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Guided Meditation: Aware of the Body's Awareness

So hello everyone, and welcome to our meditation together.

One of the remarkable aspects of being human is the ability to be conscious, the ability to be aware. In that awareness, being conscious has many facets. At different times, different facets are emphasized, and one of those is the ability to recognize what's happening. To be aware and to recognize. But there are different kinds of recognition.

This morning, I woke up fairly early, about an hour before I usually do. I felt quite awake and refreshed. I thought, "Wow, this is an hour before I usually do my morning meditation. I have a long to-do list, and maybe I'll do some things and have less to do during the day." And then I said, "No, I can also meditate longer." So I sat down to meditate, still with thoughts that I should be doing things.

As soon as I sat into my meditation posture and settled in, I realized that my thinking about what I should do—"Here it is early in the morning, should I do some of my to-do list or should I meditate?"—was a lot of thinking. There was a deeper recognition that happened when I sat down to meditate. When I got into my posture, immediately there was this knowing in my body that I was home. There was a knowing of, "Oh, this is good. This is subtle. This is the place to be."

That recognition was not in the same discursive thoughts that I had when I was considering what to do with my time. This was a deeper knowing, a deeper cognition that felt much more embodied. "Oh, the body knows. Oh yes, this is the place to be, this is right." And so I settled in, and I felt affirmed in my decision to meditate.

This way of being connected to the body, letting the body be an informant—how does the body cognize? How does the body know? What does the body know? Sometimes the body knows before the mind thinks about something. If we're uncomfortable in our body, the discomfort occurs before the cognitive intellectual labeling of, "Oh, I'm uncomfortable." It might happen seemingly at the same time, but there's a little gap between them. A gap that is noticed when it's possible to sit quietly in meditation. There is a knowing that things are uncomfortable, but there's no thinking about it. There's no reaction to it. There's no higher cognition in the knowing of it. It's almost like a silent knowing. This knowing that I was in the right place meditating, that it was good to sit here—there was a silent knowing in the sense that it wasn't really the mind talking, thinking, or imagining. It was just the body speaking.

Our ability to be aware of the body is such a powerful thing. It is so helpful. It is not always easy; the body is challenging. A lot of pain and discomfort can exist. But below the level of thinking about it and reacting to it, what happens? What does the body know? How does the body settle in? How do we really become attuned to our bodily experience?

Assuming a posture and mindfulness can begin for meditation with mindfulness of the posture. Taking some time to maybe sway back and forth, or maybe rock back and forth a little bit, to become a little more embodied. Find a nice midpoint in which to sit or lay in a good balanced posture.

And then gently close your eyes. Without much else to do, what are you aware of in your body now? Attune yourself to your body. Familiarize yourself with the body. Maybe almost as if you're listening to the body.

Then, as a gentle way to expand the sensations of your body, the range of what you sense and feel, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Three-quarters full. And gently exhale—a long, relaxed exhale.

Being attuned to your body, follow a pace that feels relaxed. Return to normal breathing.

As you exhale in a relaxed way, with no hurry, relax any parts of your body where there's holding, where it's easy to relax. Relaxing around the face. Let the area of your lips be relaxed, so the lips are not pressing against each other. Some people find it a little bit relaxing to have the tongue gently touching the upper palate, the roof of the mouth.

Relaxing the shoulders. Can you relax a bit in your upper back? Maybe if you do so, it feels like you should adjust your back a little bit.

And on the exhale, softening the belly. Sometimes if the belly relaxes and hangs forward and down, it might also feel appropriate to adjust the posture a little bit, to adjust the spine.

Relax the fingers.

And then center yourself on the body's experience of breathing. Maybe the emphasis can be to allow the body to have its own experience of breathing. The body can have its own knowing: the movements, the sensations of breathing. A knowing that's deeper than the skin. The body's knowing is not the same thing as thinking about the body. In fact, as you exhale, see if you can let go of thinking, or let go of your interest in thinking. Your interest can be in the body's experience as it breathes in and breathes out.

