The Open Heart Meditation

This heart-based meditation is from the book 'Mindfulness for Women' by Vidyamala Burch and Claire Irvin and accompanies Chapter 10 ‘Keep Flowing and Loving’.

Transcript

The open heart meditation.

Begin by establishing your meditation posture.

Align your body as best you can and set yourself up to be as comfortable as possible.

Give the weight of your body up to gravity.

Allow your whole body to settle.

And gently rest your awareness inside the body as you feel the sensations and the movement of the breath.

Can you feel the breath moving inside the body as well as at the edges of the body?

Can you allow the front sides and the back of the body to be massaged by the gentle rhythm of the natural breath?

As your awareness begins to settle into the meditation,

Check that you're not blocking or resisting any unpleasant or painful aspects of your experience.

Scan through your body for any feelings of tightness or resistance.

See if you can gently and tenderly relax your body and feel the breath.

See if you can gently and tenderly include these in your field of awareness with a sense of kindliness and feel how your experience is continually flowing and changing.

Respond to any discomfort as you'd naturally respond to a loved one who was hurting.

Rest here for a few moments and cradle the discomfort in a soft and tender breath.

And if you have a strong sense of resistance or aversion or your experience feels hard or defensive,

Then accept that this is how it is for this moment and cradle this in a soft and tender accepting breath.

Allow the weight of the body to settle back down towards the earth with each out-breath,

Settling over and over again.

Now very gently shift the gaze of your awareness to settle upon the pleasant aspects of the moment.

Rest your attention very lightly on anything pleasant,

No matter how subtle.

Something like the feeling of the Sun falling on your skin perhaps.

A soft face,

Warm hands,

A pleasant sound.

Or maybe you simply notice an absence of the unpleasant.

Be careful that you don't only value the big intense experiences.

Remember to pay attention to and appreciate the subtle or even ordinary pleasant experiences that are always there waiting to be noticed if you include them in the light of awareness in the right way.

So gently scan through all of your experiences in the body,

In your senses,

And rest upon,

Dwell upon the pleasant and enjoyable as they rise and fall,

Moment by moment.

And now if you imagine that you've just focused on the unpleasant and pleasant aspects of the moment with a precise and close-up lens of awareness,

Very gently broaden and widen your perspective to cultivate a wide angle lens of awareness.

Rest back in your experience,

Rest back in your body,

And allow any unpleasant aspects of your experience to arise and pass away moment by moment without resistance.

And allow any pleasant and enjoyable aspects of your experience to rise and fall moment by moment without clinging onto them.

In the same way as the breath comes into being and passes away moment by moment in a continuous flow of movement and changing sensations,

Allow the unpleasant and pleasant to come into being and pass away in a continuous flow of movement and changing sensations.

If you find it helpful,

You can imagine that your moment by moment experiences with a pleasant or unpleasant are like waves on the ocean which are continuously rising and falling.

If you react to each wave of pleasure or pain with knee-jerk,

Aversion or grasping,

Your awareness is like a small thingy bobbing about at the mercy of each wave,

Each passing sensation.

But if you cultivate a broad,

Stable,

Non-reactive awareness that includes all of your experience with a sense of wholeness and balance,

Your awareness becomes like a strong and beautiful yacht carving its way through the waves and the sea.

Can you get a sense of your awareness being like this beautiful yacht as you rest here,

Breathing in and out,

Including all of your experience within a fluid,

Open perspective moment by moment,

Feeling stability in your body like the ballast provided by the keel of the yacht and having a broad and open perspective like the view from the mast.

Now allow your experience to expand and ever widening circles to include other people and all of life.

Rest in a quality of awareness that is open and receptive as everything flows on and on and on,

Flowing freely.

Bring a kindly,

Tender quality to the natural breath.

On the in-breath,

Breathing kindliness and acceptance.

And on the out-breath,

Breathe out kindliness and tenderness that flows through your whole body and out into the world.

Can you allow your edges to feel a little softer and more porous as the breath flows in and out?

Maybe you can even have a sense of the whole world breathing,

Expanding and subsiding,

Expanding and subsiding,

A ceaseless gentle movement and flow,

Allowing the whole world to be bathed and saturated in a kindly,

Loving breath,

In and out.

And very gradually begin to bring the meditation to a close,

Perhaps form an intention to take this broad and stable,

More fluid perspective with you as you move back into your daily life.

Allow your body to be grounded,

Stable and receptive to the kindly breath as you continue to relate to all experience as a flow of passing sensations,

Thoughts and emotions.

When you're ready,

Gradually move your body,

Taking a kindly breath with you as you move on to the rest of your day.

Reviews

Just as I was starting to grasp the guidance of this meditation, you introduced the imagery of the ocean. This came at the perfect moment! This image, as well as the waves, dinghy and yatch really deepened my understanding. Thank you! I will be returning to this meditation again and again.

Excellent. Centering. And I love your beautiful voice! Thank you.

A gentle practice to return to presence and kindness and stability.

Thank you

Lovely! I especially like the boat metaphor, which I have tweaked slightly to that of an inexperienced sailor tossed about and that of an experienced one guiding their little boat with ajustments to the sails and an awareness of the wind.

Really nice meditation, thank you! I also joined your recent live meditation and was looking for the recorded version you mentioned but can't seem to find it. Could you tell me what it his called? 8/4/21

Thank you Vidyamala

Thank you for the image of the yacht and the gentle firmness in your guiding, for me from bobbing in the waves to calm overview. Thank you!

Beautiful and peaceful. I came to this meditation feeling tense and with self pity.
Whilst not all gone I now feel calmer .

Excellent meditation. Thank you.

Thankyou Vidyamala. I like the image of the whole world breathing in and out. It creates the knowledge that we are not alone .... even when some situations seem like we are.

Your voice is so incredibly soothing and this practice is extremely helpful. Thank you.

Beautiful. ..thank you.

Lovely meditation, thank you 🙏

Beautiful voice
Gentle and clear leading
Grounding and softening results

Calming and peaceful

this is so good.. exactly what i needed this morning. thank you.🙏🏼✨

Beautiful ❤️🙏🏻

Being kind to what is painful or imperfect in me.... thank you!

Thank you. This allowed so much acceptance and softening into my being ❤

Thank you. What a peaceful meditation! You have such a calming voice. Aloha 💜🕊