MBSR Sitting Meditation For Clarity & Insight

Sitting Meditation Settle into a comfortable sitting position,

Either on a straight back chair or a soft surface on the floor,

With your buttocks supported by cushions or a low stool.

If you use a chair,

It's very helpful to sit away from the back of the chair so that your spine is self-supporting.

If you sit on the floor,

It's helpful if your knees actually touch the floor.

Experimenting with the height of the cushions helps until you feel comfortably and firmly supported.

Whatever you sit on,

Arrange things so that your knees are lower than your hips.

Allow your back to adopt an erect,

Dignified,

And comfortable posture.

If sitting on a chair,

Place your feet flat on the floor with your legs uncrossed.

And if you desire,

Gently close your eyes.

Bringing your awareness to the level of physical sensations by focusing your attention on the sensations of touch and pressure in your body,

Where it makes contact with the floor and whatever you're sitting on.

Take a few moments to explore these sensations,

Just as in the body scan.

Now bring your awareness to the changing patterns of physical sensations in the lower abdomen as the breath moves in and out of your body.

It may be helpful to place your hand on your lower belly and become aware of the changing pattern of sensations where your hand makes contact with your abdomen.

Once you've tuned into these sensations,

You can remove your hand and continue to focus on the sensations.

Focus your awareness on the sensations of slight stretching as the abdominal walls rise with each in-breath and of gentle deflation as it falls with each out-breath.

As best as you can,

Follow with your awareness the changing physical sensations in the lower abdomen all the way through as the breath enters your body on the in-breath and all the way through as the breath leaves your body on the out-breath.

Perhaps noticing the slight pauses between one in-breath and the following out-breath,

And between one out-breath and the following in-breath.

There's no need to try to control the breathing in any way.

Simply let the breath breathe itself.

And as best you can,

Also bring this attitude of allowing to the rest of your experience.

There's nothing to be fixed,

No particular state to be achieved.

And as best you can,

Simply allow your experience to be your experience without needing it to be other than it is.

Thank you.

Sooner or later,

Your mind will wander away from the focus on the breath in the belly to thoughts,

Planning,

Daydreams,

Drifting along,

Whatever.

This is perfectly okay.

It's simply what minds do.

It's not a failure or a mistake.

When you notice that your awareness is no longer on the breath,

Gently congratulate yourself.

You've come back,

And you are once more aware of your experience.

You may want to acknowledge briefly where the mind has been,

Like,

Ah,

There's thinking,

Or ah,

There's planning.

And then gently escort the awareness back to a focus on the changing pattern of physical sensations in the lower abdomen,

Renewing the intention to pay attention to the ongoing in-breath or out-breath,

Whichever you find.

However often you notice that the mind has wandered,

And it will quite likely happen over and over again,

As best you can,

Congratulate yourself each time on reconnecting with your experience in the moment,

Gently escorting the attention back to the breath.

And as best you can,

Bring a quality of kindness to your awareness,

Perhaps sensing the repeated wanderings of the mind as opportunities to bring patience and gentle curiosity to your experience.

Again,

When your mind wanders off,

If it wanders off,

We just gently go back.

And we go back to the breath.

And now,

As best you can,

Allow the awareness to expand around the breath to include,

As well as,

A sense of physical sensations throughout the whole body.

While still aware in the background of the movements of the breath,

Change your primary focus so that you become aware of a sense of the body as a whole and of the changing patterns of sensation throughout the body.

Almost as if the whole body were breathing.

If you choose,

Together with this wider sense of the body as a whole,

And of the breath moving in and out,

Include awareness of the more local particular patterns of physical sensations that arise,

Where the body makes contact with the floor,

The chair,

The cushion,

Or the stool,

The sensations of touch,

Pressure,

Or contact of the feet or knees with the floor,

Or the buttocks with whatever supports them,

The hands where they rest on the thighs or on each other,

As best as you can,

Hold all these sensations together with the sense of the breath and on the body as a whole in a wider space of awareness of physical sensations.

The mind will wander repeatedly away from the breath and body,

And this is natural and to be expected,

And in no way a mistake.

Whenever you notice that your awareness has drifted,

Once again you might want to congratulate yourself.

You've woken up.

Gently note where your mind was,

And kindly focus your attention back to your breathing,

And to a sense of your body as a whole.

As best you can,

Keep things simple,

Gently attending to the actuality of sensations throughout your body from one moment to the next.

As you sit,

You might notice some sensations are particularly intense,

And you might be repeatedly drawn to these sensations and away from your intended focus on the breath or body as a whole.

You may want to use these times to experiment with choosing intentionally either to shift posture or to remain still and bring the focus of awareness into the region of intensity.

If you choose to remain still,

Then as best you can explore with gentle and wise attention the detailed pattern of the sensations here.

What precisely do the sensations feel like?

Where exactly are they?

And do they vary over time from one part of the region of intensity to another?

