Cellular Rest Meditation

Recorded live on Deep Rest Meditation Retreat in 2015. Opening to the whole field of experience of the body, as if we were listening to a big sea. Breath washing through the body, like waves in a body of water.

Feeling the heartbeat in different areas of the body. And gradually opening to feel or imagine the whole body as just group of cells, like a shoal of fish. Cells with their own rhythms and life. In resonance with the cellular life on earth over millions of years, simply here and whole.

Transcript

Breathing out deeply two or three times.

So breathing out as deep as we think we can and then still a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

And then letting the in-breath just come by itself.

This can be a good way to clear space in the body and mind at the beginning of a meditation.

And then just letting the breath come into its own rhythm,

Whatever that is just now.

And if it's possible,

Letting ourselves be kind of open to the whole field of experience called body.

As if we were feeling and watching and listening to a big sea,

A big ocean.

That has not so much small waves but kind of big smooth swells or waves.

Just feeling the breath wash through the body.

So just letting ourselves be aware of the body as one whole thing,

As if it were a body of water.

Being moved by the breath.

And then feeling,

If you feel in the head,

In what places do you feel the movement of the breath?

The changes from the body's breathing.

In the mouth and the throat and the ears.

So if at all possible,

Kind of maintaining a sense of feeling the whole field of body while gently also feeling a little bit more detail in the mouth,

Ears,

Throat area.

How does the wave of the breath move?

And the whole chest,

Including the sides under the arms,

The upper arms as well.

And then the middle of the main body,

The lower rib cage,

The upper abdomen,

The middle of the back.

How does the wave of the breath move through that part of the body as it goes out,

As it comes in?

Sometimes we might feel like we've come to a place where the breath or the wave in the sea meets the bottom of the sea.

And the bottom of the sea shapes the movement of the breath.

And moving down into the whole belly and the bottom half of the back.

Still feeling the whole field of the body and highlighting this lower half of the main body area.

Playing with learning how to kind of ride the surf,

Ride the wave of the breath.

Really staying with that edge of the unknown of how this wave is going to be as it falls out of the body and how this wave of breath is going to be as it falls into the body.

And just feeling in the pelvis,

The buttocks,

The lower back,

The sacrum,

The tailbone.

Is there any movement from the breath?

Is there any kind of feedback to the breath from the pelvic bowl?

What do you feel?

As if the body is a long string or strings on a musical instrument and the breath is a wave being played on that string.

In some places,

We might feel the wave much more easily.

In other places,

More finely.

But if we can let the string stay elastic,

Not trying to tighten the string to feel it better.

Just letting it be as it is.

And letting the wave travel along the string as far as it does.

And then just feeling in the upper legs and knees.

And in the lower legs and ankles.

Is there any kind of opening and closing that may be related to the breath?

And then feeling into the feet,

The heels,

The soles,

The tops,

The toes,

The skin,

The bones,

The flesh.

And then again,

The body as a whole,

As one body of water,

As one musical instrument.

And then feeling into the feet.

Relaxing as if into your favorite,

Most comfortable place.

Or as if onto something floating in the water or even as if the water itself,

Not even having to hold anything up.

These waves of mystery.

Happening together with the mystery of the body.

And if you wish,

Feeling still the body as a whole thing.

And also tuning into the spine and the brain.

Just feeling how the body's breath moves the brain and spine.

So the bones of the skull and the bones of the spine and the nerves and the brain cells.

And then feeling into the feet.

And then feeling into the feet.

And then just tuning into the brain and the nerves that are inside the canal of the spine,

Inside the bones,

In the back half of the spine.

Tuning in and feeling what's actually there.

And if you need some imagination to help you find the back half of the spine and the shape of the brain in the skull.

As if that were some kind of soft sea animal or one of the strings of the musical instrument of the body.

Flexible and alive.

Just feeling how the breath moves that,

That sea animal or that musical string.

And then feeling into the feet.

And then feeling into the back of the head.

And finally we could feel and or imagine all of the nerves,

The nerve cells,

The living nerve cells that branch out,

That radiate out in the head and the body from the spine.

That allow us to feel ourselves in space.

Just feeling the breath moving that.

And so again coming back to a sensing of the whole body as one field.

And for a few more moments just how the breath moves within that field.

What the breath touches.

What opens and closes with the breath.

And then as if we could relax back into the space that allows this field of body to be here.

Letting go of tuning into the breath if possible.

Just as if feeling the space around and in the body.

And tuning into the rhythm of the physical heart.

In as simple a way as we can.

By feeling its movement.

And allowing a very loose and easy kind of feeling of how the movement of the heart spreads out and reaches throughout the body.

So again tuning into the body as a whole field.

Especially feeling the area of the heart.

And how the rhythm of the heart passes through the whole body.

The whole body field.

Or rather where do we feel it and where do we not feel it.

Where is it most easily felt.

The rhythm of the heart moving the blood.

And spreading out from where it's easily felt.

