Meditation practice can be finding methods to get out of your own way. The sense of self and operating as an individual self, while really useful in daily life, is a limiting factor on your sense of existence. By dropping out of your habitual patterns, more opens up. This practice focuses on relaxing and settling through tuning in to the present moment and then following the sensations of the breath. While doing this, you allow all other sensations to come and go in the background of spacious awareness. Then finally you will drop the breath or let it fade into the background and simply be — allowing all the body sensations, sounds, thoughts, and feelings to come and go, without getting caught up. The universe continues on, vividly appearing, without you having to do anything at all.
Tag: embodiment
Inviting Relaxation By Doing Less
In this practice you will be gently guided to relax through connecting with the body, feeling into each body part and inviting relaxation. This relaxation is a kind of doing less — there was already some tension or tightness and you are simply intending to release this. You can also relax *around* any tension you find. This relaxing is a mode of allowing the sensations and feelings to be exactly as they are, reducing any clinging or aversion. Finally you will check in with how you are relating to the experience and if there is any resistance, embracing and allowing this. When resistance is fully allowed, it too will shift, soften, or change in some helpful way.
Cosy Disinterest
YouTube | alternate | audio only (32:56)
Fully give yourself permission to relax. Allow all of what arises to pass by like clouds in the sky. This guided meditation provides instructions on skilfully ignoring all content that arises by gently bringing attention to a sensation in the present. By keeping close to the present moment, experience simplifies and settles, allowing a sense of well-being to grow. This is a great practice to come back to in times of turbulence or busyness in order to drop into relaxation.
Scanning the Body for Subtle Sensations
This recording provides some ways into the Stage 5 practice of The Mind Illuminated. In this stage, you can use the subtle sensations of the body as a way to increase sensory clarity. By looking for sensations that are hard to find and at the edge of your sensory range, it heightens the degree of sensory clarity, which then increases the overall power of mindfulness. This practice is best done once there is some stability of attention so that it is relatively easy to stay with the sensations in the body. You may find that at first this is tiring and leads to dullness or vagueness, but over time and with repeated practice it is likely to help increase the degree of sensory clarity.