Mountain Meditation

Guided meditation adapted from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Mountain Meditation. Just under 20 minutes, this guided visualisation's aim is to help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression.

Transcript

Begin in an upright sitting position on the floor or a chair.

Sense the support from the chair or cushion.

Pay attention to the actual senses of contact.

Find a stable,

Poised position.

Upper body and shoulders balanced over your hips.

Hands on your lap.

Arms heavy.

Close your eyes.

Bring awareness to your breath,

The actual physical sensations.

Feel each breath as it comes in and goes out.

Let the breath be as it is without trying to change it in any way.

Allow it to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace.

Know you are breathing perfectly well right now.

Allow the body to be still,

Sitting with a sense of dignity,

A sense of resolve,

A sense of being complete,

Whole in this very moment.

Feel the wholeness reflecting in your posture.

As you sit,

Let an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent,

Beautiful mountain.

You may know this mountain,

Have seen it,

Or imagine it.

Let it gradually come into greater focus.

Allow the sense of this mountain fill its overall shape,

Its lofty peak high in the sky,

The large base rooted in the bedrock of the Earth's crust,

Its deep or gentle sloping sides.

Notice how massive it is,

Solid,

Unmoving,

Beautiful,

Whether from afar or up close.

Perhaps your mountain has snow-blinketing at its top,

Trees reaching down to the base or rugged granite sides.

There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.

There may be one peak or a series of peaks,

Meadows,

High lakes,

And lochans.

Observe it.

Note its qualities.

And when you feel ready,

See if you can bring the mountain into your own body,

Sitting here,

So that your body and the mountain in your mind's eye become one.

You sit here,

Sharing in the massiveness,

The stillness,

And the majesty.

You become the mountain.

Grounded in the sitting posture,

Your head becomes the lofty peak,

Supported by the rest of your body,

Affording a panoramic view.

Your shoulders and arms,

The sides of the mountain,

Your bottom and legs,

The solid base,

Rooted to your cushion or chair.

Experience in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.

With each breath,

As you continue sitting,

Become a little more a breathing mountain,

Alive,

Vital,

Unwavering in your inner stillness,

Completely what you are,

Beyond words and thought,

Centered,

Grounded,

Unmoving presence.

As you sit here,

Become aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,

The light,

Shadows,

And colors change moment by moment.

In the mountain's stillness,

The surface teems with life and activity,

Streams,

Melting snow,

Waterfalls,

Plants,

And wildlife.

As the mountain sits,

Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night,

The bright,

Warming sun,

Followed by the cool night studded with stars,

And the gradual dawning of a new day.

Through it all,

The mountain just sits,

Experiencing change in each moment,

Constantly changing,

Yet always,

Just being itself,

It remains still.

As the seasons flow into one another,

And as the weather changes,

Moment by moment,

Day by day,

Calmness,

Abiding all change.

In summer,

There is no snow on the mountain,

Except perhaps for the very peaks or in crags shielded from direct sunlight.

In the fall,

The mountain may wear a coat of brilliant fire colors.

In winter,

A blanket of snow and ice.

In any season,

It may find itself at times,

Enshrouded in clouds or fog,

Or pelted by freezing rain.

People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is,

Or how it's not a good day to see the mountain.

It's too cloudy or rainy,

Foggy or dark.

None of this matters to the mountain,

Which remains at all times its essential self.

Clouds may come and clouds may go.

Tourists may like it or not.

The mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by whether people see it or not.

Seen or unseen,

In sun or in clouds,

Droiling or frigid,

Day or night,

It just sits,

Being itself.

At times visited by violent storms,

Buffeted by snow and rain,

Winds of unthinkable magnitude.

Through it all,

The mountain sits.

Spring comes.

Trees leaf out.

Flowers bloom in the high meadows and slopes.

Birds sing in the trees once again.

Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.

Through it all,

The mountain continues to sit.

Unmoved by the weather,

By what happens on its surface,

By the world of appearances,

Remaining its essential self through the seasons.

The changing weather,

The activity,

Ebbing and flowing on its surface.

In the same way,

As we sit in meditation,

We can learn to experience the mountain.

We can embody the same central,

Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything.

The changes in our own lives,

Over seconds,

Hours,

Years.

In our lives and in our meditation practice,

We have our own periods of light and darkness,

Activity and inactivity,

Our moments of color and our moments of drabness.

It's true that we experience storms of varying intensity and violence in the outer world.

And in our own minds and bodies,

Buffeted by high winds,

By cold and rain,

We endure periods of darkness and pain,

As well as moments of joy and uplift.

Even our appearance changes constantly,

Experiencing a weather of its own.

By becoming the mountain,

We can link up with its strength and stability and adopt them for our own.

We can use its energies to support our energy,

To encounter each moment with mindfulness,

Equanimity and clarity.

It may help us to see our thoughts and feelings,

Our preoccupations,

Our emotional storm and crises.

The things that happen to us are very much like the weather on the mountain.

We tend to take it personally,

But its strongest characteristic is impersonal.

The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied.

It is to be encountered,

Honored,

Felt,

Known for what it is,

And held in awareness.

And in holding it in this way,

We come to know a deeper silence,

Stillness and wisdom.

If you find you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in your sitting,

It may be helpful to use it from time to time in your meditation practice to remind you of what it means to sit mindfully with resolve and wakefulness in true stillness.

I invite you to continue to sustain the mountain meditation on your own in silence,

Moment by moment.

Thank you.

As you bring your awareness and presence back to the present moment,

I invite you to take you to further sustain the mountain in your body.

Whether you are going off into the evening and drifting to sleep or beginning your day,

You are a mountain.

Reviews

This is one of the best meditations I’ve shared in on Insight Timer—and I’ve done a lot. Thank you so much. Namaste.