Guided Practice By Ajahn Brahm

This guided meditation is led by Ajahn Brahm. Ajahn's guidance helps you to cultivate stillness by relaxing first your body, then your mind. Allow yourself to be enthralled by his wisdom and insight. This track was recorded live, so contains some minor background noise. This track was published with the courtesy of Buddhist Society of Western Australia.

Transcript

So sitting down,

Closing your eyes and getting in contact with your body,

Experiencing your body.

This is a way of being mindful in this moment and learning how to relax.

So feel the legs first of all.

How are your legs positioned?

Do they need to be adjusted?

Are you sure they're okay?

If you need to change posture,

Please do so.

One of the very effective ways of being aware is to ask a question.

Ask a question,

Legs,

How do you feel?

Do you need to be moved?

Just ask a simple question,

Now do you feel the sensations in the legs?

And if you think that you need to move those legs,

Then do so.

Just adjust them.

That is called kindness,

Really caring for your legs.

If the legs have been looked after,

They've moved up to your butt.

Sitting on the stool,

The chair,

The cushion,

How does it feel?

When you first start meditating the sensation might be okay,

But it's just a sort of position where you're going to get pins and needles,

Eggs and pains forcing you to fidget.

You're fidgeting now.

You're aware and you're responding with kindness.

And then you move your attention up to the waist.

I like to sort of stretch my body,

Just like you see many species of animals doing,

A good stretch and then relaxing.

It shows that I am aware of my body and that I care for it,

Which means it relaxes.

And also the feelings,

Sensations in the body only exist in the present moment.

So it also focuses you in the now.

And I go to the rest of my back,

Making sure that it feels good.

You don't have to sit bolt upright,

You can lean against the backrest if you wish,

Or lean to the side.

Lean against the wall if you find one of the VIP seats,

Against the walls or the pillars.

You find the best position.

Then check the position of your hands.

Hands,

Are you comfortable where I've put you?

Awareness allows you to get feedback,

So you know whether it's comfortable or not.

You may try moving this,

Adjusting that,

Because the fact that you're moving and adjusting,

Still being aware of the comfort,

Will find the most comfortable position for your own hands.

It shows you're developing the kindness and you are mindful.

Then you can go up to your shoulder blades.

I only mention the shoulder blades because those are places where people have pain,

Because they're too tight.

So if you just feel those sensations,

See if you can loosen those muscles.

So at this point I usually bring up the simile of a string.

A string,

If it's pulled on both ends,

Gets very taut.

Something hits it,

Makes a really high pitched sound.

It's a recently guitar string,

Say.

And the sound gets lower and lower until something hits it and it doesn't make a sound at all.

It doesn't reverberate.

It is resilient.

Once your shoulders are relaxed,

You feel they're relaxed.

After a while,

Mindfulness,

Experiment,

Trial and error,

Kindness,

You get feedback.

After a while you learn how to relax.

Once your shoulders are calm,

Peaceful,

Go up to your neck,

Throat.

So experience any sensations there,

Get to know them and find out how to relax and soothe them.

Many irritations are over reactions of the body.

By being aware,

Getting feedback,

You can soon learn how to let things be.

Relax and be kind,

Opening the door of your heart to that feeling.

Not trying to get rid of it,

But be at peace with it.

You find,

Hopefully,

If you do it right,

The irritation or the pain lessens.

You find out how you can interact with your own body to create peace and health.

Then I go up to my face,

Do this because it's on your face which registers many of your emotions.

If you can relax the muscles around the eyes and the forehead and put a little smile on the face,

You find that's a very good posture for meditating.

The muscles of the face relax,

A little smile.

That's what tells your mind to relax,

Not to fear.

This meditation is a joyful activity.

Then I look at my whole body,

Just unified,

Relaxed,

Peaceful.

Feel it.

If I've done the job properly,

Then my body feels delightfully relaxed.

I say delightfully because there's a certain pleasure of relaxation which is not a danger to deep meditation,

But it is an important part of the process.

