Wednesday, April 7th — Guided Meditation & Practice Suggestions

Recording:

Wednesday’s call included a 15 minute meditation; you can just do 5 minutes of it or all of it. Feel free to pause the recording and practice for a bit. Included are several new tips.

Also a short structure to use for your 5-10 minute buddy calls. Steps to strengthen your formal practice and shares about “off the cushion” explorations. Enjoy.

I will be putting up more mini meditations and other resources. Highly recommended are 2 books:

1) Sharon Salzberg’s Real Happiness
2) Diana Winston and Susan Smalley’s Fully Present

Additional Resource: Chapter 1 from Mark Coleman’s Book From Suffering to Peace

Chapter 1
Living with Embodied Awareness

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I still remember the first day I stepped foot into a meditation center in East London back in 1984. I walked in clumsily, with my white mohawk, my gaudy post-punk disheveled attire, feeling out of place and not knowing what to expect. There was I, a figure of agitation, not comfortable in my own skin, restless and impatient. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t as if anyone was doing anything special. People were simply going about their day: arranging books in a library, sweeping the meditation hall, and preparing flowers in the entrance way. However, what took my breath away was the quality of presence in which they moved. There was an air of grace or dignity in how they went about their activities. They exuded a sense of relaxed ease that was quite unfamiliar to me. I didn’t quite know what it was, but I knew they were on to something, and I wanted to experience it myself.

The scene felt so ordinary I could have easily overlooked it. In retrospect, I realize that part of what I was witnessing was embodied presence. People who are at home in their own skin, who are connected to themselves and their physical experience, embody a sense of ease, groundedness, and connectedness. The appearance of my over-caffeinated, anxious, angry self in that meditation center was like a storm meeting a serene ocean. It has taken me many years to begin grow my own way into that beautiful, embodied quality.

One of my favorite pastimes is to watch modern dance. I relish how trained dancers move in their bodies, turning their bodies into living dynamic sculptures. Their movements are artful expressions of living with mindful embodiment. It’s as if their bodies are filled with presence, which of course they are. Even seeing a dancer simply walk across the stage can be spellbinding because of how present they are within their own skin. They are poetic reminders of how to move, live, and breathe with an embodied presence that is alive, graceful, and vibrantly here.

Of course, we don’t have to be a trained dancer to discover this. Anyone can learn to inhabit the body with awareness. Right now, as you are reading, what do you sense in your body? Become awake to every physical sensation: of your skin against your clothing, of your body against your chair. Can you sense the warmth of your belly and feel moisture on your skin or the wetness of your eyes? With mindfulness, we can be present to our ever-changing inner landscape and its shifting tides. We can sense the fluid energy of the body, which can be experienced as vibration, tingling, expansion, contraction, spaciousness, or pulsing electricity. One of the mysteries of embodied attention is that as soon as we call to mind a particular part of our body, it comes alive with sensory stimuli.

Our bodies are a canvas upon which emotions, feelings, and moods are painted. Emotions are physiological phenomena; we feel them in the body. Right now, attune to the radio broadcast of your body’s mood. Can you name what you are feeling? Can you feel the impressions that emotions make in your body? Take a few moments to become intimate with your heart’s terrain and where you may feel particular emotions in your chest, belly, or other part of your body.

As well as being host to a whole panorama of beautiful feelings like joy, love, and awe, our bodies also contain emotions that are not so easy to be with, like anxiety and sadness. As much as our bodies can be a source of delight and pleasurable sensory experience, our bodies also hold painful and difficult sensations, which is why we so often tune out from our somatic landscape. However, even if what we feel is unpleasant, with mindfulness we can bring attention to it and stay curious, exploring whatever may not be easy to be with.

Unfortunately, in today’s world, our attention is often scattered, distracted, and anywhere but in our bodies. We are less like modern dancers and more like Mr. Duffy, the protagonist in James Joyce’s short story “A Painful Case,” who “lived a short distance from his body.” Smartphones, computers, and video games keep us lost in our heads. We focus on screens and digital devices that often seduce and mesmerize us, taking us away from the physical sensory present. This makes the practice of mindfulness even more necessary, as well as more challenging, because in its fullest sense it is an embodied awareness that requires us to inhabit our bodies.

I luckily had access to a sense of embodiment early in life, as many kids used to. I was born before the computer revolution, and as a child, though I enjoyed Space Invaders and TV, these were no competition for playing outside. I had the good fortune to grow up near the woodlands and seashore of my native Northumberland in northern England. I remember a childhood of skinny dipping in streams in summertime, swimming in the cold North Sea breaks, and lying in the middle of vast golden fields of wheat, engulfed by the warm smell of grain and the buzz of flies. From an early age, I learned that nature invites us into our physicality and into the pleasure of opening one’s senses to the richness of the natural world.

Nature still remains my daily portal to an embodied presence. Every day I make sure to go outside, whether to gaze at the morning sunrise, to kayak on the San Francisco Bay, or to hike among redwoods and eucalyptus groves, inhaling their fragrant scents. The physical sensations of being outdoors — warm air on my skin, soft ground underfoot, bright sunlight on the water, rich smells of sea air — help me inhabit my own body. This is the reason I do so much of my meditation outdoors and why I lead people on nature meditation retreats. Inhabiting our senses is a natural, accessible support for embodiment.

