45-Minute Deep Peace Meditation

In this meditation, Geoff Bell-Devaney, M.Ed., shows us how we can meet our emotions and work with them to not only diminish their intensity and frequency but to use them as a way to experience greater peace and presence than we ever thought possible. This meditation will bring ease to the body and the breath and also employs visual and auditory anchors to help you stay more present.

Transcript

Now as you're ready,

What I'd like you to do is to gently bring your awareness in a very,

Very felt sense way to the very bottom of your feet.

We want to do our best to intentionally put our awareness where we want.

So often our awareness will be lost in thoughts.

We can get lost in the past and the future.

And recognizing that we have a degree of empowerment to bring our awareness wherever we want,

Just as we're doing now,

By keeping our awareness in a very felt somatic sense in our bodies,

It helps us live not only much more in the present moment,

But it helps us find our way out of so much unnecessary thinking.

So with our awareness at the bottom of our feet,

We want to do our best to just truly feel what's there.

And it can take a little bit of time.

We'll go slow in the beginning here.

It can take time because when we're so busy,

And when we're so in our heads thinking,

It can take time to adjust to being in the body if we're not used to that.

So we'll go slow here.

And as we keep our awareness at the feet,

I invite you to just notice what is there.

Notice what sensations.

Notice what's alive in this part of your experience.

If thoughts,

As they invariably will,

If and when they arise,

We can just gently bring our awareness back to the bottom of our feet.

For the duration of this meditation,

I invite you to let go of needing to think.

And as best you can,

And as courageously and as gently as you can,

Do your best to keep your awareness deeply in your body in a very soft,

Gentle,

And compassionate way.

So with our awareness at the bottom of our feet,

Noting what's there,

Allowing any tingling,

Any lightness,

Any warmth,

Just allowing it to be without judgment.

And there may be no sensations,

And that's fine.

We want to allow that experience as well.

For the duration of this meditation,

Whatever we're experiencing is okay because it is what it is.

And we don't,

For the purposes of this meditation,

Need to change it.

So much of this path of finding inner peace is one of courageous,

Compassionate acceptance of whatever's arising in our inner world.

So as we're anchored now at the bottom of our feet gently,

See if we can now let go of that part of our body and bring our awareness to the tops of our feet and our toes up there.

Just checking in,

Just checking in.

We're slowing down here.

We're really,

Really slowing down and honoring what's alive in this part of our body.

And now to the ankles,

Letting go of the feet as acutely and intentionally as we can,

Bringing our awareness to the ankles of both legs,

The front,

Sides,

And back.

Just spending a moment here.

And now to the calf muscles of both legs,

Gently traveling from the ankles up to the calf muscles and just resting here for a moment,

Allowing whatever is present to be as it is.

And now to the shins and doing the same.

I'm just staying here for a moment,

Slowing down and now letting the shins and the calves and the ankles and the feet,

Allowing them to rest and honing our awareness now at the knees and just checking in here,

Noting any sensations that may be present in this moment.

Doing our best to hold these sensations as we come into our body now with more intention and consistency,

We want to remember that we're shifting our practice so much in terms of gentleness,

Compassion,

And easeful holding of these sensations.

So whatever sensations may be present in your knees in this moment,

Just as they were in the lower parts of your legs,

Allow whatever sensations may be there,

Whether they're easeful,

Maybe they be warm,

They may be tingling,

They may be numb.

It doesn't matter what you're experiencing.

The objective of today's meditation ultimately is to hold those sensations as gently and as courageously as we can.

We are creating ease around these sensations and this meditation is focused on doing that.

The purpose of this meditation is to create ease in the body.

We allow the sensations like we're doing right now with our knees and we're broadening our awareness.

We're holding them very,

Very gently and this is our practice,

Gentleness.

And now to the hamstrings,

The back of the legs,

We're just checking in there.

If thoughts arise,

We just come back.

We just come back to where we want our awareness to be.

If we allow the mind to draw the awareness into past and future,

We can always remember to bring it back where we want it to be.

And it's in this way we can let go of living in the past,

Living in the future to a much greater degree.

And we can find that we have a certain degree of agency to keep our awareness where we want it to be.

We can rescue our awareness from the mind and live much more deeply in our bodies and in the present moment.

Moving now to the thigh muscles of the right,

The left leg,

And just taking a moment here on your own to hold whatever sensations may be present in this moment.

Just holding them as if you would a baby,

Just gently holding whatever may be there.

Just staying here,

Holding,

Allowing,

Not getting drawn into the sensations,

But staying as best we can in a deep sense of ease and gentleness.

