Basic Instruction Mindfulness Meditation

Basic mindfulness meditation instruction from our Power of Engaged Awareness course (on engagedmindfulness.mn) with Fleet Maull, Ph.d., co-founder of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute.

Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P, is an author, meditation teacher, consultant, coach, seminar leader, motivational speaker, social entrepreneur, and peacemaker. He is the founder of the Prison Mindfulness Institute, the National Prison Hospice Association, and Windhorse Seminars & Consulting. He is a senior teacher in two Buddhist traditions: the Tibetan Buddhist Shambhala lineage and a Roshi (Zen master) in the Zen Peacemaker Order and Soto Zen lineage.

Transcript

Hi,

Welcome to this first guided mindfulness practice in our Introduction to Mindfulness course.

So,

In this guided practice,

We're going to start with the foundation,

Basic mindfulness of body,

Mindfulness of breathing.

In successive modules and guided practices,

We will work with different aspects of the practice.

We'll explore how we work with that very busy mind that seems to get in the way of being able to practice mindfulness.

We'll work with emotions and how do we practice with our emotions,

With changes in our emotional states and with difficult emotions and so forth.

We'll work with all the different aspects.

We'll talk about bringing the practice into daily living and so forth.

But to begin with,

We're going to start with the foundation,

Basic mindfulness of body,

Mindfulness of breath,

Practice.

And foundational to that,

We're going to talk about posture.

And I'm going to guide you into establishing a good posture.

However,

Even before that,

I would like to say just a few words about attention.

So,

Wherever you are,

You might begin,

You know,

Arranging your seat,

Whatever you're going to,

Whether you're sitting in a chair or on a meditation cushion,

You could begin kind of arranging your situation for practicing sitting mindfulness practice.

Now,

Of course,

If for any reasons of physical limitations,

You need to do this standing up or lying down or leaning against the back of a chair for support,

Please do what works for you.

And we'll talk more about posture in just a moment.

But as you're kind of arranging your situation,

You could begin reflecting on your intention for the practice,

Your intention for the practice.

Now,

What do I mean by intention?

Well,

Very simply,

Why are we doing the practice?

What's our motivation?

What's our intention?

And our intention can be anything as long as it's a positive,

Benevolent intention,

Of course.

And why would it be otherwise?

We're obviously going to be doing this for some beneficial purpose.

That could be to manage our stress.

Maybe we feel like we're getting too stressed out.

We need to do a better job managing our stress.

Maybe we'd like to feel calmer.

Maybe we find ourselves feeling a bit anxious.

We'd like to feel calmer.

We would just like to have more peace or have a sense of ease in our life.

Or maybe we have the sense that practicing mindfulness will help us grow as human beings,

Grow psychologically,

Grow spiritually,

Just continue to evolve and grow as human beings to really become,

You know,

The best versions of ourselves.

Now,

I want to make a point here that's also very foundational.

We're doing this from the view of what we call innate or unconditional basic goodness,

That we are perfectly fine just the way we are.

We're not broken.

We're not missing anything.

We are perfectly fine just the way we are.

And like any life form,

We're designed to grow and thrive.

That's what life forms do.

We grow,

Change,

Learn,

Thrive,

Right?

And so,

In the sense that,

You know,

This practice might help facilitate our ongoing path of evolving and growing,

You know,

Emotionally,

Spiritually,

Psychologically as human beings.

It's not because there's anything wrong with where we are.

It's just that it's natural for us to grow and thrive.

And mindfulness practice can be a wonderful support for our ongoing human journey.

So,

That could be part of our motivation.

Our motivation could be to develop greater self-empathy,

Self-understanding.

I think whatever our motivation is,

And it can be very simple,

Like it just be,

You know,

I just want to feel better.

That could be a natural motivation.

I just want to feel better,

Right?

I'm feeling stressed out.

I'm feeling anxious.

I just want to feel better.

Perfectly fine.

Good motivation.

With whatever motivation we have,

It can be helpful.

Certainly not obligatory in any way,

But it can be helpful also to expand that motivation beyond ourselves.

