A Receptive & Resonating Body - Transform Habitual Thinking

A brief meditation in which we use the breath as a foundation for moving our being into alignment with what is. A receptive body is the foundation of healthy interactions with the world around us. Michael Mervosh shows us a simple tool for moving out of habitual thinking into a more resonant relationship with life.

Transcript

So in this moment now,

Keep noticing how it is for you to allow yourself to drop in.

Drop into your body,

Drop into the depth of your presence,

And shed the typical ways you hold yourself in body and mind.

What does that mean to drop in?

Let go.

To shed your usual thoughts and just feel into the physical being of your presence as it is right now.

If you notice your awareness staying up around your head,

How do you bring your awareness down more into a more sensate feeling of what it's like to be in the core of your torso?

And how could your breath support that process?

In fact,

Right now,

Just keep your awareness on your breathing just as it is.

Do you have a felt sense of your breath moving in your body?

What will allow you to let your breath drop down and descend gradually down into your pelvis?

Just keep observing anyway as you do this.

Observing the way your mind wants to start evaluating how well or how poorly you're doing.

Or notice when your mind wants to think about something else that should be happening and just keep letting those thoughts pass through.

Keep letting go of your thinking mind.

Notice the time and the space you really need to feel your breath moving in you,

Actually feeling it move and dropping lower into your torso.

What will allow your breath to drop all the way down,

All the way down into your seat?

Whenever you notice that you're thinking about your breath,

Just observe that you're thinking and let go once again into bodily awareness.

Keep coming back to the feeling of your breath moving through you and to the felt sense of your breath happening in your seat.

And now if you can,

Pay attention to the felt sense of your inhalation as it happens.

Feel your next in-breath come in.

Are you able to relax your body into your inhalation just like you do with your exhalation?

See if you can have now an embodied awareness of relaxing into your next inhalation and then also feel into your seat.

Feel your seat,

Feel your inhalation and allow your body to relax into your seat and your inhalation.

Feel how different this is from mental thinking.

And I'll notice the bottoms of your feet along with the bottom of your seat.

Feel into the subtle quality of letting go into the ground of your being here.

Feel the solid ground of the seat of the earth underneath you.

Let your seat and your feet rest into the solidity of the ground underneath you.

Take a little time and space to notice what that's like.

Now feel the sound of the bell passing through you.

Let the bell ring through you and as well let the sound and the tone of my voice pass through you as you sit.

Any other sounds happening in the room,

Just let them pass through you.

Or maybe even the felt sense of silence in the spaces in between the sounds moving through you,

Exchanging with you.

Notice what that's like.

What's it like for you to feel inside of your flesh,

To be enfleshed in this way?

Now use your hearing,

Let your hearing exchange with the world and listen with your whole body,

Your whole self,

Not just your ears.

Feel what that's like.

This quality of being receptive,

Of letting pass through you,

Relaxing into the ground,

Letting your breath flow,

Your mind be clear.

What's this like?

Seeing with your whole body.

The body is a resonator.

Now get ready to slowly and gently open your eyes.

Use your eyes to see with your whole body,

Not just with your eyes.

And have a felt sense of what you're seeing,

What you're gazing upon.

Don't think about what you see,

Feel what you see.

And let your eyes exchange with the world around you.

Let the felt sense of what is happening move through your entire body.

The movements,

Colors,

People,

If there are people here.

And see and feel into the stillness that surrounds and holds everything moving.

Notice when you start to see in this way with your whole body what begins to happen inside.

Seeing and listening,

Even smelling in this way.

What's it like?

Certain excitement or attention or curiosity.

It may be a subtle quality of aliveness or deeper awareness contained in your body.

What's the quality of your embodied presence here?

Are you here more now?

Can you be here receptive,

Flowing,

Grounded,

Soft,

Like a resonating body?

Are you available for a felt exchange with what is alive and all around you now?

Or are you not here yet?

Or not ready yet?

Just notice.

Let be what is.

