Inner Space, Outer Space

During this meditation, we will embark on an extraordinary journey, discovering the subtle connections between your inner world and the universe around you. You will discover the beautiful parallels between your internal structures and cosmic wonders, helping you to expand your felt experience of space within.

Ambient Music: More of No-Thing By Tom Evans

Transcript

Find a comfortable position,

Either sitting or laying down.

Allow your body to be fully supported.

Take a deep breath in and out.

Feel yourself settling into this moment.

We'll be exploring the spaces within your body,

Moving from the outer layers inward,

Discovering how the universe exists within you just as you exist within it.

Take three deep breaths.

With each inhale,

Imagine you're drawing in clarity and awareness.

With each exhale,

Release any tension or distraction.

If at any point you're unfamiliar with any words,

Terms,

Or definitions brought up,

It's okay.

Your body has known about these structures long before language existed to describe them.

If your thinking mind becomes restless,

Hand it a lab coat.

Give it the role of a watchful scientist with a clipboard,

Diligently taking notes for later.

Take a deep breath down into your body and allow your awareness to descend below the level of language and words.

Bring your awareness to the outer boundary of your body,

Your skin.

While it appears solid,

Zoom in with your mind's eye to see that your skin is actually a constellation of cells with microscopic spaces between them.

These tiny channels allow for the exchange of moisture,

Temperature,

And sensation.

Feel the subtle layers of your skin with specialized sensory gateways that connect your inner world with the world around you.

Like the boundary between our atmosphere and space,

Your skin is not an impenetrable wall,

But a permeable membrane.

Traveling further inward,

We'll tap into the ever-present web of fascial connective tissue,

A living tapestry connecting muscles,

Nerves,

Vessels,

Bones,

And organs to one another.

The fluid-filled spaces in between the webs of fascia allow for streams of movement where tissues can slide and glide against one another in harmony.

Visualize the intricate network of fascia as a cosmic web and bring your awareness to the spaces between strands.

The spaces in between your fascia are like the expanses between planets and their moons,

Necessary voids that create structure and allow movement.

Within this living architecture,

Your fascia doesn't merely exist,

It communicates.

This piezoelectric mesh network transmits mechanical forces and biochemical signals through your entire being like gravitational waves rippling through space-time.

Just as these cosmic ripples are felt by celestial bodies across vast distances,

Your fascia links parts of your body that appear separate but share profound and measurable relationships.

A gentle shift in your foot can resonate all the way to your neck,

Just as the energy of coronal mass ejections from the surface of the sun creates for an awe-inspiring and vibrant light displays of the aurora borealis and aurora australis.

Traveling deeper,

Feel the spaciousness between your muscles,

Like galaxies that appear solid from a distance but are composed of countless stars and vast emptiness between them.

Your muscle fibers contain innumerable thick and thin filaments floating in their own parallel universe,

Connecting to form the cross-bridges that allow your muscles to contract and relax,

To generate movement and heat.

Now,

Bring your awareness to the vessels and channels within your body,

Such as your cardiovascular and lymphatic system and the dura mater that contains your spinal cord.

Each of these contain a central space,

A lumen,

Through which flows the life-sustaining current of your body.

Your arteries carry oxygen and nutrients to every cell in your universe,

And your veins wash away the carbon dioxide and metabolic byproducts,

Detoxifying your body to create homeostasis.

The branching patterns of your vessels and capillaries mirror the branching arms of spiral galaxies.

Around your brain and spinal cord flows the brine-blessed cerebral spinal fluid,

A protective cosmic ocean that cradles your consciousness,

Pulsing with the rhythm of your breath and the waves of the universe.

Using your mind's eye,

Follow these waves back to source.

Like twinkling neural networks connected by living wires,

Our neurons send electrical messages through the branching pathways of our nervous system.

They're myelin-coated fibers,

Speeding signals like shooting stars across our inner universe.

This pattern of connecting electrical signals form much like how ancient stargazers saw celestial constellations.

Distant points of light connecting in our perception to form recognizable shapes like animals,

Mythological figures,

And water-bearers,

Allowing meaning to emerge from seemingly random arrangements,

Just as our thoughts,

Sensations,

And movements arise from countless neural firing patterns.

Traveling deeper still,

Sense the hollow spaces within your organs,

Your lungs with their branching airways and tiny alveoli,

Millions of tiny air sacs where oxygen enters your bloodstream.

With each breath,

Feel the expansion of these spaces,

Like nebulae growing and contracting in this cosmic vast.

Feel the hollow spaces within your heart,

The four chambers pulsing with the rhythm that has sustained you since before birth.

Like the periodic flaring of a neutron star,

Your heartbeat marks the passage of time in your personal universe.

Now,

Sense the spacious cavities of your digestive tract,

From mouth to intestines,

A long,

Winding tunnel where the outside world is transformed into your very being.

This is your inner Milky Way,

A spiraling pathway where transformations occur.

Deeper still,

Enter your skeletal system.

Though bones appear solid,

They contain countless tiny spaces with compact concentric channels and canals that allow blood vessels and nerves to reach every living cell.

Spongy bone contains large spaces filled with marrow,

The birthplace of your blood cells.

Visualize your bones as an asteroid,

Seemingly large and solid,

But actually filled with spaces.

The red marrow within your bones is like the heart of a star,

Forging new elements,

Creating the very cells that carry life throughout your body.

At the deepest level,

Enter the microscopic world of your cells.

Each cell is a universe unto itself,

With a vast cytoplasm containing organelles floating like planets around the nuclear sun.

The spaces between your cells are like the vacuum of space,

Not empty,

But filled with interstitial fluid,

The radiant backdrop of your body.

This fluid carries messages from cell to cell,

Just as electromagnetic waves carry light across the universe.

Within each cell nucleus lies your DNA,

Containing the information that makes you uniquely you.

These molecular patterns echo the spiraling patterns of galaxies,

The sacred geometry that exists at all scales of the universe.

At the molecular level,

The atoms that make up your body are mostly empty space.

The solid matter of your being is an illusion.

You are,

In fact,

Vastly empty,

Just as the universe is mostly void.

The electrons orbiting the nuclei of your atoms are like planets circling distant stars,

With proportionally similar vast distances between them.

The forces holding these particles together are the same forces that bind the cosmos.

Every atom in your body was once forged in the heart of a star.

The carbon,

Oxygen,

Nitrogen,

And calcium that form your tissues were created in stellar furnaces billions of years ago.

You are,

Quite literally,

Made of stardust.

With this awareness,

Feel your entire body as a living galaxy.

A perfectly imperfect creation of cells,

Fluids,

And spaces,

All working in harmony.

The spaces within you are not empty voids,

But vital aspects of your existence,

Just as the apparent emptiness of space is essential to the structure of our universe.

Feel how the rhythm of your breath mirrors the expansion and contraction of the universe.

Feel how the beating of your heart echoes the pulsing of distant stars.

Feel how the flowing of your blood parallels the rotation of galaxies.

There is no separation between the spaces within you and the cosmos beyond.

Inner space and outer space are reflections of the same fundamental patterns,

The same physical laws,

The same essential nature.

Gradually begin to bring in your awareness back to your physical body as a whole.

Feel the weight of your body being supported.

Notice the contact points between your body and the surface beneath you.

Take a deep breath in,

And as you exhale,

Carry this cosmic awareness with you.

You are not separate from the universe.

You are the universe experiencing itself in human form.

When you're ready,

Gently wiggle your fingers and toes,

And slowly open your eyes,

Carrying this spacious awareness with you into your day.

Reviews

What a wondrous exploration with wonderfully complementary ambient … love this cosmically aligned body scan