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Guided Meditation: Relaxation

So a warm hello from IMC^[1] in Redwood City, and I appreciate how far-spread and how close this YouTube community is, and that we've gathered together here. I like to think of it as sitting together in a wide circle to meditate. Thank you.

For me, one of the surprising aspects of Buddhist meditation was how much it involved the body. So much so, that I think sometimes the word sati^[2], translated into English as mindfulness, maybe should have been translated as bodyfulness, because it plays such a central role in attention, awareness, sensing, and feeling.

But one of the surprising things is how much the focus is not on the corporeal body—not the body that will be left when you're a corpse—but rather the animate body. The body that is animated certainly with life, but more than that, it's animated also with the functioning of the mind.

In Buddhism, this body-mind thing is not so separate. Sometimes we consider them to be working together inseparably. Much of the way in which we experience our body is mediated by the state, the quality, and the activities of the mind. As we dip deeper into the body, there's a reciprocal relationship between the body and the mind. As the mind changes, so does our experience of the animate body, the experienced body.

The way that we experience the body is not the same thing as the corporeal body. Experience is mediated partly through our perceptions, our orientations, and the states of mind we have. It's remarkable how the body shifts and changes as we become more embodied, more present, and the mind becomes more healthy, more settled, and more at ease. This was a huge surprise for me in my practice, and I'm hoping that for many of you it is, has been, or will be a similar kind of delight and surprise, and of a profound nature, to appreciate the body in a deep way: the experienced body, the animate body.

One of the ways this reciprocal relationship works between the mind and the body is that when the body is relaxed, it has a huge impact on the mind. The more tense the body, the more it supports tension in the mind. The more relaxed the body is, the more it supports the mental tension to soften and relax. So today the focus will be relaxing the body.

Taking a posture, being careful with your posture. Align and adjust your posture so that it's most balanced and open, and you're sitting most upright, so that when it relaxes the body doesn't collapse or slump. When it relaxes, it is relaxing into a support and aliveness.

Begin by lowering your gaze, relaxing your eyes, and gently closing your eyes. When I take deep breaths at the beginning of the meditation, I imagine that the movement of the inhale begins deep inside and expands outward like a big massage: stretching, moving, expanding the torso and chest. Taking a deep, deep breath. And as you exhale, relax into the body.

Deep, deep breathing, and then relax. Letting your breathing return to normal. On the exhale, progressively relax the body from the bottom up. Maybe just exhale to soften any tension or holding in your legs, around the knees, the thighs.

As you exhale, relax the whole area around your hips, your hip joints, where your bottom connects with your cushion or the floor. Relax.

On the exhale, relaxing the belly. Letting the belly soften as you exhale. Maybe as it softens, it settles down into the lower torso to create some more stability: a ground, a floor for the upper torso to rest on.

And then relaxing the upper torso, the chest, rib cage, back and forth, forward and behind.

And then on the exhale, relaxing the shoulders. Allowing the shoulders to give in to the gentle pull of gravity.

Relaxing the arms, the hands, the fingers.

And relaxing the muscles of the face. Softening around the mouth. Sometimes this is helped by gently, very slightly opening your lips, moving the middle of the lips apart a little bit. At least so the lips aren't pressing against each other. Softening the jaws.

And softening around the eyes. Letting the eyes rest in the sockets. If it's more restful, even with your eyes closed, let any looking that the eyes are trying to do be a gentle looking backwards, down into the body, so the eyes aren't reaching out.

And softening the forehead.

And then if there's any tension or pressure in the mind, in the brain area, or anywhere else you associate with the mind, let the mind relax, soften.

And then, through this soft attention, settle your awareness on your breathing. Feeling the inhales and the exhales.

And on the inhale, feel your body in whatever way it shows itself. And on the exhale, relax your body in whatever places there can be release.

Breathing in, breathing out. Feeling the body, relaxing the body.