Not so much thinking about them as just feeling them.

You may want to use the breath as a vehicle to carry awareness into such regions of intensity,

Breathing into them just as the body scan,

And breathe out from those sensations,

Softening and opening with the out-breath.

Whenever you find yourself carried away from awareness in the moment by the intensity of physical sensations,

Or in any other way,

Remind yourself that you can always reconnect with the here and now by refocusing awareness on the movements of the breath or on the sense of the body as a whole.

Once you've gathered yourself in this way,

Allow the awareness to expand once more so it includes a sense of sensations throughout the body.

Allowing now the focus of your awareness to shift from sensations in the body to hearing.

Bring your attention to the ears,

And then allow the awareness to open and expand so that there's receptiveness to sounds as they arise wherever they arise.

There's no need to go searching for sounds or listening for particular sounds.

Try to make that as best you can simply open your awareness so that it is receptive to sounds from all directions as they arise.

Sounds that are close,

Sounds that are far away,

Sounds that are in front or behind,

Or above or below you.

Open to a whole space of sound around you.

Aware of obvious sounds and of more subtle sounds,

Aware of the space between sounds,

And aware of the silence.

As best you can,

Be aware of sounds simply as sensations.

When you find that you're thinking about the sounds,

Reconnect as best you can with the direct awareness of their sensory qualities,

Patterns of pitch,

Loudness,

Duration,

Rather than their meanings or implications.

Whenever you notice that your awareness is no longer focused on sounds in the moment,

Gently acknowledge where the mind has moved to,

And then retune the awareness back to sounds as they arise and pass from one moment to the next.

Mindfulness of sound can be a very valuable practice on its own.

It is a way of expanding awareness and giving it a more open,

Spacious quality,

Whether or not the practice is preceded by awareness of body sensations or followed,

As here,

By awareness of thoughts.

When you are ready,

Letting go of the awareness of sounds and refocusing your attention so that the object of your awareness are now thoughts as events in the mind.

Just as with sounds,

You focused your awareness on whatever sounds arose,

Noticing them arise,

Develop,

And pass away.

So now,

As best as you can,

Bring awareness to the thoughts that arise in the mind in just the same way.

Noticing when the thoughts arise and focusing your awareness on them as they pass through the space of the mind and eventually disappear.

There is no need to try to make thoughts come or go.

Just let them arise naturally in the same way that you related to sounds arising and passing away.

Some people find it helpful to bring awareness to thoughts in the mind and to focus on the sounds that arise.

Some people find it helpful to bring awareness to thoughts in the mind in the same way that they might if the thoughts were projected on a screen at the cinema.

You sit watching the screen,

Waiting for a thought or image to arise.

And when it does,

You pay attention to it so long as it is there on the screen.

And then you let it go as it passes away.

You might also find it helpful to see thoughts as clouds moving across a vast,

Spacious sky.

If any thoughts bring with them intense feelings or emotions,

Pleasant or unpleasant,

As best as you can,

Note their emotional charge and intensity.

And let them be as they already are.

If at any time you feel that your mind has become unfocused and scattered,

Or if it keeps getting repeatedly drawn into the drama of your thinking and images,

You might like to notice where this is affecting your body.

Often when we don't like what's happening,

We feel a sense of contraction or tightness in the face,

Shoulders or torso,

And a sense of wanting to push away our thoughts and feelings.

See if you notice any of this going on for you when some intense feelings arise.

And then once you've noticed that,

See if it's possible to come back to the breath and a sense of the body as a whole,

Sitting and breathing,

And to use this focus to anchor and stabilize your awareness.

Then when you're ready,

You can go back to opening up to the thought as your focus of attention.

Have a great day.

And now gently and if you'd like to,

Perhaps you could explore the possibility of letting go of any particular object of attention,

Like the breath or sounds or thoughts,

And let the field of awareness be open to whatever arises in the landscape of the mind and the body and the world.

See if it's possible to simply rest in awareness itself,

Effortlessly knowing whatever arises from moment to moment.

That might include the breath,

Sensations from the body,

Sounds,

Thoughts or feelings.

As best you can,

Just sit completely awake,

Not holding on to anything,

Not looking for anything,

Having no agenda whatsoever other than embodied wakefulness.

If at any point you notice that what arises takes you in a direction and challenges your attention,

This open awareness attention,

Then you can always go back to the breath to center you again.

And then when you're ready,

Open up again to whatever arises.

And when you're ready,

Bringing the sitting to a close,

Perhaps return to the breath for a few minutes,

Going back to noticing the sensations of your breath as it comes in and out of your body without changing anything,

Just noticing what's there.

And then when you're ready,

Open up again to whatever arises.

And then when you're ready,

Bring the sitting to a close,

Perhaps return to noticing the sensations of your breath as it comes in and out of your body without changing anything,

Just noticing what's there.

And then when you're ready,

Open up again to whatever arises.