What Is Alive

This quick meditation offers you a safe space to check in with yourself - how is your physical body, what is your emotional backdrop, and what's happening in the mind? Grab a comfortable seat and offer this short moment to inquire within.

Transcript

Welcome to this quick five-minute meditation,

Simply dedicated to checking in,

Checking in with yourself.

And as your body settles into a comfortable seat,

Place your palms on your lower belly.

Simply seeing your palms on the lower belly and starting to breathe with what we call a diaphragmatic breath.

As you inhale,

Your lower belly softly expands.

As you exhale,

Navel gently draws back to the spine.

Breathing in and feeling the spaciousness in all four directions.

Breathing out and coming back to your center.

And as you let your attention rest in this rhythm of your breath,

Begin to very gently become aware of how is your physical body.

Notice if there are any areas that stand out through the textures,

Sensations,

Twitches,

What are the places of you that feel really good right now?

Maybe very soft,

Very open,

Maybe very connected.

And are there any areas that right now feel just a little bit uncomfortable?

Maybe numb or tight or there is a pain or discomfort of any sort.

And is there any way of breathing and sitting and being in this practice that supports you and allows you to observe all of these happenings with the same amount of dedication and curiosity?

Really tending to what feels alive in your own body.

To look deeply into this always changing,

Unpredictable,

Always surprising territory over inner landscapes.

And as you draw the next intentional breath in,

Could that be a gesture of descending even deeper?

Diving from the percolations of your subtle body into what's alive in your heart space.

In the yogic way of looking at the human body,

We see the physical layer is the most superficial,

Underneath which there is the subtle energetic body,

Underneath which is the emotional.

So paying attention to the heart and paying attention to your overall emotional backdrop,

What is there?

What is your most predominant feeling that you can recognize right now?

And this is a safe space to be in an authentic conversation with yourself.

To allow and let any emotion,

Any staring come forth,

Make itself known without controlling,

Without censoring.

You could choose to accept all these twitches,

Aliveness,

Starings of your inner self.

To hold it all with the same amount of interest and curiosity,

Inquisitiveness.

This incredibly broad spectrum of what it means to have a human experience.

Letting the next intentional breath in take you even deeper into your intellectual body.

As you notice what's happening in the mind right now,

What thoughts are being thought,

What's keeping you busy,

What kind of fascinating narrative is playing out in this moment today.

And as you feel the breath still softly dancing in your belly,

Let your mind,

Heart and body explore these new pathways of connecting.

Let your breath take you even deeper into the subtle dimensions of you.

What is there right now?

And could whatever you find during this exploration simply be allowed,

Be okay,

Be accepted into your experience of being human,

The living consciousness of you.

Reviews

Really nice. I very much appreciated the wording used during the observation of the various areas of the body and what sensations they were experiencing.

I'm not sure what it was about this practice, but in over two years of daily practicing, this was the first time I could truly say I felt I was actually detached and observing the various areas which my body is signaling currently experience pain and discomfort.

I had significant foot surgery ten days ago and am dealing with some abdominal issues at present along with the usual aches and pain a chronic pain patient manages and works through on a daily basis. I have been able to observe my pain and discomfort in a detached fashion before, but it has always been "barely" detached, as though I were a person standing close to myself and curiously observing - but because of the proximity, I had some deep previously-unrecognized inner filters that prohibited me from truly looking deeply at those sensations. I guess I now see it was like the social admonishing of "don't stare, it's rude." I was observing, yes, but only enough to broadly identify the type of sensation being experienced.

Here, I was able to detach, as before, but somehow I shifted to a different perspective. It felt much like when I was a kid on a rainy day and would pull out the containers of rocks I had picked up here and there - my collection - and would lay them all out on the floor, picking up one after the other and examining it in the light, turning it this way and that, feeling the textures and contours under my fingers, noting where it had some dirt on it I would later wash off, seeing if any part was shiny and more so when the light shone on it, how hard or soft it was, the color, even if I could mark it or scratch it or flake it with my fingernail.

All while contemplating how many thousands of years or longer it took to create this rock that now lay in my hand. Imagining the environment which was in existence at the stone's inception. Were there dinosaurs? Which kinds? Too early or late for dinosaurs? Did this stone witness the asteroid collision and dark skies that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, or was it much too young to have been there for that? Did waves gently caress or help shape it, or did it become what it is today under great pressure and stress? Fascinating to think of the ways things come into being and how the timing worked out over millions of years to create the intersection of this stone and my holding it in my hand at this precise moment. Destiny? Perhaps. But what an interesting thing to ponder, as the thunder rolls and rumbles, far off in the distance.

Our bodies are made up of the stuff of stars, quite literally. The elements that compose our physical structures on this planet, and all around us, the sum total of matter all once existed in the heart of stars. We truly are all one. And yet we are also each unique, with our own journeys, such as the paths and time it took for me to sit in my room with the rain softly pattering on my windowsill, rubbing my thumb over a piece of obsidian in one hand, holding a piece of smokey quartz in another, and looking at a medium sized chunk of sandstone with interesting tiny fossils on the surface sitting in my lap. We are one, yet we are separate. Same elements, different composition. So too are our physical beings and our spirits. One, yet separate.

Today, I detached enough during this practice to observe my body's sensations from the perspective of a curious child examining a pretty and unusual stone just obtained. No social influences, no "woulda coulda shoulda" thoughts. Simply exploring the edges and presence and appearance of sensation with curiosity, interest, compassion, and love.

I have had this experience only once before, and that very briefly. Today I had it as a stable state of being for the majority of the practice. I still have some elements of this state of being present at this moment, as I note with detachment and compassion the waves of discomfort moving cyclically through my body's abdomen and the ache in one area of the post-op foot which has now rested too long against a hard surface. My self-hypnosis practice for pain management has generated this type of detachment before, but never ever to the internal depth I have now.

It is quite a beautiful experience, and I feel oddly - but "perfectly" as if this is how it is supposed to have always been - ELEVATED above the pain and discomfort. I feel it, but it does not have an effect on my state of being beyond acknowledging that it is being perceived. And I find myself smiling a genuine smile, and I am happy.

This is something I have long heard of and hoped someday to experience. Whether I again am able to reach this state for this long or this deeply, or whether I surpass it at some point or never again achieve it, I have this moment to be grateful for and store away like a super-special shiny stone to be removed and cherished in private, always watching to find others like it as I move on in my daily journey of life.

Although to be honest about it all, I feel fairly confident that now that I have experienced this, the neural pathways have been forged, and reinforcement of those infant pathways will allow me to regain this type of experience - though it may take time to get there, and of course, maintaining my practice. Even if such were not the case though, I am so full of gratitude for this experience here and now. Whatever will be, will be. I am content. I am at peace. And I am grateful.

Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful practice with us here. I have bookmarked this track and downloaded it as well. I see you and the light within you. Be well. 🤲🏻❤️🤲🏻

5 minutes very well spent indeed. I noticed and allowed exactly where I was in key aspects of myself

Perfect for a quick checkin. Thank you