So,

If I do feel calmer and less stressed out,

More peaceful,

If I feel like I'm,

You know,

Growing in terms of my ability to sort of navigate this body-mind-heart spectrum and kind of interact with the world in a more positive way,

That's probably going to be very beneficial to the people I interact with as well,

Especially,

You know,

My close family members and friends,

Co-workers,

And so forth.

So,

I could have the sense that doing this practice is also going to benefit others.

And I could even imagine or have the aspiration that it will benefit all beings and benefit all of life.

So,

That makes our motivation even vaster and more powerful,

Which can be helpful.

Again,

None of this is obligatory.

Find your way into your own intention,

Your own motivation.

But I'm just putting that out there because people for millennia have found it helpful to have that expansive intention motivation to practice,

Not only for our own benefit,

Which is very important,

That's why we're doing it,

But also for the benefit of others.

Okay.

So,

Having established your intention,

And it may be different every time you sit down to practice,

I would really encourage you,

Every time you sit down to practice formally,

To take a moment to reflect on your intention and see what arises,

And be perfectly fine with whatever arises in the moment.

You know,

If what arises is that,

I'm just really stressed,

I just need to calm down,

It's just about me,

And that's fine.

Whatever arises as your intention,

But it's very helpful to have a clear intention,

Rather than just kind of stumbling into the practice,

Oh yeah,

I was going to practice today,

So I better do it,

Or I think I,

You know,

Be a little more thoughtful,

A little more intentional.

Okay.

So,

Having established our intention,

Whatever that might be,

Then we'll work with posture.

So,

As I said,

If for any reasons of physical limitations,

You need to do this practice standing up,

Lying down,

Leaning against the back of a chair for support,

Please do what works for you.

And if you are able to sit up in a chair,

Or on a cushion,

Or the side of your bed,

Or whatever kind of seating arrangement,

Without needing to use a back support,

That can be very helpful.

And if you can sit relatively upright,

With a relatively uplifted posture,

Elongating the spine,

Extending the crown of your head towards the ceiling,

Or the sky,

And then relaxing around that as much as you can.

It's helpful to have a kind of a concave quality in the lower back,

So,

As opposed to hunching.

You know,

We're all different in terms of our posture,

And the quality of our posture,

Right?

So,

But a lot of us are used to kind of hunching,

So it's good to get that concave quality in your lower back,

And extend the crown of the head up towards the ceiling,

Or the sky a bit,

And then let the rest of your body relax around.

Let the arms just hang loosely in the shoulder sockets,

And then,

You know,

Just so you can see me,

I'm going to come back here a little bit,

And you could have your hands just really loosely hanging in the sockets,

And then just bring your,

Pivot at the elbows,

And just bring your hands up,

And then just let them fall,

Right,

Wherever they fall on your upper legs.

So,

Somewhere there on your thighs,

Above your knees.

Now,

We don't want them too far forward,

Because then we're going to round the shoulders,

And that's going to tend towards sleepiness and distraction.

We don't want to pull them back too far,

Because that's going to put tension here in the chest.

So,

You find that spot that's natural for you,

Right?

So,

Concave quality in the lower back,

Crown of the head extended up towards the ceiling,

Or the sky,

Shoulders and arms relaxed.

And then the legs,

If you're sitting on a cushion,

You can simply just cross them in front of you.

It's not necessary to do any kind of fancy yogic posture,

Like a full lotus or a half lotus.

I can't even do that,

Never have been able to do that.

I just don't have legs that are that limber,

And bless you if you do,

And if that works for you,

Wonderful.

But it's not necessary.

Simply just cross your legs.

That's called tailor pose.

Just cross your legs.

If you're seated on a chair,

Then the ideal is to just have your feet flat on the floor,

About shoulder width apart.

Now,

One of the most important things about your sitting arrangement is that there is a slight decline from the hips down to the knees,

A slight decline from the hips down to the knees.

Because if it's the other way,

It makes it very hard to sit with an uplifted,

Upright posture.

Makes it very hard on the back.

So,

If your knees are way up,

You know,

Get my knees up here,

And then I'm trying to sit with a straight back,

Very,

Very hard.

But if your knees are even a little bit below the hips,

Then it makes it much easier to sit with an upright,

Uplifted posture.

So,

That's why for some,

It works to sit on a bench that you actually kneel on.

