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Guided Meditation: Exploring Verticality & Expansiveness

Greetings friends, and good morning from Mountain View, California, where it's cool and cloudy. We are seated on Ohlone land. Greetings to all of you, whatever time zone you're in. Lovely to be joining each other in this moment in time to practice meditation and share the dharma.

It's always lovely to hear the greetings on chat as they're being added one by one. This week we're exploring the mind's body. We continue the exploration today, noticing how the perception of our body can be different. There's a different sense of the energy body—not just that the perception of the body is different, but some shifts can happen energetically too as we pay attention differently. Different ways of paying attention in the body—not just places to pay attention to the breath, as we discussed on Tuesday, but also the way we pay attention, or what quality we choose to attend to with our mind, can have impacts on how we perceive and also what arises. Maybe also what are called energy channels in the body shifting and changing, and the perceptions.

So, without further ado, let's practice together. Inviting you to arrive in your body in this moment in time, however the body is right now. Whether the body is feeling good, tired, agitated, or peaceful, greeting the body with your mind just as it is, with openness, with kindness.

And as we land and arrive, turning the attention, inviting the attention to receive the sensations of the body contacting the cushion and the floor. The lower part of the body, the sense of groundedness, contact with the earth.

Releasing any tension or tightness in the upper body. Forehead, jaw, face, neck, shoulders. Arms and hands, let them be heavy and rest. Chest, upper back, lower back, abdomen. With the next out-breath, releasing any tension holding.

Let awareness be curled up in the breath in the abdomen. Comfortable, soothed, nowhere to go, nothing to do right now. Then just sit and be breathed. Receiving the breath, awareness receiving the breath at the abdomen.

Now, as we're paying attention to the breath in the abdomen in this moment, feeling grounded in the body. Feet, sit bones, connected to the earth. Sense the uprightness that you're sitting with. It's not that you have to create it, it's already there; just bringing attention to it.

As if there was a vertical axis, or rather bringing attention to the vertical axis connecting your head to the middle of your chest, to your heart center, your abdomen, groin area, all the way down and up from the inside. This sense of verticality, uplift, both uplift energetically and also a downwards direction, connected to the earth. Rootedness, as if you both have roots into the earth through this verticality, and connected to the heavens or the sky, proverbial heavens, the sky.

So that you can relax into the verticality. It holds you, it grounds you. There's a structure so thoughts aren't fleeting here and there and everywhere, like getting whiplash. There's a sense of uprightness, connection to the earth and up to the sky, through your heart center.

Now letting sensation, or awareness of sensations, fill your body. Not just that the breath is moving up and down, but filling your whole body on its own. Don't let it be effortful. As if your feet are breathing, your legs, your abdomen, your hands, your back, your chest, your cheeks, the back of your head. Sense of fullness of the body. Sitting and being breathed. Receiving the breath.

The whole body billowing with the breath, in and out like a sphere, a round sphere. Expanding, contracting, billowing.

And what if the boundary of your body wasn't at your skin, didn't end there, but a few inches beyond your skin? It's porous. More space, more space. Imagining this breath being breathed, received by the body, billowing further out into the space. A sense of expansiveness.

You don't have to push it out. Make sure you're not pushing it out effortfully, just perceiving. Oh yeah, there's more expansiveness than I realized. Look at that. Expansiveness all around.

And then a few more inches further out. The breath and the mind's body expansive. Received, pervading into space.

Let yourself relax into the spaciousness. Relax into it, spacious, easeful, all around. The breath billowing. And maybe at some point, even the edges completely disappear. The edges of this orb around the body. The breath pervading expansively into space. Space all around.

And along with the breath being breathed in, breathed out expansively, the edges of the orb disappearing, of the sphere disappearing, can there be your kindness, your goodwill accompanying this expansive breath? Just shining naturally for yourself and all around. Relaxing into an expansive sphere of the breath intertwined with mettā^[1].

And as we bring this sit to a close together, letting there be a spreading, expansive, boundless expressing of our goodwill, our kindness, our mettā for all beings everywhere, including ourselves. Intertwined with each breath, so that each breath, each moment of our life is intertwined with goodness, kindness, service, to benefit ourselves and the world, as best as we can offer. Trusting that we're doing our best.

May all beings everywhere know their own goodness, wake up to the goodness within and all around them, expansively. May all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be free.

