What Is The Body? (Long Version)

This practice invites us to explore the question at the very heart of somatic meditation. Guiding us into embodied experience in several different ways, we are encouraged to look through our expectations and into our own experience. We are encouraged to ask, ‘What is the body?’

Transcript

So just let yourself get comfortable.

Let yourself have a sense of the body and the sense of the earth underneath.

And for most of us,

The most immediate experience of the earth is going to be whatever we're sitting on.

That sense of groundedness,

That sense of presence,

That sense of support.

And just settle in.

Let your attention settle into the body,

Which simply means feel what's going on.

And let your body settle into the support of the earth.

Just give yourself to the support,

Typically of the seat underneath us.

And we're going to begin by attending to the breath as it's drawn in through all the pores.

Just let yourself notice the breath,

The inhalation being drawn into the body through all the pores.

We don't often think of it in this way,

But the skin is the largest respiratory organ the body has.

And just begin to notice what's always happening,

Which is every inhale,

The breath is drawn into the body through every pore in the body from the tip of the toe to the crown of the head.

Feel the breath flow in,

Notice the breath flow in.

Let your attention settle into the body through all the pores.

And if the body begins to unwind and relax as this occurs,

Just let this happen.

Notice the breath coming in through the pores into the body.

And as always with meditation practice,

If you notice your mind wandering away,

If your attention drifts from the breath coming into the pores,

That's no problem.

Just relax and bring your attention back in that direction.

And guide your attention back in that direction to the breath coming in through all the pores.

90 30 guess that's the Mai Tai Ten method.

And having now done this for a few minutes,

What's happened is our minds,

Our attention has settled a little bit.

Certainly our attention still wanders away,

Chasing thoughts about tomorrow's dinner and yesterday's argument and what shirt we'll wear to work in the morning.

And the wanderings may be not so frequent and not so intense and not so sticky and not so seductive.

We've begun to settle a little bit.

So we're going to let our attention get a little bit more intimate with the breath.

Now we've been noticing the breath coming in through the pores.

And now let's follow the breath.

So let your attention actually rest with the breath and follow the breath in through all the pores in the body.

That means we're following the breath in to the skin and we're following the breath in to the musculature.

We're following the breath into the bones and in to the blood.

And so let the breath,

Let the inhale guide us into a deeper sense of embodiment.

And let the body unwind and relax and release.

As this occurs.

And as always,

And as before.

If your mind wanders away,

Just relax and bring it back.

Let it rest with the breath and follow the inhale in to the body.

Follow the inhale in as fully and completely as you can.

And let the breath in as fully and completely as you can.

Let the breath in as fully and completely as you can.

Let the breath in as fully and completely as you can.

Let the breath in as fully and completely as you can.

And at a certain point,

You could even look into your experience of the body right now.

Not what we think the body is,

Not what we remember the body was 20 minutes ago,

But you can look and contemplate what is our experience of the body right now.

What is it we're coming into?

When we follow the breath in through all the pores,

Into the body,

Into the blood,

Into the bones,

What do we find?

There's no right answer.

It's just what we see when we look.

Follow the breath in.

And then we're going to shift things a little.

I said we were going to do a series of linked meditating with the body practices in that first practice is called arriving in the body.

And now we'll work with yin breathing or lower belly breathing.

And we'll begin to breathe into the lower belly.

So we'll inhale a single stream of breath like we were breathing through a single nostril from outside the belly,

Into the belly,

In through the front belly,

And then into the body itself,

Somewhere roughly halfway between the navel and the pelvic floor.

And in addition to the front of the body,

There's a kind of entry point back towards the spine.

And let's replicate what we did before.

And just to begin with,

Just to let us settle,

Just notice.

So notice this single stream of breath coming in to the lower belly.

Lift your attention toward this.

Ten complexity.

And then having begun to stabilize a little bit,

Get a little more intimate and follow the breath in.

Let your attention rest on the breath and follow the breath in to the lower belly.

Ride the breath in.

And there's an interesting thing that we can notice,

We can become aware of as we're following the breath into the lower belly.

And that's a very common tendency to kind of check out on the breath at a certain point.

We follow the breath in,

We follow the breath in,

And then it's like,

Okay,

That's enough.

And our mind kind of drifts for a few moments.

And then we follow the next inhale in,

We follow it in,

And then our mind drifts away.

That's okay.

Follow the next one in.

See if you can actually follow the inhale in all the way to its conclusion.

As the inhale becomes more deeply into the body,

It becomes more subtle and more refined.

It's like the solidity of the breath becomes energetic.

And then it becomes even more open and spacious.

And at these points,

It's really easy to just leave.

Stay with the breath,

Stay with the inhale until it feels like the inhale has reached its inevitable conclusion.