And now moving our awareness from the legs to the midsection,

The buttocks and the groin,

And just scanning this area,

Holding it almost from a distance,

Creating some spaciousness here and infusing our holding of these sensations in this part of our body with gentleness and ease.

And now to the low back and doing the same,

Staying as acutely here as we can in a very broad and gentle way.

If thoughts arise,

It's okay.

It's what they do.

We just come back again and again and stay here.

And now moving upwards to the middle and the upper back,

Letting go of the low back and holding in a very broad and gentle way,

Whatever sensations may be present in the upper part of the back.

And now from the upper back,

We travel down towards the stomach,

But very gently we sweep down the sides of the rib cage from the upper chest all the way down to the hips and finding our way to the stomach.

This is all about slowing down.

We can get so busy in our daily lives.

It can be unfamiliar to move in these slow ways.

And that's why we practice to make these easeful,

Slow ways more familiar.

And staying now at the stomach,

Perhaps noting the breath,

Noting the stomach expanding and contracting,

And just allowing that expansion,

That contraction to happen,

Softening the whole body in this moment as well,

Letting go as we keep our awareness intentionally at the stomach.

And now slowly moving upward,

The solar plexus and the chest region and staying here as we've been doing in other parts of our body,

Staying here gently at the chest,

Noting any sensations,

Allowing this part of our reality,

This part of our body to be our focus in this moment,

Spending time here,

Just watching,

Just being.

And now ever so slowly bringing our awareness from the chest region,

Letting go of this whole core area and bringing our awareness to the tops of the back of the left and the right hand,

And just really doing our best to intentionally in a very,

Very gentle way,

Keeping our awareness here,

Softening the body as we do this.

And now to the palms of the hands,

And now letting go of the hands and bringing our awareness to the forearms,

From the wrists to the elbows,

Just scanning all sides here,

Softening,

Softening,

Just settling in here.

And now to the elbows,

Front,

Sides,

Back.

And now the triceps and the biceps of both arms,

Holding expansively and gently whatever sensations may be arising in this moment,

Letting your reality be as it is within you in this moment,

And softening the body.

Now to the shoulders,

Front,

Sides,

Back,

Making space here for what's alive,

Whatever sensations may be present.

And now letting the arms,

The shoulders rest and bringing our awareness to the neck region,

To the back of the neck and the sides and the front,

Staying here as intentionally and as lightly as we can.

Again,

If thoughts draw you away,

It's what they do.

And we just can come back and stay here.

We can anchor ourselves wherever we want to be anchored.

And in this moment,

It's at the neck region,

Holding these sensations,

Creating space within us for them.

And now gently moving to the back of the head,

Exploring this area and the sides of the head,

The ears,

And now bringing our awareness to the chin,

Noticing what sensations may be present here in this moment.

And to the cheeks,

Softening the body.

And now bring our awareness to the mouth,

To the lips,

The teeth,

The tongue,

Just staying here in the upper lip and staying now at the nose,

Gently exploring this area,

Noting perhaps which nostril you may be breathing out of.

We typically breathe out of one nostril and throughout the day,

It shifts from one side,

One nostril to the other,

And sometimes we breathe through both.

And maybe we can just check in now and see if one is more predominant or exclusive.

And however that breath is at your nose,

It's as it is in this moment.

Just anchoring here for a bit,

Spending a moment with the breath at the nose,

Making this the focus of your meditation,

Of your experience in this moment.

And softening the body,

Just settling in here.

And now gently feeling our eyes,

Noticing what sensations may be there.

We often carry stress in the eye region and just being here,

Holding that stress or those sensations can be very,

Very healing as it can in any part of the body.

Our eyes and the rest of our body don't need to be at attention.

They don't need to be ready right now for anything.

We can rest.

We can let our body rest.

And now to the eyebrows and to the forehead and just checking in here.

And just resting.

And now gently,

Very slowly at your own pace,

We're going to sweep down from the top of the head,

The front,

Back and the sides,

All the way down to the bottom of our feet.

And I'll guide you in a broad sense here,

But take your time.

And again,

Whatever sensations arise,

We want to hold them.

We want to focus on the act of holding them gently.

It's infusing our experience with this gentleness,

This compassion and this peace that helps us grow in compassion and gentleness and peace.

And it helps us grow in awareness and insight and wisdom.

It helps us hold whatever's arising within us or without in a state of acceptance,

In a state of presence,

In a state of peace.

So let's begin from the top of the head.