There are these benches you can get where you kneel,

And then you put the bench behind you and over your lower legs,

And then you sit on the bench.

So,

You're actually kneeling on this bench,

And you can acquire those.

You can make one yourself,

Or you can acquire them.

They're easy to find online.

Or some people will just kneel,

And they can just kneel and kind of sit on the back of their heels.

Now,

You have to be very limber for that.

Again,

I'm not that limber,

And I've had knee operations,

So I'm not going there in this lifetime.

But you could also use a cushion.

Sometimes people just put a cushion between their lower legs or heels and their rear.

And so,

You can find different ways to do that.

But a kneeling posture,

Obviously,

Usually you have a fairly sharp decline from the hips down to the knees,

And that makes it very comfortable and easy to sit up with a straight posture.

But even just a little,

Just getting a little decline like that makes a world of difference.

Now,

If you're new to mindfulness practice,

New to sitting meditation,

Sitting mindfulness,

You know,

One of the journeys that we all go through is figuring out how to get a comfortable seating arrangement,

Whether it's with different kinds of cushions.

There's the round Japanese-style cushion known as a zappu,

Which is a fancy word in Japanese that means sitting cushion.

Or there's my teacher developed a square one,

Right,

Square cushion,

Which had a fancy Tibetan name that also meant sitting cushion.

And as I said,

There's these benches that you kneel on.

There are some specially shaped cushions that people have tried to design cushions that really support the body in a unique way.

And there's a whole industry around sitting apparatus or sitting apparati,

Right?

So,

We all find our way.

We find our way.

And again,

You can just sit on a chair,

And if you don't need to use the back for support,

If you're not experiencing that kind of back problems or physical limitations,

Then you can just maybe sit forward a bit on the chair and have your feet flat on the floor,

Okay?

So,

You'll find your way with that.

The important thing is a posture that feels awake,

Stable,

Relaxed,

That you can do without a lot of effort.

Now,

To begin with,

There may be some effort if we're not used to sitting up straight,

If we're used to kind of hunching.

So,

We'll have to develop those muscles,

But that'll develop fairly quickly for us with practice.

But we want to develop a seating arrangement and an ability to sit still for extended periods of time in a relaxed,

Stable,

Awake,

Comfortable way.

That's the idea.

And it doesn't mean that we never move either once we've established our posture.

Stillness is part of the practice,

Settling in to stillness.

But we can always adjust our posture if we need to.

We can always adjust our posture if we need to.

So,

There's nothing about being rigid here.

The practice is always about letting go,

Relaxation,

Fluidity.

So,

Rigidness is not helpful.

So,

Another aspect of the posture is the eyes and the eye gaze.

Now,

There are many different techniques and forms of mindfulness practice,

Meditation practice.

Some are done with the eyes open,

Some with the eyes closed,

Some with the gaze raised,

Some with the gaze lowered.

What we encourage is a lowered gaze,

Looking down the bridge of the nose at about a 45-degree angle.

Now,

Why is that?

Well,

First of all,

We're encouraging eyes-open meditation because we feel that if we learn to practice mindfulness and cultivate greater mindfulness with our eyes open,

It more easily translates into our daily living,

Which is really a very large part of the purpose,

Is to bring mindfulness into our daily life.

If you've learned to do it with your eyes closed and you want to do it with your eyes closed,

There are certainly traditions that do it with the eyes closed,

And that's fine.

You can do that.

For me,

That makes for a little more of a transition into our daily life.

But if you wish to do it that way,

You can certainly do it that way.

But what we encourage is eyes open,

But gaze lowered.

So why gaze lowered?

Because it reduces the amount of visual input.

It reduces the amount of visual input,

So we're less distracted.

Now,

Another part of the gaze,

With the eyes open at any rate,

Is it's a relaxed gaze.

It's a relaxed gaze,

A soft gaze.

Now,

That doesn't mean we're blurring out,

But it means we're not staring either.

And as we practice,

We may come to realize that in our regular walking around daily life,

We're always kind of looking,

Right?

We're looking,

And it's like we're projecting out,

Trying to capture things,

Right?

So here,

We're kind of relaxing that.

I've heard someone say it's more like we're seeing from the back of the eyes,

Right?