It just melts into the body.

And then we ride the next inhale in.

See if you can stay with the body,

Or the breath,

The inhale particularly as fully as possible as it streams into the belly.

And as always,

If the body wants to roll back,

We'll put aina why,

We will pull it over.

Let it flow for me just one more.

Now the automobile itself is the one Biden is Gender lighter brand.

It's black.

He's got a playset red with a white for three projectors.

And as always,

If the body wants to relax,

Let the body relax.

If our mind wanders away,

Just bring it back with a gentle sense of precision.

Follow the breath into the lower belly.

Stay outside your Pork Arm.

And as we said at the outset,

The practice of meditating with the body affirms the centrality of the body of our immediate relative lives in the human journey.

Which raises a number of questions,

Not the least being what exactly is the body?

Follow the breath into the lower belly and just take a look,

Again,

Not at what we think or remember or expect.

Take a look at our experience of the body.

What do you see?

What exactly is the body right now in the lower belly?

Just look as we follow the breath in.

Enjoy.

Good.

So we haven't yet acknowledged the exhale.

We've been focusing on the inhale.

And now pay a little bit of attention to the inhale and the exhale.

So the first practice that we did was arriving in the body,

Which linked into lower belly breathing,

Which will now link with a third meditating with the body practice known as earth breathing.

So follow the inhale in to the lower belly.

And on the exhale,

You may notice there's a kind of down and out release quality on the exhale,

Like something's just opening up and being let go.

Follow the inhale in to the lower belly.

And on the exhalation,

Let your attention follow this release down and out.

Next to the very depths of the lower belly.

And then let your attention follow the exhale's natural sense of release down and out to the pelvic floor,

The perineum.

And now follow the breath,

The inhale in to the lower belly and follow the exhale down and out through the lower belly,

Through the pelvic floor and into the earth underneath.

And for the next few minutes with every exhale,

Just let yourself surrender down and out into the earth a little bit further,

A little more completely.

Remembering to draw on the faculty of imagination if this is helpful.

So we follow the inhale into the belly and then follow the exhale down and out into the earth.

Professorlua.

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Let the body relax.

As you follow the breath into the lower belly,

Follow the exhale down and out into the earth.

And if you find yourself settling very comfortably onto the exhale,

You can actually let go of the inhale and just keep opening down and out into the earth.

Down and out into the earth.

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And we're still going to be doing this earth breathing practice.

We're just going to shift how we're breathing a little bit.

And what we all need to do is just pick a point somewhere in the earth.

Somewhere in the depths that we've opened up to just pick a point underneath the pelvic floor.

For some of us,

It'll be two inches in the earth.

Some of us,

It'll be 10 kilometers.

Just pick a point in the depths of the earth,

Roughly underneath the pelvic floor,

Underneath the perineum.

And just begin to inhale into this.

Breathe the openness of the earth,

The experience of the earth into this little point.

Let your attention stabilize on that.

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And with the periphery of your attention,

Notice how when you breathe into that point,

The space of the earth,

The openness of the earth that comes into that point,

Comes up through the earth like a straw and enters the body through the pelvic floor.

And it's a peripheral noticing because our attention is on the inhale coming into that point in the depths of the earth.

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So our attention is deep in the earth,

Breathing into this point in the earth,

Breathing in the earth,

And in a peripheral way,

Noticing that coming up through the pelvic floor into the body.

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And as we continue,

One of the things you may notice is that qualities that we normally associate with the earth,

That we normally separate from ourselves,

Qualities like stillness and groundedness,

Steadiness,

Rootedness,

Qualities like openness and equanimity,

Are actually part of our own embodied experience.

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So again,

Coming back to what was said at the beginning,

The practice of meditating with the body affirms the centrality of the body in our spiritual journey,

Which begs a couple of questions.

One is,

What is the body?

And as you sit here with your attention deep in the earth,

Deep in the greater body,

The cosmic body,

Attending to the inhale,

Drawing the earth into this point and up into the personal body as you sit here,

What is your experience of the body?

Not our thoughts or memories or expectations,

But what is our experience of the body?

And notice those qualities that were mentioned earlier,

Stillness,

Steadiness,

Rootedness,

Openness,

Groundedness.

As you consider the question of what does the body,

What does this body bring into our spiritual journeys,

Bring into our human lives?

Stay in the earth,

Following the breath in,

Letting it come up and percolate through the body on the surface.

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And just for the last minute or two,

Maybe let the technique drop.

Just sit here being the body,

Being the earth.

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And once again,

Just looking into that question,

What is the body?

What is our experience of the body as we sit here as the body,

As the earth?

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And then just let the practice melt,

Dissolve.

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