Transcription
So just wondering if we just do a breath meditation now, do you want that guided or do you just want to get on with it yourselves? Okay. So let's do that. Let's do a meditation on the breath together.
[00:33, guided meditation begins]
Just take a little time to feel yourself in, to establish a posture that feels comfortable. So the back is upright but not rigid, not tense. The posture reflects a kind of noble balance, if you like, between uprightness, alertness, wakefulness, but also softness, receptivity, openness. See if you can find a posture or feel those qualities in the posture even before you start.
Let yourself settle into that posture. Perhaps taking a few moments to feel the sensations, the very simple sensations of the contact of the backside on the cushion or the bench or the chair. How does that feel? How do the legs feel? What are the sensations in the legs? Just noticing. Contact with the floor if it's the legs, or the feet on the floor. How does that feel? What do those sensations feel like? Can you feel into your hands right now? Notice how they feel.
Is it possible to open up and be aware of the whole body at once? Open up a space of awareness that encompasses, fills the whole body. Almost as if there's a bubble or balloon of awareness that's expanding and encompassing that whole area. Just feeling what that feels like -- the texture, the vibration, the energy, the feeling of that whole space. Just hanging out there. The space will keep shrinking. No problem. You can just keep opening it again, filling that space with presence, bright, luminous awareness. Filling it with sensitivity. Feeling, opening. It's a global awareness of the whole space. The sense of its energy, its vibration, its texture, feeling.
Just keep opening and inhabiting that space. If you want, you can see it as bright, see it as filled with light, luminous, filled with presence and mindfulness. You might want to hang out just with that sense of that field of energy, of vibration. Or keeping that more spacious awareness you can also begin to notice how the breath ripples through that whole space, the whole body, the whole area. The in- and the out-breath, how they feel and affect the whole space. Just noticing. When it shrinks, opening it out again, feeling into it again.
Very often it can be extremely helpful to very gently allow or encourage the breath to become long and slow. You don't have to move a lot of air, but a long, slow, comfortable in- and out-breath. And keeping this whole body awareness. Feeling how that breath feels in the whole space, how it ripples and changes the energy of the whole space. Staying with this open, full-body awareness, opening, opening. So keeping this more global, open space of awareness encompassing the whole body, maybe even a little bit bigger than the whole body. Gently supporting the breath to open, to become long and slow and smooth.
Some people notice the whole body space expanding a little bit with the in-breath, and with the out-breath just contracting a little bit, and tuning into how that feels, this expansion and contraction with the in- and the out-breath, the whole space expanding, contracting. Not at all a problem when the mind drifts and the space contracts. Just coming back, returning over and over, no problem, and filling out this space again with awareness, with presence, alive, sensitive, bright. Tuning into what you can feel, how the space feels. Sensitive to the whole body, the whole area. Some people notice that with the in-breath there's a feeling of energization. It's as if the whole body feels energized a bit by the in-breath, with the in-breath. And with the out-breath, there's a natural, organic feeling of letting go, of relaxation. Tune into those feelings in the whole space, the energization, the letting go, the expansion or contraction. What's helpful for you right now?
Filling the body with presence, with awareness, sensitivity. Gently allowing, encouraging, supporting the breath to be long, smooth. So the breath can open up the body. Opening the body to the breath, the whole body. And then opening the awareness to the body, to the whole body. The whole body is breathing. Feeling that. Some people, in this whole-body awareness, feel almost as if there are currents of energy with the in- and out-breath. Really whatever's helpful for you to feel and tune into. Some people notice up the front of their body -- how does that feel with the in- and the out-breath, up the torso, the front, up into the neck and the face? Can you include the legs? Perhaps you notice how it feels in the legs as the breath comes in and goes out. Or up the back, up the spine. What's helpful for you? Could be the expansion and contraction. Could be the energization and letting go. Could be these currents. Whatever is helpful for you. Whole body, open.
Now, keeping this more open, more full awareness of the whole space of the body, this balloon or bubble, keeping that expanded over and over, is it possible to find a way of breathing that's the most comfortable right now, or the most helpful, let's say? What does the body need? Perhaps it's this long breath that energizes and opens the whole body. Perhaps it's a much shorter breath, gentle and soothing, subtle. So not just the ordinary way of breathing, but what's most helpful, what feels the best right now? Maintaining this whole body awareness but tending to the body with the breath.
[29:06, guided meditation ends]
So let's do a walking meditation now, a period of walking meditation. I'll just give some brief instructions. If you're going to walk on the green, just be a bit careful because it's a bit muddy, but around the green is good. Okay. So with walking meditation, it's very simple -- at least the way we're doing it today, very simple. What you want, though, is to delineate a walking path for yourself. So rather than just kind of ambling around, you set a path. That path could be a third of the width of this room or half or even up to the full length, but you're walking between, back and forth between two points. So there's a form there, a contained form for the mindfulness. You can start just by standing at one end of your path, and just really feel, what does it feel like to stand? What is this experience of standing? The sensations in the feet with the contact with the earth, the floor. Feeling that. And also in the rest of the body, it's alive with sensation. So really taking as long as you want to feel mindfully the experience of standing. Very, very simple.
And then, when you feel ready, beginning to walk, and bringing mindfulness to the sensations of walking. What does it feel like in the body to walk? Now, you could walk very, very slowly, and that might help you. Or you could walk very, very quickly, and that might help you. The question is what helps you right now to feel connected, which pace of walking? So it could be very slow, very fast, anywhere in between. You could also pay attention to a very small area -- for example, the soles of your feet, and really just concentrate on that small area. Or it could be your lower legs, or your whole legs, or the whole body. Or you can also pay attention in a very, very wide way, so that you're aware of sky and space and sound and colour and light and all that, a vast space, the centre of which is alive with body sensations. And one walks in that space open to it all.
So you can play with the aperture of your lens. You can go small or big. Again, it's really what's helpful to you at any time, you know? And you can stop at any point and regather the mindfulness if it feels helpful. At the end you stop and stand as long as you like and turn mindfully, see if you can turn mindfully then begin again. It's very, very simple. Does that make sense? Any questions about walking? Okay. If we could plan to be back here -- Alex will ring a bell and we'll plan to be back here at 11:25.
