the thoughts flow down the stream and disappear.
This is a period of non-doing. Of coming back to the present moment, over and over. Deep relaxation is a vacation. Being with things as they are just at this moment is your only goal. There is nowhere to go and nothing to do for this moment.
The very best way to keep yourself in the present moment is to merely focus on your breathing. You just need to breathe in and breathe out in a soft, natural way. There is no need to be forceful with your breath. Be gentle and quiet. Be aware that you are breathing in. Be aware that you are breathing out.
Assuming that you are lying down, let’s begin, shall we?
By working with the body and becoming intimate with it, we learn how to remain fully present, with our eyes open to life as it is, moment by moment, and breath by breath. This is the practice of the spiritual warrior---to never turn away---and every teacher in one way or another is continually reminding students of this because we all need to keep hearing it.
Observe the constantly changing sensations throughout the body. Again, we begin with the breath and notice how it is ever-changing...no two breaths are the same. As we move on to the body, we notice the constant change, some of it subtle and some readily apparent, in the beating of the heart, in sensations and in the changing position of the body in space.