Now moving down all sides,

Making our way down the forehead,

The sides of the head,

The forehead,

The back,

The ears,

The nose.

On your own now,

Just slowly making your way down the head.

Just feeling,

Just sweeping in a very felt sense way what's present here.

Now the shoulders,

Moving down the front of the body and the back,

The chest,

The back,

The arms,

Sweeping all the way from the shoulders down to our hips,

Sweeping through the arms,

Sweeping through the whole core.

Doing our best to broadly hold our awareness in these ways.

At your own pace,

We're slowing down here.

Softening our bodies and staying in our bodies easily.

The midsection,

The groin,

The buttocks,

We move down slowly into the legs,

Upper part of the legs,

The back,

All the way down to the toes.

And we'll do this,

We'll spend a minute here.

At your own pace,

If you arrive at the toes,

The bottom of the feet before the minute,

It's okay.

You can just hang out there or feel the whole body.

At your own pace now.

Now,

Resting.

Resting gently.

Just softening,

Making space for whatever may be arising in this moment.

Staying now at the feet.

And now,

Transitioning to as best we can,

Holding the entire body as a whole.

Stepping back gently in terms of your awareness.

Seeing if you can extend and broaden this capacity that we can build within us to hold gently whatever sensations may be in our body in a very broad sense.

So do your best now,

If you can,

To feel your whole body as a whole.

And again,

If thoughts arise,

We just come back and we stay here gently.

Softening,

Resting here.

If any areas in particular have very strong sensations,

It's in those moments it behooves us to intentionally broaden our awareness to the other parts of the body to look for more easeful experiences within the body.

This can be particularly helpful if we're feeling anxious or overwhelmed by strong emotions.

By broadening our awareness throughout our body as we're doing now,

It helps dissipate to a certain degree the intensity of the emotion,

Which helps us not get lost in it.

And as we do that now,

Feeling the whole body,

Again,

Remembering to soften.

Letting go of any tension you may be holding.

And just staying here for a moment,

Feeling the body,

Holding it gently within the field of awareness that you are.

And now,

Letting go of this practice of holding the whole body and returning to a more focused approach by bringing our awareness as acutely as we can to our chest region,

Our heart center,

If you will.

And just staying here for a moment.

And then going a little deeper and finding the breath at the chest.

Finding it expanding and contracting.

Allowing the breath to be exactly as it is.

We're not changing anything here.

We allow the breath to be,

Whether it's easeful or whether it's erratic,

It doesn't matter in this moment.

Our job isn't to change reality as we practice this.

Our job is to hold it in a very gentle and spacious and courageous way.

And as we keep our awareness at the chest,

Letting go of any thoughts,

Staying here,

Seeing if you can now really pay attention to the breath.

Just watching it.

We can anchor ourselves here.

We can,

Like a surfer riding a wave,

Catch the breath,

If you will.

Allow our awareness to be anchored at the in-breath and the out-breath as it expands and contracts our chest.

Staying here gently,

Feeling.

And seeing if you can make even more easeful space around the breath.

As you anchor yourselves there,

See if now you can broaden your anchor so that it encompasses a degree of ease and gentleness.

Seeing if you can broaden the degree,

The depth and the capacity of holding that breath.

Allowing it to do its own dance within this gentle embrace of our awareness.

Focusing on the gentle act of holding and allowing and letting the breath do what it does.

Seeing if we can broaden that spacious,

Easeful holding of the breath further out and up and down our bodies.

Seeing if we can be bigger within us.

Seeing if our gentle embrace can be larger and deeper and broader so that the breath,

In essence,

Becomes a smaller focus of whatever may be arising in our awareness.

We're still aware of it,

But we're opening to it.

Perhaps paying attention to the way the breath expands the chest and the abdomen and how it contracts.

Allowing,

Perhaps,

Within this broad,

Spacious awareness that we're bringing to our body,

Allowing the breath and the body to be as one and being a gentle observer of that expansion and contraction.

Staying here for a moment,

Allowing ourselves to be breathed.

Allowing the body and breath to be one.

In and out.

In and out.

Feeling our body gently and holding that feeling of our body.

Holding everything as best we can,

Gently and broadly.

And now I invite you to keep your awareness at the body and the breath.

Perhaps allowing them to be one as we've been practicing.

Noticing,

Perhaps,

If any anxiousness arises as we do this.

And opening your heart to that,

To any challenging sensations.

Courageously and compassionately holding any discomfort you may feel arising within you.

Knowing that it's not you and that it will change.

And that any discomfort we experience is best met with gentleness and compassion as we're doing now.