As if on an easy adventure to see,

To feel,

To notice where that rhythm is resonating in the cells of the body.

Do we feel it in the fingers?

And what does it feel like in the fingers?

And what about in the elbows?

The pelvis?

The legs?

Can we feel the pulse of the heart in the lungs?

And what about in the back and the spine from tailbone to the top of the spine?

Tuning into this station of feeling.

This station of experience.

The whole field of body and especially the spine.

And is there a way to tune into the feeling in the body of the blood coming back to the heart?

Which doesn't have so much of a pulse,

But we can sometimes hear the sound inside.

It sounds more like a shh.

As the blood amazingly travels up all the way from the toes back to the heart.

All the way from the fingers,

The ears,

The top of the head.

The tip of the nose.

Just feeling the different quality as the blood finds a way to swing and swish back to the heart.

Without the help of the pulsing heart.

Feeling or imagining what's actually happening in the body.

And if you wish to play for a few moments more with tuning again into the pulsing rhythm of the heart as it supplies the blood to the whole body.

And just for fun feeling where we can feel it.

Can we feel it in the skin behind the knee?

The shoulder blade.

The stomach.

The bones.

Inside the bones.

And then tuning back into the feeling or the imagination of letting the blood come back home.

To the heart and lungs.

We can listen for the sound that's possible to hear sometimes.

Not just the pulsing of the heart,

But the shh.

As the blood moves through the veins coming back home.

And then again relaxing open.

Relaxing into openness and letting the whole body feel.

Play in relaxed awareness.

And tuning into our felt sense if possible,

Our actual experience if possible.

Of the body as a group of cells.

And then coming into this station where it's just cells,

Not different kinds of cells.

The difference between the brain cell,

The skin cell,

The muscle cell,

The bone cell,

Etc.

The differences are not as important as what is shared.

Fluid in a very thin skin,

Floating in fluid.

With the center inside.

With communication with things coming in and things going out.

Through the walls,

Through the skin of the cell,

Through the membrane.

And if we could start to feel,

Experience,

Or imagine what's called the cellular breathing.

And imagine every cell releasing what is not needed through its skin.

And opening to receive what it does need through its skin,

Through its membrane.

So just playing with this,

Not trying to get it right.

Playing with this real possibility that we can feel these cells called ours,

Called mine.

With their pulsing rhythm.

Sparkling open and closed like tiny flowers.

Like tiny waves.

So if our image of our body comes in strongly,

If we can let the image be there but not believe it.

And coming inside into our experience.

As the cells resonate with life.

Similarly with sounds,

Thoughts,

And feelings.

Letting them be,

But not letting them shape our experience of the cells into something known or fixed.

Just wide open experiencing of cellular life.

And it sells all the cells as just cells.

Like a flock of birds or a school of fish.

A group of birds or fish that somehow fly or swim together as a group.

Flashing and bubbling with life.

Just the simple cell in tune with the first cell that became our body.

The one cell.

The one cell that became our body.

The one cell that became each of the bodies in this room.

The one cell that became the birds and the trees they're singing from.

The simple one cell that keeps using all of the material of the planet.

Letting it in,

Becoming the body,

And letting it out.

The life of the one cell.

Receiving and letting go of the earth and the air and the water.

The warmth and the coolness.

The one cell that learned to fly,

To dive,

And to speak.

Just resting into the possibilities of this simple cell experience.

Where the more we relax and let it be,

The more possibilities there are.

The one cell that became our body.

Resting back and letting the cells life,

Sparkle.

Resting back and letting creativity have the cells.

The one cell that became our body.

Reviews

Life giving

So peaceful and relaxing feeling breath throughout the body. thank you.

Brilliant .. thankyou 🙋‍♀️🐦🙏🥀

Lovely to find you here, Jayaji. Thank you for the beautiful meditation.

Wonderful meditation.
Thank you🙏

Great fun imagining vibration ......energy at the cellular level, and much more.

Liked very much, different, a bit noisy in the beginning but only a few minutes - thank you 🙏

True expansion happened for me. Thank you!

Not bad. I liked the quiet pauses to practice. Abrupt ending but I just kept sitting so ok. Thank you.

Thank you. Very much needed

A beautiful journey through the body and the breath, the nervous system, the cardiovascular system, and cellular respiration. The journey is poetic and peaceful. The voice is easy to listen to, the pace of speech and pauses are just right. Thank you for this powerful meditation.

Excellent. .thank k you

Allowed me to go deep into meditation

Thank You 🌈🙏 ✨💚💖🕊

A Very good deep meditation. Jaya is a wonderful teacher who can guide you toward the sometimes difficult path for me so that I can just let go and drop into my body and actually feel my heart beating in my hands. So a very strong practice for me. Thank you.

Twas good. Thank you. I needed to be aware of my body even as it twitched and jiggled and moved all over the place. I'm not a fan of the brief ad at the start though, is that info not available in the text part of your bio?