Delighting in a body which is relaxed,

Not 100%,

Never is 100%,

But much more than usual.

Once the body is at ease,

Then you can turn to what I call the peace-ometer.

How peaceful are you right now or how agitated?

Give it a number from 1 up to 10.

1 is peaceful,

10 is agitated.

It's not only to be proud,

No one knows except you,

Being truthful to yourself.

What it really does,

It puts you in contact with one of the most important parts of your mind,

The quality of peace or agitation.

And what makes your mind more peaceful?

What causes the mind to relax?

What makes it more agitated?

Because you're looking again at something which exists only in this moment,

You find that every time you move out of this moment,

Fears,

Anxieties or hopes of the future,

Anxieties from the past,

Good and bad,

That agitation gives you business to be done.

This is not business time,

This is being time,

Just relaxing.

You find that your peace-ometer shows you getting closer and closer to peace.

If you have a goal or an aspiration,

Something you like to achieve,

That will disturb you.

And past a moment you're out in some future somewhere.

If you're still hanging on to the past,

You haven't put it down for a while,

That will also just obsess your mind.

Let it go,

Just for a while.

In this moment,

Your peace-ometer can get so quiet.

It's a point for an incremented understanding that due to an武laughs,

And after a while when the mind is peaceful,

It's delightful.

And if you can do light in this moment,

Hopefully you don't need to think.

All the thoughts and ideas are like waves on a lake which is being disturbed.

Just imagine the lake up in the mountains,

Where there's no wind,

And it's perfectly still.

Your mind always not moving,

Not thinking.

And maybe you'll be aware of your breathing,

The last thing moving.

Breathing in peace,

Breathing out,

Letting go,

Just breathing,

Letting go.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

Enjoying,

Valuing,

Just this natural movement of the breath in and out of your body.

It's very close to the end of the meditation.

How do you feel?

The last couple of minutes of meditation I like to use for reflection,

To exploring what worked and what didn't work.

It's where we learn the skills of relaxation and the peace of mind.

If you are physically relaxed,

How does your body feel?

How healthy does it feel compared to when you started?

How peaceful is your mind?

What is peace?

Explore its meaning by understanding how it's expressed in you in this moment.

Peace.

We learn from experience,

Not from theory.

I'm now going to ring the gong three times.

Please be patient and wait for the last sound from the ringing gong to start to vanish when you open your eyes.

One two three.

Reviews

This was very helpful. The stress on peace made sense to me.

This guided meditation worked for me. My body and my mind were relaxed and at peace by the end. Would recommend to the community

I an so glad to have found this meditation 🙏🏼
Thank you

Such a kind and friendly presence. Always makes me smile. Thank you 🙏🏼 💕

A beautiful compassionate approach to settling into my meditation practice. Thank you.

This meditation felt like a breath of fresh air — kind, gentle, clear guidance with gaps of silence to go deeper. Beautiful ❤️🙏❤️

Amazing! Truly quieted this monkey mind. So many thanks!

Fantastic! Just enough settling in instruction. Followed by a good chunk of silence.

To mention kindness to your own body position as you meditate was eye opening. I appreciate the sense of humor, the patience, the pauses i between to focus. An excellent guide

Nice opening to help relax the body and prepare to meditate. Liked that then was largely silent to allow deepening of the practice that without a lot of talk.

I always love a guided meditation from Ajahn Brahm, thank you 🙏

Thank you. Absolutely wonderful guided meditation, will return to this many times.

For me, the simpler the better. And you don’t get simpler than this! Soothing voice. Thanks 🙏 ☮️

Beautiful. Thank you 😊

Listing to Ajhan soothing voice makes me go into meditation right away.

Wonderful thankyou 🙏

the only meditation you need.

Enjoyed this meditation. Good guidance was very relaxing. Thanks. Namaste 🙏

Thank you. Very relaxing; very peaceful.

I return again and again to Ajahn Brahm to begin my meditation. Kindness.