Staying grounded in our bodies.

Being easeful.

Accepting what's arising and meeting it with courage and gentleness.

With love and with compassion.

And it's in this way that we build our capacity to be gentle,

To be easeful,

To be compassionate,

And to be at peace.

We can create peace.

We can abide in a state of greater ease and peace.

And it's in this way,

It's in this way of holding,

Of allowing,

Whatever's arising within us.

That we not only grow in our capacity to do so,

But we begin to welcome in and integrate all of those old emotions that we may have kept away,

Understandably,

For so long.

And as we stay here now in our bodies,

With gentleness and courage,

With ease,

We walk down a new path of choosing and creating peace,

Of acceptance,

Of keeping our awareness where we want.

This is a path of waking up,

Of not being lost in the mind,

In the past,

In the future,

But of staying here in the moment,

In our bodies,

And being here,

Running to ourselves,

In these ways.

There's much strength and healing to be found by doing this.

And now,

While keeping your awareness in your body,

I invite you to listen to my words,

Meaning,

Stay anchored in your body,

But do your best to really keep your awareness at the sounds that you're hearing.

Buddhism teaches us that we have to use our anchors,

What we're seeing,

Hearing,

Smelling,

Touching,

Tasting,

What we're feeling.

We need to stay at our senses,

At our body,

At our breath,

Lest we be swept away into thinking,

Into unconsciousness.

And as you keep your awareness now at my words,

Know that it's this intentional listening that can help us also stay grounded here in the present moment.

It can help us stay in the state of peace and ease that we're creating by courageously coming into our bodies in these ways.

And as you hear my words,

I invite you to also listen to the space between the words.

It's this space between the words.

It's this space within which the emotions,

The sensations in our bodies are held.

And it's this space within which thoughts,

Thoughts arise that we can return to.

We can return to this stillness,

This stillness from within which sounds arise and sensation and thought.

And it's by gently allowing these sensations to be in our bodies.

It's allowing the breath to be as it is.

And it's allowing in these moments words to arise and paying acute attention to them that we choose peace and we choose the present moment.

And it's by listening to the words that helps us focus and build our capacity to stay focused and to better use our anchors.

But it's also by listening to the stillness,

Paying attention to it rather,

That helps us remember what it's like to be at ease.

And it helps us better recognize how thoughts do arise from this stillness as do sensations.

And it's in recognizing how they arise and pass away as my words now are doing,

That we can pay attention in every moment and we can let go.

We can,

The more we practice being in this way as we're doing today,

Begin returning to this stillness,

Staying here in this state of a presence,

This awareness,

This field that Rumi talked about,

This field beyond all wrongdoing and right doing,

This field of peace,

This field of peace that we can create within ourselves by doing just what we've done today,

By choosing ease and choosing to pay attention and to hold what we see arising within our field of attention,

Within a broad,

Spacious and grounded way.

Paying attention to stillness helps us remember it,

Helps us grow in peace.

And now I invite you to slowly begin opening your eyes.

We can,

As best we can,

Stay easeful and resting in our bodies and our breath.

And as gently as you can,

I invite you to look across the way in the space you're in and choose one object and see how gently you can do this.

See how little effort you can put into allowing the eyes to do what they do,

Allowing what's to be seen to be seen.

It doesn't take any effort,

Ultimately.

We can allow all of our senses to be this way.

We can allow all of our senses to allow the world around us to open up to us.

We can use those senses,

As we're doing with the eyes now,

To help us stay grounded here,

To anchor ourselves in the present moment.

And as gently as you can,

Choosing an object in the space around you,

Giving it the gift of your attention,

Noting the colors,

The shape,

Noting the size,

The shadows,

The textures,

Seeing if we can slow down in this way.

We don't often give things in our world as much attention as we might possibly be able to.

And as we spend some time very gently softening our bodies and staying grounded here and really gently and curiously noting what characteristics that object has,

We can begin to notice the colors,

The aliveness in this world around us.

And now,

Like you did with my words,

I invite you to look at that object in terms of the space that is around it.

I invite you to move your gaze gently to the left,

To the right,

In front and past that object.

And notice that object is arising,

It's present.

It's being within a field of spaciousness,

Of awareness,

Like our thoughts,

Like our emotions,

Like everything.

Even us,

We arise within this field of awareness.

Our words arise within this field of awareness and then they pass away.

And as we spend time recognizing these different objects in whatever space we may find ourselves in,

We can start to slow down and perhaps choose to live a little more easefully.

We can start to see perhaps that this world is in many ways like a big museum full of objects.