And as we approach the end of this sitting, perhaps now you can do another round of relaxation of the body. As you exhale to relax deep at the core, the core of the body. The way that you might be held in check, closed, or held back, just for the last minutes, relax that.

To relax again around the face, deep in the mind.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, bring to mind a saying: in times of crisis, one person who stays calm can keep everyone calm. I don't know if it's always true, but it's a wonderful principle. May it be that as we go out into the world today, the next 24 hours, that may be our gift: to keep our body relaxed, a calm body, a calm presence.

People carry so much tension, chronic tension. Some of that tension is a response to being around other tense people. If we can turn that around and find a way to be relaxed, let that be the gift, so other people can relax, can feel at ease, can let go of some of their tension and anxiety.

You might see what ways being relaxed in body is beneficial for the people around you. Being relaxed. And being relaxed, maybe it's easier to have our hearts concerned with the welfare and happiness of others. Maybe we live this day caring for others so they can be happier, safer, more peaceful, and more free. May all beings everywhere be happy, peaceful, and free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Body (1 of 5) Relaxing the Body

So this day, this week, the focus is on that part of the mindfulness instruction that has to do with mindfulness of the body. Of course, the mindfulness of the body practice begins with mindfulness of breathing, the focus for last week. Breathing is a completely embodied part of our experience, and now it begins opening and helping open us to the rest of the body.

The simplest instructions for mindfulness that we teach here at IMC is to use the breathing as the basis, as the home base for meditation. As a default, if you are wondering where to have your attention, have your attention with your breathing. Make it a default, an automatic choice. But if something else becomes more compelling—there used to be the teaching that when something else becomes predominant, there are two things you can do.

You can either let go of the breathing entirely and bring your full attention to this other thing that is predominant. For now, it's going to be the body. If something becomes more predominant in the body, then we practice mindfulness of the body, mindfulness of that place.

The other option is to stay with the breathing, but in a sense, maybe through the imagination slightly, imagine you're breathing through or with the strong sensations in your body.

Sooner or later, the body will speak up with strong sensations. For beginners in meditation, taking a meditation posture is quickly uncomfortable. Slowly over time, the body adjusts, stretches, opens, and gets stronger, so that there's some ease in this yogic posture of meditation. It's well worth it to work through that time, but you don't need to strain yourself meditating. You don't have to force yourself to stay with discomfort. If some discomfort becomes too strong, then change your posture. If it feels like you're getting stressed by the meditation itself, then don't stay with uncomfortable things.

But there's also this turning towards what's there in the body. Today's topic is relaxation: to relax the body in a deep way.

One early time where I started learning the value of relaxation was when I was a Zen^[3] student. There were times that my knees hurt a lot from sitting. We meditated a lot, and in Zen, you weren't really supposed to move while you're meditating. If you were uncomfortable, you had to kind of bear it.

I noticed at some point that around the knee pain there would be subtle micro-tensions in the muscles around it, like an expression of resistance to the pain, contracting around it. But that tightness actually made the pain worse.

If I relaxed those micro-tensions, the pain got better; it got less. It was just enough of a difference to go from being overwhelmed to managing fine with it. But I had to be very attentive, because if I didn't pay attention, the reactivity I had would creep in unknowingly, and then the muscles would be tight again. So I learned to kind of stay there, sense the sensations there, the tightness, and relax them.

I learned also that I sometimes had subtle tension in my fingers. They looked ever so slightly pulled in, and it was an expression of some kind of feeling like I had to work hard here, I had to engage now in doing this meditation thing. So I learned to recognize that subtle tension in the fingers and relax it, and keep it relaxed. That was in reciprocal relationship to the attitude that I had to work hard here. As I relaxed the fingers, that attitude would soften. Unknowingly, the attitude would return, and the fingers would get tense again.

So I learned to make it a regular part of the check-in as I meditated to make sure my fingers were relaxed. It was something that was relatively easy to do for me; it was a micro-relaxation, a micro-attention.