From this embodied presence,

From this place inside,

Let's take up a question as a kind of invitation or exploration right now.

What happens inside when you hear this question?

What is the world asking of me today?

What is the world asking of me today?

Let go of whatever you are typically asking of yourself.

Just feel the question with your ears,

Feel it with your eyes,

Feel it with your muscles,

Your skin.

Feel the question with the ground of your entire being.

What is the world asking of me?

Feel it as an invitation.

Notice what comes.

And now notice what happens in your body.

When I tell you that I am going to ask you to speak your name out loud.

Notice what happens inside when you hear this request.

Feel that.

What happens in you?

I want to ask you to speak your name out loud.

And now clearly and with your whole being,

Simply say your name out loud.

And feel your body,

Feel your resonance.

And I'll try that one more time.

With your whole being saying your name out loud,

Call yourself into being.

Feel that inside,

The ground of your being.

And don't leave yourself.

Feel yourself here as you stay.

Complete this morning,

This afternoon or this evening,

Wherever you are in your day.

One more round of body as a resonator now with a poem from Rilke in the Book of Hours.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us and walks with us silently out of the night.

And these are the words we dimly hear.

These are the words we dimly hear you,

You sent out beyond your ability to recall.

Go to the limits of your longing,

Embody me.

Embody me.

Go to the limits of your longing,

Embody me.

Flare up like flame.

Flare up like flame,

Make big shadows I can move in.

This groundedness and this resonance let everything happen to you.

Exchange with the world beauty,

Terror,

But just keep going,

Keep resonating.

No feeling is final.

No feeling is final.

Don't let yourself lose me.

All around you is this thing called life,

A living world.

You'll know it by its gravity,

By its presence.

Now give me your hand.

Use this meditation now with some quiet,

Some simple following of your breath.

Three slow and deep breaths and then taking the time and space that you need to complete.

And if you so choose,

Journaling,

Whatever has arisen for you.

Reviews

Loved it !

A beautiful practice and experience of noticing and be-ing. I will definitely do this again regularly! Namaste 🙏🏼

What an exploration! A calling out of the senses to be here now - alive! An invitation to enter the mystery, really, of what it is to be an embodied human BEing. I feel the vibrations and look forward to working with this one more. Thank you.

This was so good and brought me back to myself and removed all my distractions some how. Thank you for this. I plan to turn to it regularly.

What’s the world asking of you today?
Letting resonate this question

Listening with my whole self... so beautiful !

Well....that was special. I would describe this as a guided practice. I was quite moved by this & very engaged - one of my cats couldn’t help but share the experience. Will visit often. Namaste.

So wonderful!! Thank you!! 🙏✝️💝

Wonderful Thankyou 🧡🙏🏻

The concept of “dropping into your body” worked well for me. Thank yoy

I found this practice incredibly interesting. It was unlike any meditation I've ever done. When speaking my name out loud with my entire body I felt a vibration all over. What an experience! ❤️🙏❤️🙏

This is fabulous
Thank u

Amazing!!! Made me feel sooo alive!! And when I said my name I felt empowered. Not over anyone but empowered to be a better me. Thanks tons!!!

I listened to this twice this morning. The vibration in your voice resonates with me. I listened the second time allowing myself to imagine being in your presence with others and a band of energy waved through the group. When you said, to say my own name it felt foreign. I had to say my first name with my middle name to resonate. Thank you for a deep and intriguing meditation.
Namaste 🙏🏻 Teresa Renee

I found this meditation very grounding, I feel like I learned something new. Thank you!

Thank you for that extraordinary meditation

Thank you. That was one of my favorite poems from when I was a child! Definitely brought back some memories and gave it a new context. Thank you so much!! Bendiciones!

Definitely 5 stars!!!!!! I will return to this again. It was a lovely experience to listen and hear with my whole body but difficult to see with my body
Thank you

An amazing embodiment experience - never had I felt-sensed my uttering of my name out loud!