What is meditation: start from where you are

So what is meditation?

First of all can you take a comfortable position,

Preferably sitting up?

If you can with your eyes closed.

And if with your eyes closed is too intensive to activating,

Keep your eyes open first.

I would suggest not to lie down because it will bring about sleep rather than staying present.

So if you can sit up either in a lotus position or on a chair or on a couch.

Now we have all kinds of ideas of what meditation might mean or things we've picked up in magazines,

On the internet,

Things we've read and it's always about getting somewhere,

About getting in a particular state of mind,

A particular silence,

Using mantra,

Voice,

Color,

Imagination.

Now I want to take a much more realistic approach to what meditation might be which is to start really where you are.

Which is to start with conflict we might have,

With tension we might have,

With being disconnected,

With being busy,

With being stressful,

With suffering from maybe hyper vigilance or depression or any other symptom that might be present when we feel emotionally overwhelmed or suffer from post trauma symptoms.

Now really just sitting quiet will be challenging for some of us and allow yourself to fidget,

Allow yourself to move if you have to.

But what one difference is that whenever you move do it with attention,

Do it with awareness.

Now just me saying that to not pretend to or wanting to arrive in a different state of mind but really just to start where you are right now.

See what that does for you already,

If that might take pressure away of expectation,

Of having to force yourself into something and see if that can help you to allow yourself to be busy if you're busy,

To be disconnected if you're disconnected,

To feel depression,

To feel heaviness in the body or to not even feel the body but feel the head or the pressure in the head.

Or maybe you don't even feel connected to the body,

You're into thoughts and those thoughts carry you away in one sense or the other.

Now take a moment to just hold that,

Just be present to that,

Not to be concerned too much about if it's right or wrong,

If it shouldn't be or if it should be,

If you have to or not have to.

But without further rejecting your present state of mind,

Nor without trying to find a direct solution or an escape from where you are,

That if you're occupied,

If you're busy,

If you're in conflict,

If you're stressed,

Then that's a fact of this present moment and hold yourself there just right now.

And as you listen to my voice,

I will slowly,

Deliberately take you out of your habitual comfort zone.

It will allow you to follow my voice,

Distracting you bit by bit from being too focused on yourself,

Being too indulgent in your own preoccupations.

Now if we would consider that our thoughts are busy,

Of all,

All kinds of different thoughts we might have in all different directions.

Now without further analyzing the particular thoughts in themselves,

Can you get the feeling of that movement of thinking itself,

The pressure it gives,

The busyness it produces,

The addictive quality of it,

How easy it is to engage with our own thoughts and be carried away by them.

Now what I want you to shift right now is where you put yourself by being with your thoughts.

So creating a bit of a space between you and the thought process by feeling into the movement of your thinking.

And I will help you along with that.

Thinking usually brings the energy up in the body.

It brings the energy to the head or surrounding the head and it gives a buzz to the head of busyness,

Of pressure,

Of stress.

And when that continues,

When that increases,

It might go into numbness or disconnection or what they also call dissociation.

Now if that's the case for you right now,

Again see if you can just hold that disconnection for a moment without making a further problem of it and without allowing yourself to go further into thoughts surrounding it or it shouldn't be I want to solve this why am I here why did this happen to me etc etc but just to hold that sensation of disconnection and give that some time you see when we listen to disconnection that very listening in itself is creating a connection again it is that very listening to where we are in the present state of mind that something starts to happen and that happening is not because we are acting we are producing or creating something but because we hold ourselves in abeyance of acting on ourselves on acting on our thoughts on our feelings and that very listening to disconnection gives us a sense of our bodies again however slight that might be I might start only with feeling pressure in the head tension in the face or you might move from racing thoughts to this connection to feeling tense in the face or the head or a sense of business and again back to busy thoughts of all types and then back again to disconnection and then back again to feeling the head feeling that pressure or feeling this space in the head to the restricted space in the head and again see if you can just be aware of how that's going for you and what it moves for you right now and again not to get a certain result not to get focused on trying to relax trying to be quiet forget about all that it won't work relaxation is a byproduct of being present is a byproduct of simply staying with what is it is not an aim in itself now as we're doing this you might have noticed also the breath you're breathing your chest going up and down expanding contracting so we have two things now already one is the head the business of our thoughts and now when that increases we might disconnect and we went in the reverse direction as well staying with disconnection then ended up feeling our business of our thought processes and below that how that has an effect on our physical brain our body our head the space around our head and our face and the next thing to introduce is our breathing our breath something that is there for all of us can't be denied it might be shallow it might be short breaths it might be just in the chest and not in the belly and again see if you can just follow the breath as it is without forcing it to change to be different if it's restricted allow it to be restricted if it's shallow allow it to be shallow but see what that connection is with your breath if you can be with that movement of rising collapsing rising collapsing and see where the breath reaches for you if it connects with your belly if it connects with your chest area if it connects with the sides of your body and the body really is where we hold our emotions that are unresolved and the breath is a way of gently connecting with what is unresolved it will show as restriction in the breath which will reflect in tensions we might have in different parts of the body you