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Guided Meditation: "Stay home" in the Body

Greetings from Redwood City. Like I said yesterday morning at the start, for me to sit down and take this posture that I've been meditating in for decades very much feels like a homecoming. It's a homecoming into my body, in my body, with my body. Many years ago, I heard a teacher ask a question: "Do you have a body, or are you a body?" That stopped my mind a little bit. If I had to answer the question, I would say that it feels like I am the body, rather than the body being some objective thing outside of me.

This idea of coming home in the body, to the body, is one of the great potentials we have: to feel at rest, to feel comfortable, to feel safe. To feel at home. Even if some of the rooms in the home might be messy and need to be cleaned, it's sometimes good to feel like you're finally home. To have a home that you can carry with you wherever you go is one of the great potentials of a human life. I certainly feel like I've benefited from that. My body happens to always be with me, and to then have this thing which is always with me that is available for a homecoming is wonderful.

In meditation, one of the little phrases that I've used, and you might think of using, is a loving phrase: "Stay home. Stay home. Stay here in this body." The body is always in the present moment. The mind might not be—of course it is, but the content of the mind, what we're thinking about, gets pulled into this other world of imagination and ideas. The mind might be thinking about the future, the past, fantasy, other places. The mind itself is seldom here.

For the mind to find its home in this body, and for the mind to come home to itself here and now so it can relax, be at ease, find its comfort, find its delight and its joy—it's a long process. It isn't like you can suddenly do it. But it really helps to have a practice—a practice of coming back to the body, trusting the body, feeling the body, working with the body. We'll do a little bit of this in this meditation. We will have a little bit less emphasis on breathing, but more emphasis on the body. But it's going to be a support for this breath meditation we're doing these days. The more we are in our body, the richer the experience of breathing can be.

So assuming a posture for meditation. This mindfulness of the body begins with assuming, entering into, a meditation posture. Give some attention to how the body can be adjusted so the posture feels supportive for being alert, for being present. It's not necessarily a posture where we can most thoroughly relax, because we can overdo the relaxation. It's a posture that allows for dynamic balance between relaxation and alertness.

Sometimes it's useful to let your attention travel up the spine, from the base of the spine to the top. Almost as if you could adjust each vertebra, to adjust them so that there's a feeling of being alert and the vertebrae balance one on top of the other. Some people can have the feeling as they adjust their spine that there's a kind of uplifting feeling in the back. Rather than a downward momentum of the weight, there's an upward momentum of our vitality, our aliveness, alertness. Especially between the shoulder blades, let the spine gently pull towards the chest, and all the way up to the neck. Create a little space between the last vertebra and the skull by maybe tipping the chin down or lifting the back of the head up a little bit.

If you haven't, gently close your eyes. There's a ritual and meditative way to awaken your awareness: take a few long, slow, gentle breaths. Perhaps loving breaths. Breathing in deeply enough so your torso stretches, your rib cage opens. In a loving exhale, maybe as slow as is comfortable for you, releasing, releasing, releasing with the exhale. Taking a few more deep breaths, see how wide through your body you can feel the movements of breathing. As you exhale, see how deeply into your body, into your core, you can feel your inner body.

Then, let your breathing return to normal. We'll do a little body scan. Begin at the top of your head to feel whatever sensations might be in the crown of your head. If there's nothing there, it's okay; then feel the absence. But there might be a subtle tingling, vibration, warmth, coldness, or pressure.

Then, as if you're standing underneath a delightful flow of water that lands on the top of your head, imagine your attention now flows down the sides of your head, the front, and the back. As you do so, feel the sensations of your head, of your face, around the eyes, cheeks, jaws, and mouth.

Flowing down through your neck: the front of the neck, the back of the neck, the sides. The idea is to just feel things without commentary, knowing you were going to move on. If it's uncomfortable, see if you can be relaxed knowing we're moving on.

Down into the shoulders, focus your attention. Letting sensations be just the way they are. Your job is just to have the water of awareness flow over them, through them.

Down your arms. Elbows. Your wrists and your hands.

And then from the top again for the shoulders, let the flow of awareness move down the front of your chest. Feeling the rib cage, solar plexus area, diaphragm, and the belly.

Down into the hips, the whole pelvic cavity. And down your legs: the knees, the lower legs, and the feet.

From the top of your head to your feet, this is the body that we can be at home in. To do so is to allow yourself to receive rest in the sensations of your body. You might open your awareness now to your experience, your full body, your whole body. Allowing yourself to experience, to know the sensations of your body that are most compellingly a place of home. Of being settled, being rooted here.

Feeling the tingling and vibrations of the body. Feeling the warmth and the coolness that exists in the body. Feeling the places of hardness or dense solidity in your body, which is what provides support.

With a global awareness of your body, notice the edges within your body where the sensations are not so distinct, or where there's just a sense of feeling of space. Perhaps feeling the indistinct boundary between inside your body and outside the body. With eyes closed, just feeling and sensing, maybe no sharp boundaries between the space around your body and your body.

With the global awareness of the body, experience the movements of the body as you breathe. If you were going to really come home, be at home in your body, is there some place in your body you most associate with that? To the whole body? Or is it some place inside, maybe deep inside? Or maybe in the feet or the hands? Where in your body do you feel most at home?

And then, if there is such a place, breathe through that. Breathe with that. Let that support you to be here. Stay home.

Letting go of your thoughts and ideas so you can better sense and feel the body. As if the body has been waiting for you for a long time, and finally you're here with your body. Breathing with it, sensing it, feeling it. Feeling the body instead of thinking about it. Sensing the body instead of judging it or comparing it. Allowing the body to have its own experience of itself independent of all the ideas that you've had, all the shoulds and shouldn'ts, all the ways you've been distracted from it with your thoughts and ideas. Here, sit here in this body. Breathing. At home in your body.

Come home. Come home to your body. Let go into your body to feel the sensations—the dynamic, active, flowing sensations of your body. And stay home, rather than wandering off in the past, in the future, in other places with your thoughts.

And then in the next few exhales, as you exhale, let go more deeply into the weight of your body. The solidity of your body against your chair, your cushion, your bed. To feel the support. To feel how the weight of your body is supported and grounded here. All the ways in which the weight of your body is supported in your body: maybe your hands on your lap or your knees, your vertebrae supporting the weight of your back, the lower torso supporting the upper torso. Feeling settled and grounded to some degree here.

See if you can stay that way to open your mind now, your heart. Think about the people that you might encounter or see or think about in the course of today or tomorrow. If attention is a kind of love, mindfulness of the body can provide stability to that love and care. That attention can convey a feeling of stability, at-homeness. We express in our attention not only that we're paying attention, but that we're doing it grounded, doing it settled, doing it while being at home with ourselves.

If the medium is the message, then to pay attention to others this way can convey a love which is an example of being at ease or at home in this world. Something people need. May it be that as we go through this day, we can subtly—not dramatically, but subtly—convey a sense of being at home in our bodies, at home in the present moment, as we extend our kindness, our care, our love, our support to others in whatever way we might do it, directly or indirectly.

May this meditation practice that we do, may the benefits of the practice support us to have a simple and clean care and kindness for others. May this implicit simplicity and cleanliness of our care contribute to the welfare and happiness of others.

May this practice that we do support others so they can be happy, so they can be safe and free.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free.