Dharmette: Mind's Body (4/5) Grounded & Spacious with Metta

Hello friends, greetings once again. So we are exploring this week the mind's body together. As I mentioned, especially on the first day, the way we pay attention, the way we perceive, and where we bring attention to—where we touch with our awareness, with our knowing, places in the body—not just the places, but how we do it in the body can make shifts in our physical perception, and in our mind's perception of the body. It's actually quite flexible. There's a lot of flexibility, and it's important as practitioners to know where we bring attention to, how things can shift and move, and the results that they can have in our physical perception and in our mind's perception of the body.

Connecting this a little bit perhaps to Chinese and other energy medicine traditions: either physically touching or bringing mind's attention to a point can have an impact. A lot of times these arise in meditation and we may not actually know, "Well, that's interesting, how did that come up?" So it's good to know that there are some laws in the body, in the mind, even if we don't fully understand them.

So, exploring the mind's body or the energetic sense of the body this week. Today, the exploration that we did, we did two different explorations. Let me spell them out for you. The first invitation was to explore what I'm calling, or what is called, a sense of verticality. This sense of being connected to the earth through your sit bones and your abdomen, your heart center, your head. There's a sense of sitting in verticality, a sense of uprightness. As if there was a vertical pull, an energetic pole going through this cylinder of your whole body. There's a sense of spaciousness, and there's a sense of well-rootedness, feeling the breath and feeling your body around this upright vertical cylinder.

Of course, you can see what impact that has for you. I suggest that you actually explore these on your own time later, in more expansive sits. It can have the sense of both grounding, feeling grounded, and also feeling upright. Being awake and yet grounded at the same time. There's a beautiful energetic feeling to it, and the mind can actually be quiet. Thoughts can be quite quieted. There's a sense of spaciousness and grounding at the same time. It emphasizes verticality and a sense of uprightness, which also can come with a sense of ethical uprightness. It's just a lovely way to sit, a lovely way to go through the world and explore both being grounded and uplifted. So that was the sense of verticality that I invited you to explore.

Then we switched to another way of exploring the body, the energy body, and the breath in the body. That was imagining the breath filling out the whole body first. We start there, with this sense of roundness, the breath filling out the whole body. Then I invited you to imagine that the border of your skin, the border of your body, was a few inches further than your skin. The sense of expansiveness, the sense of spaciousness of the breath billowing, and then spaciousness, and more spaciousness. At some point, through practice, the sense of border can completely dissolve, and there's just the sense of complete spaciousness in the mind's body and the energy body that the breath is moving through.

What this can bring for many is a sense of peace. An expansive peacefulness that can arise. A lot of spaciousness. The space element, part of the four elements^[2], can be quite present here. A sense of spaciousness and peace. For some people who practice open awareness, this can also be a good support for open awareness, or actually, open awareness can lead to this sometimes.

Similarly, as I invited you at the very end to add some mettā—not to push it out, but just imagine that this spaciousness or expansiveness of the breath has some goodwill, some kindness that's just like a light intertwined with this expansiveness. Just as it can be a nice support for open awareness practice, this way of perceiving the mind's body can be a great support for mettā practice. If you're radiating mettā, this can be a really lovely support for that as well. Really getting to the practice in a very expansive way where the self can also disappear. All these practices are connected.

Of course, it can be very expansive and beautiful just in its own right to really settle. Especially if there's a lot of anxiety or fear present, just giving it a lot of space, no boundaries. Often when we have anxiety, it feels like a wild horse or a wild ram running around in our chest. If we try to contain it and put up the barn doors, it feels like it wants to kick against the barn doors, and the sense of anxiety can become worse. In this way, taking the doors down, all the boundaries down, and just giving space. Giving space to the breath, giving space to the sensations to be expansive. A sense of relief and expansiveness can come from that.

So these are two different ways you can explore the energy body. Delighted to read for some of you this, even in this short period, "never felt so light before," etc. Yeah, wonderful tingling, wellness. Very different ways.

Thank you all. Thank you for your practice. I'm trusting there are many more comments here, but it's hard to both teach and attend to all the moving comments at the same time. So thank you so much for your practice, for your dedication, for being here, supporting yourself, supporting each other. May our practice be a cause and condition for awakening for ourselves and all beings everywhere. Take good care, and see you tomorrow to conclude the series. Take care.

Guided Meditation: Exploring Verticality & Expansiveness