EP 10: A Meditation With Our Bodies

Our minds often race. It is natural. When we sit for meditation they get filled with gotta do things, should do, other ideas and soon we are in a trance.

When we are in a trance, sometimes it is like a dream when we drift away and have no idea that we have left our here and now and have fallen into a series of thoughts along a line of thoughts.

We have talked about how to wake up from a trance. Often we just realize that we are off in this dream and say to our selves “oh, look at that, I was off in a dream.”

This meditation however, is an attempt to stay completely in our bodies and discover everything we feel in our body as we walk across Central Park. By staying in our body, we awaken this enormous resource – as a listening post – and shut off our frontal lobe from taking us away from here.

The goal is to stay here and experience everything that is happening HERE.

It can train us to have this resource of our body, as a tool to bring us back when our mind takes us away into a trance or is locked up in anxiety or panic.

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

I hope you enjoy this work.

Ep. 9: Listen

How often do you say you are “listening” but what you are really is preparing to speak?

How often do you feel the person you’re speaking to is kind of listening and how often do you feel that they are just preparing to speak?

Well, how well do you listen to yourself?

What are we listening for and how do we listen?

Might it help to put our hands on our body to listen? To feel?

Let’s explore this concept in this meditation.

EP 8: Their Hands and Their Feet

Recently I visited my mom and dad.  I am blessed that they still thrive and during my visit I took the time to massage their feet while they were relaxing.

I often talk too much – as you know – and I felt that this was a way just to be present with them and not talk.  In fact, it came to me from a story about a man who was not feeling great and how his friend, an elder, would come every day and massage his feet and not exchange anything more than the tough.  The man who was massaged said that of all the people that offered help, the friend who came and massaged him without words was the most helpful visitor of all.

Sometimes the person who needs visiting is us and sometimes the person who needs to be visited, or held or touched is another.

In this meditation, we explore a bit of both.

Ep 7: The Kind of Thoughts We Wish To Dominate Our Lives

“A single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

― Henry David Thoreau

(credit for finding this quote goes to Tara Brach)

So, how do we train our selves to make a deep mental path?

I had written a post last year that gives some ideas but I’d like to take a more meditation oriented step here with this meditation. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

EP 6: The Inbetween

Isaac Stern, the great composer and conductor (I think) said that music (or maybe even life) happens between “the notes,” to quote Yo-yo Ma in his interview with Krista Tippett this morning in their podcast.

They were talking about music.

In yoga, we talk about transitions – between the postures.

And in life, well we talk about change.

Change is where life takes place, in many ways.

For me, I have been working on keeping my focus on myself – and watching myself – in the midst of my change – my minds shift from one topic to the other and when it comes awake from a mental trance.

In this meditation, we explore this concept. I hope you enjoy.