.
This is a meditation adapted from some instructions by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen,
Who discovered that she could really help her insomnia by bringing some intention to the pericardium,
The kind of sac around her heart,
Her physical heart.
Many meditations are heart based and usually we're talking about the energetic space,
The heart chakra,
Or heart as in a feeling of love,
Compassion,
Mercy,
Loving kindness.
But in this case we're coming through the physical body,
It's a somatic instruction.
I'm recording this at 4am under a full moon.
4am is often the time that I wake these days.
It was often used by contemplatives,
Monks and nuns and so forth,
As a time for prayer,
Because of the very stillness of the night at this point.
And you might find that with this holding there's a breath or two that feel a bit like a sigh,
Just through the comfort of the holding.
And in her instructions Bonnie says,
This is her experience and I'm instructing now from my experience and your experience will be yours.
So it may be a little bit the same,
A little bit different,
But the essence is we want to take you into a deeper,
Stiller place where you can sleep well,
Where you can get a peaceful night's sleep.
Or get back to sleep after 4am.
Holding the heart then and thinking about the pericardium as a bag that the heart,
The muscle of the heart sits in,
And I like to think of it as a drawstring bag,
A little draw at the top that I can loosen to make it feel less tight.
So go ahead and loosen your bag in whatever way looks and feels right to you,
So that the heart inside the bag might feel a little more space and ability to release,
Maybe relax.
And keeping our mind there with the heart in a single point.
Continuing to breathe,
Continuing to loosen the muscle of the heart,
The pericardium,
The bag that it sits in,
Through the power of our intention.
Bonnie says she identifies a slow wave with this,
A circuit if you like from the heart to the brain,
So that maybe the brain too can relax inside the skull,
That it might have more space.
So maybe feeling that the brain can relax away from the skull a little,
And not be quite so tight inside that particular box.
I'm not sure how Bonnie experiences that,
But right now I can feel that I could do a kind of loop,
A figure eight kind of movement,
A fluid movement between brain and heart.
Breathing all the while,
Slow,
Slow.
And coming to rest once again in the heart.
Maybe the rest of the body has some response,
The head,
The throat,
Shoulders.
Allowing them to continue gently adjusting,
Settling.
We'll remain here a little while longer.
Maybe resting the mind at the heart.
Okay,
Thank you.
.