So we're just relaxing back.

Instead of like out here looking for something,

We're just relaxing it in,

Right?

So it's a relaxed,

Soft gaze.

Then if you like,

You can allow your lips to be slightly parted,

As if you're about to say,

Ah.

That will relax the jaw muscle.

Now again,

There are many techniques.

Some are done with the mouth open,

Some with the mouth closed.

There's differences in the position of our tongue,

Which I'll address in a moment.

But we're encouraging this technique.

It helps relax the jaw and create further relaxation,

To have the mouth slightly open,

The lips slightly parted.

And also that way,

The breath can move freely through the nose and the mouth.

We also encourage you to have the tongue resting on the upper palate,

The roof of the mouth,

Just behind the upper front teeth.

That will actually reduce salivation,

Which can be a distraction,

But it will also encourage the breath to be mostly through the nose,

Unless your nose is obstructed because you have a cold or something.

You'll still be breathing primarily through the nose,

But through the nose and the mouth.

And having the tongue resting on the upper palate,

It just kind of brings into synchronization some of the internal circuitry and energetic flow of the body.

Now,

There are other techniques that are done intentionally with the tongue floating,

Loosening the mouth.

So there are many,

Many different techniques.

But this is kind of a basic foundational technique,

Which is incredibly helpful,

Which could be the technique you use for life.

I mean,

This is not like it's a beginner technique.

It's just foundational.

It's a provenly effective way to practice sitting mindfulness and mindfulness of body,

Mindfulness of breath.

Okay?

So having established our posture,

You're then invited to begin bringing your attention to your body,

Bringing your attention to your body.

Now,

We all have the capacity to move our attention or shift our attention.

In the technical language,

In the scientific literature,

It's called attention switching.

So there's a coffee cup on my desk here,

And I can intentionally put my attention there,

Or I can shift my attention back to the camera where I'm addressing you.

Or I can even without changing where I'm looking,

I can mentally shift my attention to noticing what I'm feeling in my knee right now,

My right knee or my left knee.

Right?

So we can consciously move our attention from one location to another,

From one object to another.

It's called attention switching.

So here you're invited to intentionally bring your attention to your body,

To your body.

Now,

With body,

I want to make a distinction between our conceptual body,

What has been called psychosomatic body,

And what has been called body-body,

Direct physical experience of body.

And that's what we want to work with.

We have these amazing conceptual minds.

It's one of our higher cognitive abilities as human beings is to conceptualize,

To abstract thinking,

And to have concepts.

But it also prevents us from direct experience.

So when we're outside,

You know,

Looking at a tree,

Are we really experiencing that living organism in the tree,

Or does our mind quickly replace that experience with the concept of tree?

Right?

So just knowing that there's that layer of conceptuality,

We're making a gentle effort to really feel the body directly,

The actual tactile physical sensations that make up the moment-to-moment experience we call body.

So you're invited to begin really feeling whatever you can notice and feel at the level of physical sensation,

Body.

Now,

To begin with,

You may want to bring your attention to the more obvious places where you experience physical sensation,

The contact points between your body and your chair,

Or your cushion,

Your feet and the ground,

The contact between your clothing and your skin,

The weight of your clothing,

The texture of your clothing,

Sensations arising with any movement of the air where you are across exposed skin surface areas like your face or neck or hands,

Arms,

Ankles,

Sensations related to the air temperature where you are,

Coolness or warmth,

And the passage of air across the nostrils and or parted lips with each in-breath and out-breath.

So we can tune in to and feel physical sensation all across the surface of the skin from head to toe,

Which is one vast sensory organ.

And the invitation is to explore that with interest,

With caring,

And allow the gentle effort to feel the body,

Feel the actual sensations that make up the experience we call body.

Allow that gentle effort to bring us into the moment because the body is happening right here,

Right now.

The breath is happening right here,

Right now.

Now,

As you're doing the practice,

Your mind will wander.

That's what minds do,

No problem at all.

So if you notice you've become distracted and maybe you went into a whole loop of daydreaming or discursive thinking,

The minute you notice that,

There's like a little moment of awakening there,

Right?

You're suddenly back,

Really appreciating that moment,

That shift.