And whatever moment we're finding ourselves in and whatever objects are there,

We can use them as ways to anchor ourselves here and to remind us of the spaciousness around them.

And looking now perhaps at another object and noting how it too is very stationary,

Noting how it too has its own unique colors and shadows and contours and textures and noting the space between those two objects.

It's noting that space outside of us that can help us find it within us in those moments when a thought arises,

We can find space.

And that can help us let go of needing to grab on to thoughts.

They are temporary,

But they have a wonderful capacity to draw us into them,

Into the story,

Into the past and the future.

And it's in paying attention to all of these experiences within the field of awareness that we are,

Whether it's objects outside of us or experiences within us,

Thoughts,

Sensations,

That we can start to hold them more gently.

We can stop resisting them and we can start meeting them.

We can allow them to be as they are in this moment.

We can allow ourselves to be as we are in this moment.

We can allow life to arise and we can work with it.

And we can allow life to arise.

And we can begin dropping our guard.

For the more we're able to accept these inner and outer experiences as they are and stay grounded in our depth of peace and compassion and presence,

We'll find a great strength arising.

A strength born of detachment.

A strength born of realizing that if these thoughts arise and pass away,

These objects,

These objects that are in our lives and then they break.

For example,

These clouds that arise outside of us,

They pass away.

And it's in growing in awareness of the impermanent nature of everything that we can realize that we don't need to hang on to thoughts and we don't need to resist unpleasant sensations.

For they,

Like clouds in the sky,

Will pass.

And we don't need to change them.

We instead can begin holding them,

Meeting them gently with the bright sunshine of our love and awareness.

And the more that we do that,

The more we'll become brighter.

The more we'll become more loving and peaceful,

Empathetic and compassionate to ourselves and to others.

And then these old feelings we've resisted for so long will start to integrate within us.

For we won't be keeping them at bay or covering them up.

We're getting swallowed up by them.

The more we practice staying here as we did today within us,

And outside of us,

Gently grounding ourselves here in the present moment,

We'll start to wake up to the reality that the only place that there is peace is in the present moment.

And the only way to stay in the present moment is by employing these two wings of the bird of awakening that the Buddha taught.

Wisdom born of loving kindness,

Born of mindfulness rather.

Wisdom born of mindfulness and love born of loving kindness.

And it's these two wings of the bird of awakening,

Love and wisdom,

That can help us awaken to the present moment.

That can help us find the field that Rumi talked about,

Beyond all wrongdoing and all right doing,

That field of peace and presence.

Mindfulness helps us recognize how we want to get drawn into thought and sensation.

Loving kindness helps us build our capacity to be with those challenging sensations and the pleasant ones in ways that enable us to hold them and not get drawn into them.

And it's by practicing mindfulness and loving kindness that we can awaken.

We can let go of our old unconscious ways of being,

Of relating to ourselves and the world.

And we can start resting here more and more in the present moment.

We can come back here to the stillness and the power and the peace that can only be found here.

And it's by doing as we did today,

Bringing ease and gentleness into our bodies,

Staying grounded here,

That can help us let go of needing to live in the past and future.

And yes,

We can still use the mind,

But we can use it much more effectively when we're grounded in our bodies than when we're lost in thinking.

And it's by practicing as we did today,

Noticing the space between sounds,

Noticing the space between objects,

And noticing the spacious capacity that we can infuse within us to hold all of these sensations.

It's by remembering and coming back to that awareness of that space that helps us grow in our capacity to be spacious,

To be peaceful and to be at ease,

To rest gently in this present moment and to meet whatever arises from a degree of empowerment and effectiveness of compassion and creativity.

And we can always come back to this place.

And as we do,

We will remember and we'll learn and we'll start to want to come back to the present moment because that's the only place that there is peace.

We can't find it through thinking,

For thought arises within this field of peace.

And it's,

Again,

By bringing our awareness into the body as consistently and courageously as we can and staying gently grounded here.

When thoughts arise,

We just come back and we stay.

If a thought arises that we need to take action on,

We do.

But the more we can let go of unnecessary thinking and stay gently grounded in our bodies like we practiced today,

The more that we'll wake up to our true nature.

To our true selves.

To peace.

To ease.

To compassion.

To love.

Now,

As you're ready,

I invite you to slowly begin moving a very gentle degree of ease into your body,

Perhaps moving your fingers,

Your toes,

Moving around,

Looking gently around the room,

Seeing if you can bring this degree of gentleness into the rest of your day,

Coming back to that way of being when you remember,

As often as you remember.