What follows is a very gentle meditation designed to encourage healing in whatever ways you may need it.
You can follow these instructions either sitting or lying down.
To start,
Ensure that you're comfortable.
Let your spine be straight and free of unnecessary rigidity or tension.
Give yourself a few breaths to settle into the meditation.
Let the body soften,
Feeling your muscles gradually becoming heavy and loose,
And tap into whatever sense of quiet,
Calm or peacefulness you can find in this moment.
Be open to the idea of healing,
Tuning into your natural impulses and instincts for health.
What would contribute most to your well-being at this moment?
Allow spontaneous responses to this question to surface.
And as you do,
Get a sense of your toes.
Your big toes.
Your little toes.
Your middle toes.
Are they warm or cool?
And your fingers.
The little fingers.
The thumbs.
The middle fingers.
The ring fingers.
The index fingers.
And what's the most obvious sensation in your head?
Tightness in the jaw?
Or around the eyes?
Sensations across the scalp?
Something around the nose or mouth?
What do you notice when you rest your attention in the throat?
The neck?
The shoulders?
How about in the chest?
The lungs?
The heart?
What's apparent?
Which of your arms feels most comfortable?
And which leg?
What's going on in the gut?
The belly?
Can you sense the diaphragm moving?
What we'll be doing in this meditation is simply allowing what needs to be healed into our awareness.
There may be things we like and don't like.
There may be judgments and evaluations.
And perhaps efforts to change what we experience.
All this is perfectly fine.
Let's just see what happens when we endeavor,
As best we can,
To permit things to be as they are.
Are you content with this moment?
With what you're thinking and feeling?
What calls for your attention?
What's on your mind?
Job worries?
Your children or family?
Creative ideas?
Sexual fantasies?
Incomplete projects?
A relationship?
What's there for you in this moment?
Thoughts often filter into awareness as you relax,
As you settle deeper into the rhythms of your breath and body.
See if you can resist the urge to dismiss these thoughts.
Instead,
Attend to them with curiosity.
These thoughts are there for review.
They indicate places of unrest and are the doorways to renewed health and well-being.
Even if you're thinking of things that you feel tense about,
Let the process unfold naturally.
Perhaps your wandering mind will lead you to a place of rest or respite or freedom or to a new understanding.
Every now and then you can open your senses to the breath.
Explore your breath as the most exquisite and satisfying type of touch.
Notice the subtle sounds as you breathe in and as you softly exhale.
Let the breath move freely,
Allowing the body to expand and contract naturally.
Alternatively,
Let your mind rest on some simple sensation,
The sense of contact your body makes with the surface beneath you,
The temperature of your feet or hands,
The subtle beating of your heart.
Sooner or later,
Your mind will drift.
If you think,
My mind is wandering,
I have to concentrate harder,
You'll miss the spontaneous intelligence arising from within.
The basic principle is this,
Life moves.
Life goes after the fulfillment of needs.
As you meditate,
You'll witness this movement.
Accept each thought,
Each impulse,
Even though you may crave peace and rest and silence right now.
Accept the yearnings that arise in your heart and everywhere in your being.
Where does your mind wander if you give it the chance?
What do you start thinking about as you rest with the movement of your breath or the stillness of your body?
Note what thoughts come and go through the back of your mind.
Of what are you reminded?
Perhaps you long for something.
Pay attention to it.
Explore your desire.
And when you feel the thought is finished,
Let your attention shift back to some simple sensory experience.
Sounds,
Your body,
Your breath.
Can you simply be with each experience,
Each thought,
Each sensation?
It may be possible that some comfort,
Some soothing,
Some healing takes place simply by remaining open.
Allow yourself to be fully aware of whatever you're experiencing right now.
What do you feel in the body?
What sensations are present?
Are there familiar feelings?
Are there sensations you're ignoring?
What else do you notice?
Memories,
Images?
Snatches of conversation?
Thoughts?
Some emotional charge?
Can you allow all this to go on?
To pass through your awareness without any effort to fix or change?
Relaxing into whatever is happening.
Not resisting anything.
Going with the flow.
If there's something in your life that you feel needs healing,
You can let that filter into your awareness.
Let it be fully present.
Be curious about the thoughts that arise,
And be prepared to meet your emotional response with compassion.
Emotions are the energies,
The textures,
The colors of life.
Can you simply allow them to be fully felt?
Or if things become too intense,
Perhaps you can find some way to soothe yourself,
To find some sense of peace amongst the chaos.
Be gentle,
Practicing a natural awareness.
Letting thoughts come and go.
Letting yourself feel sensations in the body,
Noticing where they're located,
The textures of each feeling,
And the tone and texture of any emotional response.
Fully present to this moment as it is.
Bear any discomfort or distress with empathy and patience.
Be a good friend to any pain you experience.
Letting everything arise in a space of warmth and acceptance.
And so there can be thoughts about how this won't work,
How the situation can't change.
There can be thoughts of discouragement.
The essence of healing is to have all such thoughts and feelings surface so that they can be seen and acknowledged.
Neither suppress nor hold on to what passes through awareness.
Whatever you experience,
Anger,
Fear,
Sadness,
Impatience,
Embarrassment,
Notice the tangible sense of that emotion in the body.
And along with that,
The internal dialogues and mental pictures.
You can experience a sense of peace or calm in the same way.
Just bringing your mindful attention to all that's happening.
Learning how not to interfere with the natural flow of the senses is an extension of relaxation.
As you train not only the body,
But every fiber of your being to work in a cooperative way.
The essence of health and well-being is that relaxation into the natural rhythms of life.
Deep relaxation allows healing.
Not resisting anything.
Noticing everything in detail.
Fully present.
Open to healing.
And you can continue in this manner for as long as you'd like.