Our bodies are home to trillions of cells, with nerves and exquisitely refined sensors that can attune to an infinite variety of sensory experience. These sensations always reside in the present, which is why our bodies are perfect portals to mindfulness. By becoming aware of any one of our five senses, our attention immediately orients to what is happening in this moment. In order to appreciate the dawn chorus of birds, the sunset, the taste of a strawberry, or the tingling of fear in our belly, we must connect in an immediate way with our surroundings and physical body.

Not surprisingly, there is a growth in research on the impacts of mindfulness and its relationship to the body. In a 2008 study, researchers found that, after only eight weeks, participants in a mindfulness course reported a heightened ability to observe sensations in the body. So the good news is that even if you feel disconnected from your physical experience, anyone can develop this skill.

The body with its refined sensory apparatus also improves our ability to handle difficulties, so that we can stay aware and connected even when we feel pain or are under duress. The following story from Anne, a meditation student of mine, illustrates this. Anne’s husband, Tom, was diagnosed with lung cancer and a massive brain tumor. Tom had surgery

to remove the tumor and underwent intense chemotherapy. Though he was miraculously spared from death, he still has cancer and requires routine tests to monitor its growth. Anne shared with me the anxiety she feels before getting his test results: “The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, heart racing, gulping in breaths, dizziness, thinking that I might be losing my mind.” However, rather than run from these feelings, Anne has been practicing embodied awareness, which has helped her cope. As she wrote, “These feelings still come, but I’m not afraid of them anymore.”

Here’s how she describes the experience of traveling together to get Tom’s results:

We are on the bus, and John interlaces his beautiful strong hand in mine. I sense the warmth in his fingers. I notice all the places where our bodies are touching as we sit side by side. We are hip to hip on this bus journey and always heart to heart. I close my eyes. I breathe deeply into this feeling of connectedness and then that becomes the emotion. Love. The anxiety has subsided and it has been replaced with love. How did that happen?

It happened because I leaned into the discomfort. I allowed myself to physically feel it. Not the story (the catastrophizing and the “what ifs”), only the feeling. That’s the thing with emotions. They must be felt . . . in your body. If you avoid, numb, or block them, they don’t go away. That clenched stomach, the sweaty armpits, the racing heart — I have learned to embrace them. Stay with it. Don’t rush to move on. When negative thoughts try and break in, gently come back to the body, to the breath, to the feeling itself — not the story. Then there’s a shift. There’s always a shift. That’s how this whole mindfulness thing works.

Our body is like a fine-tuned instrument, but it requires our attention to fully realize its potential. Mindfulness is our ally here, in that we learn to turn toward our physical experience, lean into it, and feel from within this ever-changing topography. The body is also a

source of intuition and emotional information that can serve us in the choices and decisions we make. But in order to optimize that capacity, we have to attune to this inner knowing, which often whispers its secrets and perceptions to us as subtle sensations in the gut or to our heart. Sadly, if our heads are swirling in thoughts, lost in past conflict or future worries, this knowledge will go unheard.

In a similar way, embodied attention can be a doorway to revelation. We tend to think of insight arising only through the mind, with our thoughts, ideas, and perceptions, but the body is also a powerful vehicle for understanding deeper truths. Sages and mystics throughout the ages have described how attuning to physical experience supports this. For example, if we need to grok more deeply how fleeting everything is, no matter how joyful or excruciating, we need only turn to the ceaselessly changing nature of our own body, breath, and sensory landscape to help awaken us to this elemental fact.

Any sensation is short-lived, and often that’s what makes it precious. If a taste or delicate fragrance endured perpetually, we would become immune to it. That’s why silk flowers become boring after a time. Even the hottest orgasm, or the most intense pleasure, passes no sooner than it arises. Thus, as the poet William Blake instructed, to relish the gifts of pleasure, we must learn not to hold on to them, but to simply appreciate them, knowing they will pass. This allows us to let go no matter how sublime sensations are and frees us from the futility of chasing after every fleeting experience.

Attending to the body also reveals the mysterious selfless nature of bodily experience. Sensations, pleasures, and painful experiences come and go ad infinitum, despite our wishes! We don’t own them, can rarely control them, and can neither hold them at bay nor grasp them indefinitely. The endless waterfall of experience teaches us how the body has a life of its own.

We are simply guests within our own skin. Becoming intimate with this through an embodied attention, we cease to resist this river of change. Knowing this helps to access a sense of peace within our own body amid the broader changing circumstances of life.

Walking Meditation

This walking meditation can be done anywhere, inside or outdoors. Rather than focusing externally, focus internally while walking first one way and then back, taking twenty to thirty slow mindful steps in each direction. As you finish taking thirty steps or so in one direction, pause, then slowly turn around and recommit to staying present to the changing physical sensations of walking as you set out to take more mindful steps. Keep walking like this, up and down, as a support for present-moment attention.

While walking, finely attune to the sensory experience of your movements, and as your mind drifts, bring your attention back each time to the body. To help sustain attentiveness, focus awareness on the soles of your feet. As each foot moves with each step, feel all the sensations as you lift and place your foot. Attune to the muscles and bones of the feet and legs as you walk. Keep your gaze downward and your attention focused on your physical, bodily experience, no matter what other sights, sounds, people, and objects you may notice. Let your fascination be oriented to your inner world of movement and sensation, rather than to what is around you.

This practices, once developed, will enable you to stay grounded and present in your physical sensory experience as you walk anywhere, such as while shopping, in your home, on a hike, or even at work. They enable you to develop a continuity of mindful attention that’s always accessible. Whenever you walk, simply bring awareness to your physical experience.

Your morning walk to the bus or your daily stroll with the dog could be your new venue for cultivating mindfulness!