Letting the thinking mind become quieter so you're better able to feel and sense the body knowing itself.

The more we can feel our body, and let the body's awareness of itself become fuller, the more the body's own process of healing, of making whole, has a chance to unfold. The settling, the calming of the body, the opening of the body, the awakening of the body, allows for all kinds of wonderful healing processes and deeper understanding of our life. It gives a different character to our capacity to care, for compassion, for love, for friendliness. When it's embodied in a relaxed, healed body, when it's relaxed and open, it seems to vibrate or resonate from the body.

As we come to the end of the sitting, we turn this body awareness out into the world. The art is to stay centered in the body and simply become aware of the world around us in some kind of intuitive way. The people in your communities, people you'll encounter, people you'll learn about and communicate with today. May you stay in your body. In your contact with others, stay in your body, and let that be a place from which friendliness and care can flow. Not from your thoughts so much, not from the mental shoulds and shouldn'ts, but from a sweetness within. With whatever sweetness, tenderness, gentleness, and beauty that we have within, may we wish well on the world.

May we wish for the welfare and happiness of others. May it be that we contribute to the happiness of others. May it be that we contribute to the safety of others. May it be that we contribute to peace for others. May it be that we contribute to the freedom of others. And as we do so, may it grow our own happiness and safety and peace and freedom.

May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Body (2 of 5) Recognition of the Body

So this week we're talking about mindfulness of the body. I think one of the wonderful results of doing mindfulness practice is to become more embodied. Many years ago, I read an ancient Mahayana^[1] Buddhist text that insisted that we don't get enlightened through the mind, we get enlightened through the body. Whether that's literally true or not, it's kind of an inspiring idea. Certainly, as we practice mindfulness, slowly, slowly, perhaps for some of us—certainly for me—the body wakes up. There is an awakening of the body, and we have more and more access to sensing and feeling the body.

There are people who, for all kinds of significant, important reasons—difficult things that happened to them—find it very difficult to be in their body. The body is not a safe place to be. It feels like you tap into fear or terror to really drop in and feel the body. So, to emphasize the wonderfulness of being in the body is a careful thing to do, because of how difficult it is. Some people live from their neck up or from their waist up and feel really disconnected from parts of their body.

For today, the emphasis is recognition as an aspect of mindfulness practice. In these five days of the week, it's relaxation, recognition, respect, restoration, and release. Today's is recognition.

Part of recognition is to reconnect to the body. Spend time getting to know it, and learn to do it in a way that is not frightening or distressing, but with gentleness and care. For some people, that means doing it in very short periods of time. Spend a little bit touching in, and then pull out, just as long as it's safe. I know for some people with really difficult things in the body, I've given them the instructions to imagine awareness is like a soft cotton ball. We gently reach down and touch the place that's difficult with that softness of the cotton ball, and then pull back and let it be. Just so it's known and felt, maybe note it a little bit, and then pull back.

Slowly over time, the body reveals itself to us in different ways. Sometimes it can be through discomfort. As the mind gets quieter and the body settles down, we go through the layers of where the body is held and where there's tension. We have layers of tension that we're not aware of because the coarser tension holds them in place, hides them, or covers them up. When the coarser tension relaxes, then we're aware of deeper tension. Slowly there's a greater connection to the body.

It's not just a connection to the body as if the body is something separate from you. The body has its own awareness. Often we call it sensing. Sensing and sensations belong to the body. If I touch my hand, I have sensations of warmth and pressure upon my hand. Those sensations of warmth and pressure occur in the location where the left hand is pushing against it. That raw, immediate sensing occurs in the body, in the place where the sensations occur. I like to say that sensing and sensations are non-dual. They're not really two different things.

Separate from that, the body knows it's warm when I touch, and knows the pressure. Separate from that, I can have the cognitive thought where I put the English words "warmth" or "pressure" on it. If I spoke a different language, I would use a different sound to represent that. These are just sounds that we use to represent things, these words that we have. But the body has already sensed it. The body feels it.

