Headless Meditation—Living Without The Ego-Mind

We live a lot in our heads these days. It’s where all our thoughts are—and also all our memories, frustrations, desires, and problems live. But we also have the capacity to operate more from the heart level, or the body level. This meditation is a shortcut to a space beyond mind and ego.

Coming from the Hindu Tantra tradition, this meditation is an exercise of imagination. For some it might feel like a macabre exercise—others will find it incredibly liberating.

Transcript

Today's meditation is a very different style of meditation.

It comes from the tradition of Tantra and it's a quite an exotic meditation so to speak.

But I included in my book Practical Meditation and some people really enjoyed it so I thought I'll run it today for you guys.

So allow yourself to close your eyes and feel comfortable in your body.

Pay attention to your breathing.

Notice the movement of your breath.

Notice if your breathing is shallow or deep.

Allow it to become deeper.

Notice if your breathing is short or long.

Allow it to become longer.

Notice if your breathing is smooth or jerky.

Allow it to become smoother.

Now feel your whole body from head to toes.

Become aware of your whole left leg,

Left foot.

Become aware of your whole right leg,

Right foot and toes.

Become aware of the abdominal area,

Your chest and your back.

Become aware of your whole left arm from shoulder to fingertips.

Become aware of your whole right arm from shoulder to fingertips.

Become aware of your neck and throat.

Become aware of your head and face.

Now become aware of your whole body all at once as a single unit.

With every in-breath you become more grounded.

With every out-breath you release all tension.

Now imagine that you have no head.

Everything is fine with you.

You feel present,

Peaceful and well.

The only difference is that you have no head.

Your energy is grounded throughout your body.

And if there is no head then there are no thoughts,

No worries,

No ego.

It's like your body ends above your shoulders and after that there is only space.

It's like the empty sky is your head.

Feel that spaciousness.

Thoughts have nowhere to come from and nowhere to land.

Feel how your being is spacious,

Boundless.

In this moment all your thoughts,

Your ego,

Your personality and complications are all gone.

In this moment there is only space.

Visualize yourself as having no head.

Feel that you have no head.

In the place of your head there is only open space.

See yourself moving about your day,

Getting everything done,

Flowing with life but without a head.

Nobody's noticing that you have no head and yet you feel this amazing feeling of space,

Peace,

Silence.

You are centered in your body and heart,

Not your head.

Now visualize your head coming back into place above your body.

Your head is there now again but internally you hold on to that feeling of spaciousness,

Of presence,

Of egolessness.

You can now start to gently move your toes and fingers and whenever you're ready you can open your eyes.

So this meditation in the book is called Headless Me and as I mentioned it's a kind of exotic,

Very different style of meditation.

Some people love it,

Some people don't.

The purpose is to allow our energy to get out of the head with the thoughts and the ego and the problems and to sink more into the body and the heart center.

I'd love to hear from some of you how was this experience,

How was this meditation for you?

Reviews

At first this felt macabre, but actually it was very effective! Thank you!

This was a useful concept to help in getting out of the head. Thank you

Interesting 🤔

Helpful

Why can't I find more tracks on the headless way here on Insight Timer? I hear it's quite popular in the US.

Interesting exercise: letting go og the mind, thoughts, & ego by sensing the boding and imagining the head is not there. Imagining space. I will repeat this one.

This was my first time going headless, and I think I love it! ♥️. Maybe I enjoyed it so much because it was EASY!! I really liked removing my head, I think I’ll keep doing it.😂☺️
Thank you for an amazing experience that I can carry with me all day💕

That was fant5. I'm always drawn to body focused medits and today I didn't want to be in my head, understand learning in my meditation today. Really great, thank you

Wonderful! It was diferent to what I’ve done before, but I really enjoyed it. My head actually feels physically lighter now! I think it will ve a great meditation to do when my heax feels like ut will explode with so many thoughts!

I was able to sense my headlessness. The sky. The openness.

Loved this meditation, thank you! An interesting and fresh way to explore being more embodied

I have an overactive mind that at times is challenging to tame. Did this practice at the end of an active day, partly out of curiosity. At first, my mind jumped to instant images of guilliotined body of mine (and other historic characters who suffered that horrible fate.) But as I continued, these images fainted away and did not resurfaced. I felt grounded and peaceful - which was surprising to me due to a rocky start. More, I felt a significant degree of liberation as I was able to detach from my headspace and its thoughts for the remainder of the practice. Pretty impressive. Will definitely revisit to explore. Thanks for the experience and the post-practice reminder. It was most definitely unique for me (as I assumed I sampled it all, ha-ha.)
Namaste.

As someone who suffers from frequent migraines and overthinking to imagine myself without a head was a welcome relief. I felt much more spacious inside. Towards the end, I felt a rush of energy in my body, as I felt it flow more towards the lower chakras instead of getting stuck in the head. That is the kind of sensation and practice that I'm looking to integrate into my life. (The only disturbance is that the volume of the audio goes up towards the end and I kind of got jerked out of my state a little.) Thank you for this meditation, Giovanni 💙

Thank you , Giovanni !
That was very interesting and challenging for me to visualise myself without a head 😂 At the same time maybe at split seconds when I was able to see myself without a head with all the thoughts and worries, it felt like a bliss . I will try it again to see if I get better at this visual .
Thank you very much for this meditation 🙏💕