And then just whatever you were caught up with,

Whatever distraction,

Thought process,

Sound,

Whatever it might be,

You just let it go and come back to the body and back to the breath.

No self-recrimination,

That's not helpful at all.

We don't even need to get in dialogue with ourself about it at all.

We just come back.

Whatever it is we notice that we were distracted,

Well,

We really notice that we're back.

And by noticing that we're now we're back,

We're awake,

We then kind of at the same time notice the quality of being distracted.

And we're curious about that difference,

Distracted mind versus being awake,

Being present.

And we just come back.

Whatever it was that we're caught up with as a distraction,

We just let it go and we come back.

And it really doesn't matter how many times in a given practice session that we need to come back,

Because every time it's like doing a rep,

Like our muscle of mindfulness will get stronger every time we come back,

Because we're training our mind to wake itself up when it's distracted and to come back to presence,

Back to nowness.

Along with all of the sensations we can notice and feel on the surface of the skin from head to toe through what is known as exteroception,

External perception,

We can experience all the internal sensations within the body,

The internal landscape of tactile physical sensation,

Internal touch,

If you will.

And our capacity to feel that is known as interoception,

Which is short for internal perception.

And that's how we know when we're hungry,

When we're tired,

When we're thirsty,

When we need to use the restroom.

It's how we experience physical discomfort and pain.

However,

Absent discomfort,

We often ignore the internal landscape of the body because we're very externally focused and very visually and auditorily focused and often caught up in our thinking,

Right?

So the invitation is here is to really drop into the body and begin to feel and explore the internal landscape as well,

Which includes all the sensations arising and falling away with each in-breath and out-breath.

So as we're breathing in,

The diaphragm muscle is contracting,

Pulling down on the lungs,

Creating a vacuum.

We feel the air going into the lungs,

Feel the air moving across the nostrils and or part of the lips,

Generally a little cooler as it flows in,

Unless we're in a really hot space or something.

Generally a little warmer coming out,

The air having been warmed by the body.

So we can focus on feeling that entire flow of sensate experience with the air flowing in and out of the body with a natural wave-like motion.

We're not doing anything intentional with the breathing.

We're just letting the breath find its own rhythm and just using the breath and the body as the object of mindfulness,

What we're paying attention to,

Moment to moment.

If you like,

You can focus on a particular place where you experience the breath and make that the primary object of mindfulness.

So it could be focusing on the sensations right there as the air passes across the surface of the skin at the nostrils.

Or it could be focusing at the chest,

Feeling the chest rising and falling,

The ribcage opening and closing with each in-breath and out-breath.

Or it could be focusing on the belly,

Feeling the belly rising and falling with the breath.

So that's perfectly fine to choose a particular place where you feel the breath very prominently,

Or you can choose to focus on the entire flow of the breath.

Feeling the muscles,

Feeling the abdominal muscles contracting and relaxing,

The diaphragm muscle contracting and relaxing,

The intercostal muscles between the ribs,

Helping the ribcage open and close.

You can focus on that entire flow of sensate experience or focus your attention at a particular point.

And you can experiment with both of those.

So in terms of your object of mindfulness,

You may wish to have a particular focus with the breath or a particular place where you feel the breath and have that be sort of in the foreground of your attention as the primary object of mindfulness and then a more general awareness of the body a little more in the background.

Or you can work with the entire experience of body and breath and just feeling into it as deeply as you can.

As you're learning the practice,

The important thing is having an object of mindfulness and working with the object of mindfulness in a way that helps you over time become less distracted.

It makes it a little easier to stay with mindfulness of body,

Mindfulness of breathing.

Maybe the mind wandering a little less,

A little easier for it to come back.

But again,

We're not trying to stop thinking.

We're not trying to stop the mind from wandering.

The mind wanders,

We bring it back.

That's what the mind does.

However,

In working with the object of mindfulness in the way that is most effective for ourselves,

It'll help the mind settle over time.

We'll talk in later sessions about what's going on there neurobiologically as we synchronize body and mind.

And we're making that shift that naturally allows the discursiveness of the mind to lessen attention stabilization and awareness to increase and deepen.

So,

Wishing you good practice and please make this your own.

Explore it,

Experiment with it,

And we'll see you in the next module.