Welcome to the Take a Seat guided meditation.
This meditation is based off of a practice that I call Divine Posture,
Which I developed after working with many students in the process of establishing a strong seated meditation practice and now offer through the Your Turn Meditative Living Community.
When we get ready to start a seated meditation practice,
There are a few things that we have to remember.
The first is that it's not easy.
It can be very difficult to learn how to sit,
And that's okay.
We just need to be ready to move through some of those periods of frustration,
Especially as we sit to calm ourselves and find our mind racing a million miles a minute.
So in the practice of taking a seat,
We turn the power of our attention and our awareness to our embodied experience.
For this meditation,
All we're doing is coming into a posture,
A divine posture,
A posture that embodies the very spirit of why we practice.
It is noble,
Empowered,
Tranquil,
And at peace.
You can do this practice in a chair,
On the floor,
On a cushion,
On a bench,
On a stool,
Whichever works best for you.
So having determined where you will like to practice,
Chair,
Stool,
Bench,
Cushion,
We will begin.
Begin from the ground up.
We want to take our posture by establishing a firm foundation with three points of contact with the floor.
This may be both feet and your sits bones if you're in a chair or a stool.
It may be your shins and your sits bones if you're on a bench.
And if you are on a cushion,
It could be in many different postures,
Burmese,
Half lotus,
Quarter lotus,
Full lotus.
And in this case,
It would be your knees and your sits bones.
Really allow them to find a firm placement that enables you to be strong and certain in your seat.
Bring your attention up to your hips and notice that they are slightly above your knees.
If this is not the case,
Then make whatever adjustments are necessary.
You may need to add a cushion under your feet or under your buttocks in order to create the right position.
Now,
Gently perform a small circle with your low back and spine,
Rocking your pelvis all the way around so that you can feel where upright is.
And as you come forward onto your sits,
You may feel a slight movement in your lower back.
And as you come forward onto your sits bones,
Without rounding or arching the back,
The lumbar spine,
The lower back will begin to rise straight up toward the sky.
From this position,
You want to allow yourself to relax up,
The mid back and the upper back,
Finding their natural place,
One vertebrae on top of the other,
With very little effort on your part.
Just enough to relax up.
Turning your attention to your shoulders,
Roll them a few times as they find a nice neutral position directly under your ears.
You may want to activate your trap muscles or your rhomboids to create subtle shifts in the energy of your shoulders so that they find the most natural,
Neutral and comfortable position for your sit.
Allow the upper arms to be relaxed,
Yet hold the position with a little bit of space between them and your body while your hands come to rest in your lap.
You can choose to use a mudra for your hands,
Or simply place them palm up or palm down on your thighs or knees.
This is really a matter of personal preference,
And one that I would encourage you to explore over time.
Bring your attention back up to your neck,
And feel a gentle lifting continue up the back of your neck to the crown of your head.
Notice how this ever so slightly tucks the chin.
Keeping the lips together,
Teeth gently parted,
And tongue touching the roof of the mouth behind the front teeth,
Establish a slow,
Steady breath through the nose.
For the eyes,
You can meditate with them open or closed.
Each has their benefits.
Should you choose to keep them open,
Allow your gaze to find a single point and to rest upon that point,
While at the same time relaxing your vision,
Like being at the ocean or on a plane and seeing a broad horizon.
You're looking at a single point on the horizon,
But your eyes open so your peripheral vision expands to include as much of the scene as possible.
Now that we've taken our seat or built our posture from the ground up,
We will now pass awareness back through the body in a body scan to release any unnecessary tension.
Bring your awareness to the crown of the head,
Hovering slightly above the body.
As this awareness passes down over your scalp,
Feel all tension melting down through the body.
Release and relax all of the tension around the eyes and the temples.
Pass that attention over the jaw.
Releasing and relaxing the muscles of the cheeks.
Flow awareness down through the neck,
Releasing any unnecessary tension in the neck and shoulders.
Allow the ribcage to relax,
Smoothly expanding and contracting with each deep belly breath.
Feel into the diaphragm and the belly.
Allow them to soften and release any unnecessary tension.
Now,
As all extra effort melts out of your body and into the earth,
Feel the earth and the air as they melt into the earth.
All extra effort melts out of your body and into the earth.
Continue to witness the rise and the fall,
The expansion and the contraction of the body as you are breathed for the next several minutes.
