Hello friends,
This is David.
Today we're going to do a meditation on vedana,
Or feeling tone,
And specifically finding a greater sense of ease no matter what we're feeling.
So to start out we can take a little time just relaxing.
Maybe starting with three slow deep breaths.
On the inhale,
Our torso filling with air like a balloon.
On the exhale,
Our whole body relaxing into the seat.
You can also bring that sense of ease and softening places like our forehead,
Our jaw,
Our shoulders,
And tummy.
Letting go of any clenching,
Contraction,
Or tightness.
Letting our whole body relax.
To help with this settling in practice,
We can bring our awareness to a very gentle light anchor.
Something that's easeful and obvious.
Like just being mindful of the touch points of your body on the chair,
Cushion,
Or ground.
Maybe the breath,
The general sense of the body,
The hands,
But whatever it is,
Just let yourself relax into an anchor.
Mindful.
And then letting the anchor drop away,
We're going to move into a few different forms of body scan practices.
And the first is,
I'd invite you to scan your attention through your body and see if you notice any unpleasant sensations or feelings.
This could be tension in your back,
Tightness in your chest,
Maybe you're a little cold or too warm,
A headache.
So if you notice anywhere where there's unpleasant sensation,
Just take a moment to let your attention linger there.
To feel it,
To allow it.
Not to make it go away,
But just to be with it.
To see what it's like,
To be curious.
And then after a few moments,
You can let that one sensation move along and look elsewhere in the body.
Are there other unpleasant sensations?
Being with unpleasant sensation in the body.
And then we'll shift gears a little and we'll scan the body for pleasant sensation.
Sometimes this one can be a little subtler,
And it doesn't need to be this big burst of joy.
But just noticing perhaps somewhere like the tingling in the hands,
The feel of touch on the ground,
A sense of spaciousness throughout the body.
Like if you're feeling calm or relaxed,
How does that feel in the body?
And once again,
If you should notice anywhere where there's even the slightest bit of pleasant sensation,
Let your attention linger there for a moment.
Feel it,
Allow it,
Observe it,
And then move along and notice if there's other pleasant sensation in the body.
And then we'll shift gears once again,
And we're going to scan the body to see if we notice any neutral sensation.
For starters,
This would include anything that didn't fall into the pleasant or unpleasant category.
But for some specific parts that often are a bit more neutral,
This could include places like the earlobe,
The pinky toe,
The forearm.
Places where it just doesn't seem like there's much of anything going on.
And we take the opportunity in this meditation to let ourselves actually linger there for a moment to feel it.
What is neutral sensation like?
Observe it,
Be curious about it,
And then after a few moments move along and notice other neutral sensation in the body.
And then we can let these investigations into pleasant,
Unpleasant,
And neutral sensation fade away,
And we come back to our gentle anchor.
No need to laser focus on it,
But just having it lightly in the center.
Relaxed.
As you're with your anchor,
You may notice that pleasant,
Unpleasant,
And neutral feelings are always moving through our experience.
We might not notice them,
But they're always there.
And by spending some more time looking at them closely,
Like in this meditation,
We realize we actually have the capacity to be with them,
To just feel them,
Allow them.
We truly don't need to feel any differently than we do right now to have peace.
So for the final stretch of this meditation,
Just relax more and more into an ease of being.
Radically allowing whatever feelings are here.
Mindful.
