Buddha’s Meditation Technique For Inner Peace

What if you could experience greater peace, clarity, and presence simply by learning to step out of the constant activity of your thinking mind?
In this guided meditation, Dr. Alison J. Kay introduces you to a foundational breath-awareness technique she describes as one of Buddha’s most frequently taught meditation practices.
Through gentle instruction, conscious breathing, and the practice of observing your thoughts without becoming attached to them, Alison guides you from mental busyness and reactivity into greater stillness, relaxation, and expanded awareness.
Discover how returning your attention to your breath can strengthen your focus, cultivate emotional steadiness, and create more space for intuition and connection with your inner self.
You don't have to silence your thoughts to meditate successfully. You simply learn to stop letting them lead.
Allow yourself to soften, become present, and experience the freedom of a quieter mind.

Transcript

So sitting down now. You've already had some time to. . . Draw your attention in off the external environment. So I'm going to act like you just have come in. To the room to sit down and meditate. So you're coming in off your external environment, Whether it's driving or it's, Well, Of course it's driving. Work before that or kids before that or meal before that, The busyness that I was talking about earlier. So you sit down, Simple cross-legged position. You don't need to go into full lotus. Why be an overachiever? You don't even need to go into half lotus. You can just sit in simple cross-legged position. And if halfway through the meditation, Your legs start to fall asleep, Just switch them. No need to set up unnecessary battles. And that's part of the. . . The deal with us with having such a goal-oriented culture and that, You know, This is how it gets done and I got to do it right and I got to get it done right. And the goal here is Not bad. Taking the core area, This is a really good conditioner and strengthener for the core. Taking the core area, It's an inch and a half below the nail. That word that I just got out of my mouth was navel. And you want to pull the meat in that lower belly area up. And then back towards the spine. That naturally should be bringing your shoulders back. And so your shoulders are not your earrings any longer. Your gaze is soft. Your eyes are gently closed. Your palms are, If they're face down, You choose, Then that's going to be a more introverted. Meditation. If your palms are face up, That's going to be a more receptive meditation. Open to more insight. I could tell you a couple of mudras. But I don't want to overcomplicate things. I want to get in at the most basic level here. Which is a finger position. That you could also add in. So. You're sitting here now, What do you do next? So coming off the external environment at one level of gross consciousness, That's beta brainwave state, Coming down into seated meditation posture next. Excuse me, Wait, You're in your in simple seated meditation posture. That's the next level in of consciousness at the gross level. Now we're looking at our body. We're not calling our bodies gross. It's just a physicalness. That the subtle energies don't have or subtle consciousness doesn't possess or isn't made of. So the next level in where we bring our awareness to now. Is our breath. So go ahead and take that core that's been pulled up and back to the spine and you want to inhale so you're inflating your belly like a balloon. Up goes the chest inflating, Now the trachea neck region. You're inhaling through your nostrils, Not your mouth. Nostrils have a natural filtration system in them that detoxify the air we breathe in, Keeping the mouth softly closed. Get to the peak of that inhale. Like it's a wave, Wave now breaks, And now exhale. So the chest. . . Concaves and the belly deflates, The balloon loses its air. Yeah. Inhaling. Belly in place. Chest. In plates. Trachea and neck seems to have more space because you're getting air in there. Nose now? Get to the peak of that inhale. When you're ready, Start letting it come out the nose. That is called diaphragmatic breathing, Because we're breathing with the diaphragm down in the belly. There's a host of studies done about what deep breathing does, Again, For the physiology, Shifting the biochemistry into the parasympathetic nervous system instead of the sympathetic, Which means calming. So what do we do now? Asks the goal-oriented monkey mind used to being used to do something or flutter about with its gadgets and its texts and its emails and its YouTube and its What do we do now? What's the next task? Huh? Huh? What do we do next? It's paying attention to your thoughts, Which is the next level of subtle consciousness. Breathing and. Thoughts are now considered subtle consciousness. So as the thoughts come in. Which they will. Especially more rapid fire now. Because you're sitting down and observing your mind, Especially for those of you who are not. Meditation practitioners go ahead and inhale. And exhale. When the thoughts come in, All you want to do Let's just go. Oh. Thinking. Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Let the thoughts float by like they're a leaf on a river and the river's current. Carries the beef away, The thoughts just float by. If you need to, You can pick those thoughts back up as soon as the radio shows over and figure the stuff out and chew on it if the mind needs that. But you'll find that it won't after we clear it with the meditation. So it's just a matter of redirecting, Pulling off of the thoughts as soon as you're aware that you're thinking, Which you won't be all the time. At some point, Maybe three minutes of a bunch of thoughts about this weekend and what you're going to do. Oh wow, I'm not supposed to be doing that. Thinking. Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. So I'll guide you through. Go ahead and. . . Continue on with what we're doing. Inhaling or wherever you are in your cycle of breathing. Thinking, Pull off of the thoughts. Let them float by, Let the river take them away and come back to your breath. Really good night. Where the breathing process, The breathing cycle. If you lost track of where you were in the breath and you weren't consciously breathing, Just start over with the inhale. Thank you. Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Thinking, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Thinking, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Again, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Little more presence, Can you feel it already? Yeah. And sometimes the thoughts will be more sticky, Because it'll be a juicy train of thought, Not just a single fleeting thought, Like my back itches. What did he say? What does he mean we're going to be doing this weekend? I can't wait to see him. I can't wait what we're going to do. And you don't want to come off of them, Or you could be reviewing. An event that happened this morning. Where you're going over what you said and how good it was what you said and how bad it was what you said and what you could have done better and what did he mean by what he said and what did she mean by that look she gave you and did they misinterpret you and why didn't they understand what you meant in that conversation and just reviewing yeah and getting lost in it and letting it take you away like this tidal wave. Thank you. Pull off of the thoughts. Come back to the breath. That was a suction cup like a plunger for the toilet because sometimes it's required. Because of course the momentum behind that. Train of thought is stronger. So that's where the element of detachment comes in to that when you're in life off the mat. You can actually use these skills gained in the process of pulling off of the juicier trains of thought. Coming back to the breath. When you're in a situation that's kind of explosive or reactive and you're triggered. And it's the usual place where you have a usual reaction and it gets you upset. It's the same thing as here's the usual train of thought. Do you tend to review your performance when in conversation with others? Or do you tend to project into the future. With worry and anxiety. The mind only goes backwards into the past and projects into the future, But it can't be here now. What we're doing is pulling off of the past and off of the future that's in our thoughts so we can be here now with presence. So what will happen is, In that constant redirecting of thought, Excellent you guys, This is the brilliance, I love teaching this. So when you're in your everyday life. And there's attachment to. Oh man, I hate when he does that. Oh man, I hate when she does that. Oh, I hate when people do that! And you want to teach them a lesson. And that you get all bodily involved and attached to the situation instead. And come back to the breath. You'll be able to manage your reactivity and it won't be there eventually. This is the way you undo it. We're developing musculature, Just like we're in a gym lifting weights. It is muscle. It is absolute machinery that can be retrained. Inhaling at the belly. Chest. Trickier There it is. Exhaling Nose, Trachea. The deflate's core goes up and back to spine. Empty. And healing. Thank you. The lack of the thought. Come back to the breath. Continuing to inhale. Thinking, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Finishing your exhale. Inhaling at your own pace. Thinking, Pull out all your thoughts, Let them float by. We're making the mind serviceable now. If you want to, You can pick those thoughts right back up as soon as we're done. And back to the ground. Reigniting the breathing process if you forgot where you were. Now your mind's wondering what to do next. It's looking for a goal, A task, An assignment. We got over the initial restlessness. Why I kept redirecting thinking, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. So much because that's what happens in the beginning. You see your restlessness. I just settle in. And it starts to get quieter. The mind starts to wander around like a little kid. Okay, Well now what? Constantly going, Constantly expecting things, Constantly expecting stimulation. This constant expectation of stimulation is exactly what is meant by Americans love to burn their central nervous systems out. Any thoughts? Any thoughts? Flips a response on in the central nervous system. It moves energy. The more thoughts that we have. The more energy moves up