Same thing with the belly. In the early years of meditation practice, I had a lot of tension in my belly. My belly was always tightened up and held in. I didn't make it a big project, but probably two or three times in the course of meditation—beginning, middle, or near the end—I would relax the belly. Oftentimes in the beginning, it would just tighten right up again. I didn't make much to do with it; I just periodically relaxed it.

But over time, over the months of doing this, the belly learned what it was like to be relaxed. As the belly became more familiar with it and more at home in it, it became more of a regular place, easier to be there in a relaxed belly. But also, the anxiety that seemed to be the genesis of that stomach tension began to loosen. I hadn't recognized it until I started hanging out with the belly and feeling the tension there.

So as you do mindfulness of the body, it's helpful to keep an eye out for where the tension is, where the holding patterns are, the tightness. Do not make it a big project or be very ambitious about the relaxation, but it is helpful to relax.

As many of you know, I teach here on these 7:00 a.m. meditations to relax at the beginning. Always to relax at the beginning. But as the meditation goes along, it's useful to check in. Is there some tension there? Has any tension crept in?

In some of my longest retreats where I sat in very deep states of meditation, I developed a practice. I would sit sometimes for a few hours at a time, and I would pull myself out of the meditation with my mind. I would still look like I was meditating, but I would pull out of the concentrated state and look around for a few seconds to see if any tension had crept in. If there was, then I would relax that tension.

Often the relaxation had to do with something in the upper head that was connected to trying a little bit too hard to be focused, a little too hard to concentrate, causing a little contraction there. So I'd relax, and with the relaxation, the consciousness softened, and then I would dip back into the deep place of meditation. I found it so useful to always come out and check.

Some people, as they get concentrated, get tension in their face. Come out of the concentrated state, relax the tension, and then see if you can get concentrated without that tension building up.

Some people find that in meditation, even if they don't try to do a lot of relaxation actively, just meditating is relaxing. The genesis of a lot of tension has to do with the tense way we think and the tense things we think about. In meditation, as the thinking quiets down, that source of tension begins to lessen and become weaker and weaker. So some people find simply staying with the breath, focusing on the breath, letting their attention ride the breath, means there's not so much attention available to all this thinking that is stress-producing. Just with that, people find themselves relaxing sometimes progressively, and sometimes they realize after the fact, "Boy, am I relaxed," without trying.

So it's important also not to try too much to relax. There were times when I tried to relax my body and I made it a project, and I couldn't quite do it. I could do a little bit, and I'd try some more, and do a little bit, and it just kept me busy in meditation. And then I wouldn't try to relax. I would just stay focused, be with my breathing, get concentrated on my breathing, and lo and behold, that part of my body relaxed. We don't always want to do a frontal assault on our tension. Sometimes we just have to accept it, allow it to be there, do the practice, and trust that it will relax on its own.

Finally, an interesting thing to do with relaxation of the body: if you feel there's tension somewhere in the body that doesn't want to relax, don't worry about it. But sometimes it's very interesting to relax around it. Relax the attitude towards it. Relax this outer layer of reactivity around it. Like my knee pain, I tightened up around it.

If the shoulders are very tense or the belly is tense and it can't relax, don't worry about it. But maybe it's possible to relax a little bit in a wider circle in the body, just around it. There might be a softening that can happen.

So today's theme is relaxation. Relaxation is just—I think of it as kind of like the entry-level taste of the deep letting go that in Buddhism is called liberation. It partakes of and shares some of the goodness and some of the qualities of deep, deep relaxation, freedom, and liberation. We get a hang of it and a feel for it. The body gets a sense, and it helps prepare the ground for deeper and deeper letting go and relaxation as meditation proceeds.

So thank you for today. You might spend the next 24 hours familiarizing yourself with the tensions in your body, the times and places and ways in which you tighten up. It might be fascinating to see how much it goes on. But also, are there simple ways you can relax? What happens if you stay relaxed or don't allow the tensions to build? How does that affect your day?

Thank you very much.