Savasana And Meditation Focused On Central Channel

The practice begins with a guided savasana (reclining) practice which includes lengthening the exhalation and a body scan. Continuing, there is an invitation to remain reclining or shift to a seated position. This part of the practice includes a flow up and down the central channel with the breath, followed by resting awareness in the Dantien (navel area).

Transcript

And please get ready for Shavasana. Take your time settling your body so that you're comfortable. And let's start our Shavasana today with kind of a slow pranayama, Just to find a comfortable inhalation just as deep as you want it to be. And then really elongate your exhale as much as you can. You might kind of play with coming towards six or eight or even ten seconds on the exhale. When you're ready to take in the next breath, Go ahead and just in a leisurely way draw your in-breath in, Fill your lungs. And begin the exhale very slowly so that you can elongate the exhale quite a bit. If we rush the beginning of the exhale, It's much harder to draw it out slower. So start it slowly and let's just do that several more times. Nice leisurely deep inhale and then really exploring how much you can slow your exhalation all the way to the bottom of the breath, All the way to empty. Find just a couple more of these nice slow exhalation pranayamas and let your breath settle and witness as your breath finds its own rhythm now. Just let it happen. Trust the natural impulse of breathing in, Breathing out. And then let's just gently include our whole bodies in our awareness of sensing your head, Your face, Your crown, The back of your head, Your ears, And jaw. Gently sense and include just breathing comfortably. Include your neck, Wide awareness into your shoulders and down your arms, Front of the upper arms and forearms, The back of the upper arms and forearms. Inhabit your hands, Your fingers. Glide your awareness back up your arms to your shoulders and descend, Sensing your torso, Your chest. Really feeling your body as three-dimensional, Not as a kind of a flat poster, But you have a front body, A middle body, A back body. That's true through the chest, Through the sides of the waist, Down into your gut and back and pelvis. Sensing your whole trunk. Glide your awareness gently down through your hip joints, Sensing your legs in all sides, Down through the knees and calves and ankles and include your feet, Inhabiting your feet and toes. Now I invite you to breathe gently, Sense your body as a whole. Go a little bit wider so that you're now sensing your body and also the space around your body. Space above your body, To the sides, Below your body, Maybe even a vaster space in your room or beyond that. Let's just rest in spacious ease and presence for a couple of minutes. Be effortless, Let the mind kind of go expansive. Now's a good time to sense into how you want to orient yourself for meditation. You can certainly stay on your back or gently move and stretch and shift to sitting. Take your time, Just kind of getting a sense of your preference, Your choice. Now let's gently now circulate the breath up and down the body. So the idea, Especially through the spine, You can include your whole body but especially your spine, Just feeling that your inhale gently travels up the spine. You get to sense along the whole channel, The whole column, Towards the crown. On the exhales you gently, Kind of softly, Glide your awareness back down towards the base of the spine. And so kind of rest in that movement. See if you can find some ease. It's almost like a habit in a way that we cultivate to sense up the spine on the inhale and back down the spine on the exhale. And the breath could be a little deeper here or not, It's really up to you. But you can sense, We're not just sensing the back body, The central channel is really kind of in the middle section of the body, A bit towards the back, But this essential channel in the body that really connects us with our wholeness. So let's stay in that for a bit, Just the inhale up towards the crown, The exhale down through the body towards the base. And in this practice we're not really kind of laying out the re-sync where we're feeling the physicality, The emotions, And also the mind, But it could really include all of that, This up and down the spine or the soul. So just feel free to kind of play with it a little bit. The sense of inhabiting your central channel by flowing up, The channel on the inhale and back down, The channel on the exhale for some breaths. You really can't do it wrong, So feel free to just experiment with it. And then begin to centralize your awareness right around your navel. You can feel, Easily hear, The rise and the fall of your belly with your natural breath. And see if you can rest your awareness around the vicinity of your navel, Not in such a focused way that this excludes your awareness from the rest of your body, But more in a way that the navel, Because this is very close to where our physical center of gravity is, Of course our important digestive functions, Take place in this vicinity. So see if you can feel that you're resting your awareness around the navel is kind of a gateway to your wholeness through your physical body. So you're resting awareness in the navel, But from that place you can sense and include your whole body, Nothing is excluded. Just to kind of play with that, Explore that a little bit. At the same time you have this sort of home base to return to, Home base for now, Is the navel. Just welcoming your experience. And we're not really delineating three sync, That we're only paying attention to the body, Or only the emotions, Or only the mind. But from the navel, Just you have your experience of whatever feels alive and moving in you. And regardless, Keep resting and sensing from the navel, Or exploring that in your own way. And now let's shift the home base to the heart chakra. Sensing up the spine a bit, Being aware of your sternum and your spine through the heart area. See if you can kind of find the vertebrae that's the closest to your physical heart. And then moving just a little bit to the left of that, Now sensing your heart chakra, Which is really a space. Not so much about now the vertebrae, Or the sternum, Or the shoulder blades, But you're just sensing the vicinity. You can feel your breath in this area, Kind of playing with the heart chakra being home base now for a while. The heart chakra in the tradition I was trained in is really considered the biggest chakra, The most vast, And encompasses all the other chakras. So again, Resting in this space of the, In this case, The heart chakra, It doesn't exclude anything. It really contains everything. So I just invite you to keep exploring what's it like to have the heart chakra be your home base for now. Being curious about your experience when you explore that, When you rest in that, Letting it be as effortless as possible. Now notice if there is another chakra that you want to rest in and reside as a home base just for some moments could be the crown, The third eye, The brain chakra, The throat chakra, The solar plexus, Sacral plexus, Or the root. See if you're intuitively drawn to kind of rest in another chakra, Or you could stay with the heart if you want to. Gently flow your awareness up and down your spine again. Feeling that subtle movement of inhaling to the crown, Exhaling to the base of your spine. Or if you want, You can exhale all the way down to your feet. Find that up and down movement through your body. Widen your awareness out to your extremities. Find a little wiggle in the fingers or the toes. Some little micro movements in your shoulders, Hips or your spine. Start to make a transition. If you want to add in a little stretch or a knee hug, Feel free to do it. Then finding sitting for a minute or so and let yourself orient to sitting. Kind of physically you can sense up and down your spine or notice how your joints are. How's your energy level after sitting? After laying? You can come into the point at the navel. Such a good point for wholeness because it's really includes our physicality. Gives us kind of direct information about how we are through our physical bodies. Let's include our hearts again, Just a space of compassion. Maybe we feel the inner mother, The inner father, The spirit, The love that can get really translated into the divine bridge into our wholeness, Into our relations, Our lives. Let's join the palms together in Anjali Mudra in front of the heart and we'll finish with the sound of Om. Please exhale completely. Inhale for Om. Let's do one more. Inhale, Feel the vibration in your body. Namaste. Thanks so much for being here in the practice today.