This sensing body starts to wake up as we practice mindfulness, and the parts that are numb or have been disconnected get reconnected. This recognition is also a re-membering, putting the members of the body back together again that have been disconnected. Slowly over time, there starts to be a flow of harmony, a flow of the body. The whole body just hums in a very nice way.

The path to that is to appreciate this deeper recognition. The recognition part of mindfulness is actually extremely significant in mindfulness practice. It works in different ways, but it's always simple. It's not a story. It's not an explanation of why it's there. It's not a review of everything. What we recognize doesn't have a history; it's just recognizing in the moment what's here. If I recognize my chest expanding as I breathe in, it's just the expansion, just feeling and sensing the expansion, feeling the movement.

In addition, we can have the mental aspect. The mental part of mindfulness practice is sometimes to use a mental note. That mental note, a label, a sound, is a word that recognizes what it is we were just experiencing. "Expansion" of the chest. "Movement" that I feel. "Breathing in." That's two different forms of recognition happening. There is the immediacy of what's happening in the chest, and then very quietly in the background, almost a mental recognition: "movement," "expansion." Or if there's a pain in the knee, "pain" is happening. But that label is like five percent of what the mind is doing. It's not like we're pounding that mental note into the experience. It's more like a gentle brushing of it.

This recognition—both the mental noting and the feeling of it—is an alternative to discursive thought. It's an alternative to wandering off, flowing along with a storyline or a commentary line, an explanation, or a prediction of what's going to happen. All the ways we can get involved in discursive thought. The idea is that recognition begins to cut through that. Sometimes I think of it as the sword that cuts through the Gordian knot. Our mental world of discursive thoughts can be so complicated, with so many ideas, histories, and stories that we live in. We cut through it by just noting, "Oh, just breathing. That's an in-breath, that's an out-breath." "There's a sound, listening." "Now there's an itch." "Now I'm back with the breathing." "The stomach is tight, relaxing the belly."

It's just coming back to that simplicity. Using the simple act of recognition to help us be engaged nicely in the present moment, without being hijacked or pulled into the world of thinking. We don't have to struggle against thoughts. In a few weeks, I'll talk about mindfulness of thinking, but for now the idea is to cut through it, to keep it really simple. Mindfulness of thinking and the role of thinking comes later. For right now, we use the simplest kind of thinking to help us stay present, and that's a very simple one-word cognition of things: "pressure," "warmth," "expansion." If it's more than a word, it probably is not simple recognition.

Use mental noting very gently, softly. If your mind is able to really stay close to that simple recognition without a mental note, you don't have to use it. But mental noting is a way of staying honest, really knowing that you're not wandering off in thought. Just keep a steady pace. "Breathe in, out," "expansion," "hearing," "discomfort," "pleasure"—whatever it might be we're feeling and sensing.

Whether it's the cognition of a mental note or the cognition of the body's own knowing—the knowing that's much more silent—whichever helps you to cut through the thinking mind and connect you to something that's living and alive, use it. Because it's a miracle to be conscious. This wonderful thing that I started off with, human awareness, is an amazing thing. Stay close to the living moment, the living experience of life, where cognition, consciousness, awareness, and mindfulness keep us in our animated body. It keeps us in our living body, the lived experience.

The more we can recognize, open up, and be present for this, eventually we start allowing for the healing potential, the healing power of this body that we have. Healing not necessarily from physical illness and injury, but a deeper kind of healing, a spiritual healing. A healing of awareness, so that this hum that moves through the whole body becomes whole. I hope that made sense. To really get to know the body well is such a blessing.

I'd encourage you through the day today, or the next 24 hours for those of you in a different time zone, to get to know your body better. Listen to it. Maybe even have a timer that goes off every few minutes, you know, 10 minutes or something, and check in with your body. Check in with your body every time you go through a door frame, every time that you change your posture from sitting to walking to whatever you do standing. Whenever you pick up a new utensil for cooking or eating, check in. What do you find? Find different things to just check in. What's happening in the body? What is the body showing? If I listen to my body now, what do I learn? Recognize the body.

Thank you.