It's broadly speaking,
The postures of meditation are walking,
Standing,
Sitting,
Or lying down whenever one is alert.
So if you're awake,
You can meditate.
More specifically,
Classic sitting posture,
Basically wanting to be upright but not rigid.
So establishing a firm,
Comfortable base where you're not going to fall over or fall in any direction and then bringing the attention kind of up the spine or even do sort of a somewhat quick body scan.
And you can start even now with imbuing your attention with the wish for well-being,
With goodwill.
So everywhere your attention goes,
Let it have that energy.
So moving up the spine and letting the spine be lifted and all the way through,
Right up through the center of the top of the head,
Have the center of the top of the head be pointed,
Lifted up to the heavens and tuck the chin down just a little bit.
You want to feel the length of the back of the neck and then just let all of that settle.
So we tend to lift,
Kind of imagine the spine just perfectly stacked the way God intended it,
And then just let everything kind of fall around that.
And then breathing,
Having full breaths is helpful so that it's not just constricted in the chest.
You feel the rising and falling of the,
Around the navel,
At least to some degree,
The beginning of the sitting.
Sometimes I encourage people to take a few deeper than usual breaths,
Almost like you're,
As we were talking about exploring analysis of qualities,
Exploring,
Becoming curious.
Get curious,
Send the breath out into the body,
Explore the range.
All the sensations of breathing,
Feel the influence of those sensations.
How far down in the body can you feel the breath?
How far up into the upper chest,
Neck,
Throat,
All the way down into the pelvis,
Maybe the upper legs.
Even just the conceptual cue of,
We know that the body is being refreshed through each breath.
So we can sense and feel the refreshment.
We can imagine more deeply signals from each cell calling for the breath,
The pathways of energy,
The endocrine,
Neural,
Think of the blood moving through the body.
This is all the breath,
So letting our awareness of the body be full,
Expanded,
And just residing,
Abiding in each moment of each breath.
The inclination to get into the proliferation of thought,
Kind of a temptation of a kind of feeding,
It's like getting up and going to the cabinet when you're already full.
We stay told that there's plenty of food here,
That the universe is found in this fathom long body,
Don't need to go outside right now.
Within the awareness of the body and the awareness of the breath,
Continuing moment by moment,
We might find that the mind has escaped for a minute,
Simply returning in those moments.
It can also be interesting to see other little things like the,
Maybe the posture has collapsed a little bit,
And there can be a sort of fortification,
Re-fortification of our attention by going quickly over what we've already done,
Maybe going,
Establishing the base of the posture and moving up through the spine and settling back in again.
All counts as mindfulness of form,
Finding those sensations of breathing again,
Maybe finding them renewed,
Finding them different than they were before.
Always safe also to recall goodwill,
If I don't know much else at this moment,
At least I'm here for well-being,
Happiness I seek is independent of suffering.
My teacher will often say,
If the mind wanders and returns,
Reward it with a particularly refreshing breath,
Just thinking of breath as a snack with,
Maybe you need to acquire a taste,
It's a little like beer maybe,
Or anchovies,
But it is interesting as part of that investigation,
What do they,
What do they mean by being nourished by the breath?
Concentration being food,
Independent happiness,
Fortress,
Exploring deep breaths,
Maybe soft,
Subtle breaths,
How slow can the breath become,
How soft,
Maybe that's the taste of breath this moment calls for,
Delicate,
But it's a whole body experience,
Every cell's making the call,
This is the life force energy,
The interface of mind,
Body,
Spirit.