and down our central nervous system, The more communication occurs in our body. The less thoughts that we have. Quieter. Kneeling. And exhaling at your own pace. Sounds in the environment typically get more observed when we're meditating. They seem louder. Sometimes it's a challenge to pull off of the attention. That our consciousness wants to. Focus on them with me. Because we're expanding our consciousness as we go into the more subtle levels. Our consciousness is more expansive. It's stiller. More still. So in that increased stillness is expansion. In that expansion is we pick up on more and we're more sensitive. This is also cumulatively over time how we increase our intuition. And our psychic needs. Because I have sensory thresholds. Decrease in our perceptions, Our perceptual how I say this. My consciousness is able to pick up more. In the environment. In this expanded state. It eventually bleeds over into everyday life if we choose for it to, Yeah. Pull off of the thoughts in reaction to the stimulus in the environment, For example. And come back to the breath. Redirect. That's all it is. Okay. A lot of the thoughts come back to the breath. We're now at about the second level of meditation where the quietness starts more. We've moved beyond the everyday mind and its dominance. Now the quiet starts to increase to the second level. I'm speaking. Inhaling, Wherever you are in your breathing cycle, Continue. Okay. Off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. Okay. Go off of your thoughts and come back to the breath. Can you see the steadiness that is a result of this practice? No matter what's happening around you and outside of you, You can stay steady and centered and present. In your body, Not floating outside of it, Lost in your thoughts. In your body breathing here. What happened? With more presence because that expansion of that consciousness has happened. You're in the more subtle planes. So it's more expansive and you're more here now with the presence. This is also when you might tend to get sleepy. Because you're now dropping into alpha brainwave state. So you want to straighten up the spine. Readjust your legs if you need to. Your body and mind. Because it's slowed into the alpha brainwave state, Is thinking sleep. Because the next brainwave is theta. And that's the REM level. So alt is where we are when we are starting to drip off into sleep. So the first level is dealing with the restlessness. The mind constant recall, Redirect. The second level is then. The expansion, And in that expansion, Relaxation, In that alpha brain wave state, And in that, The body wanting to go to sleep. So to exert an element of discipline in our practice, We want to make sure that spine is straightened. And the core is pulled up and back. The shoulders are back. And you're honoring. That ability to have discipline in your practice. Not giving the mind what it wants. By wanting to go to sleep and just following along with the mind, But exerting some discipline. And then if you find that you really are sleepy because of what you touched in on during the meditation, You have the space, Go nap and honor that, Being kind. I'm not talking about disciplinarian. I'm just talking about discipline. For thinking. I was allowed to chew on, Pull off of the thoughts and come back to the breath. See how predictable the mind is? This gets really fun when you start to use these observations you make of your own mind and you start to use them when you're out at dinner or at social events with others. You can see You come back to the breath and out of that. Thought activity. Is yelling. Exhale when you're ready if we were to continue on for another eight minutes or so. We'd be entering. Some more sacred space. Where we'd be connecting with the higher self. Even 20 minutes a day is fantastic. To start out with, Because can you feel the softening? This is what I meant, My regular listeners, When I said when I returned to the States, It felt so sharp to me because of the amount of mind dominance here. You feel the softness. When we work with the mind's judgments of me, Of my voice, My tone, My instructions, Of you, Your posture, Your itch, Your ability or your inability to meditate, Judgments of meditation itself, Expectations of how things should get done. All that noise is sharp. Yeah, It's not slow. So if we live in a system, A mind-body-spirit system that honors the mind, We're honoring that sharpness. If we work with it, We can delve down the sharpness by the force of the spirit. And the Chinese culture. I've said many times, Shen, The word in Chinese, Your heart. And the word in Chinese, Shēn. Of spirit. So closing now, As I do in my yoga meditation class, Bring your hands in front of your heart chakra in the center of your chest and between your breasts. Open up the three middle fingers so that just the wrists and the thumbs and pinkies stay together. So you're forming a bowl or a cup. With your hands. Look down into that because you're flushing your head. With your heart energy. I'm going to go ahead and let you just stay in that space, Come out of it whenever you're ready. And feel the softness and carry it out there. Please. Many, Many blessings. Thanks for listening and I look forward to more. Bye-bye.