Sitting for meditation first,
For sitting cross-legged,
Letting the knees be supported.
Enough lift under the tailbone,
Buttocks,
To allow the low belly to relax and to settle into a wide base of support through the lower body.
The broader and more rooted the base,
The more free the trunk and branches,
The deeper or more broad and secure the roots,
The more the wind can move the trunk and branches.
Lower body steady creates the foundation for the upper body to relax very deeply.
Softening the belly,
Diaphragm,
Ribs,
Shoulders,
Neck,
Jaw,
Around the eyes.
Softening the tongue and its cave of the mouth.
If we're kneeling well supported,
Stable,
Side to side,
If we're sitting in a chair,
It could be helpful to sit forward in the chair so the spine is loose,
Able to move,
Floating upright on its own,
Feet stable on the floor.
If we have back support settling into it in a way that allows us to relax fully without constricting the breath.
The guideline to turn our attention to the breath,
Connecting with the rise and fall of the breath,
The pause or turnaround of the breath at the top and bottom.
And once we connect with the breath to sustain that connection through the entire body of the breath,
Rising and falling,
Is itself simply a support for what is in a way the core meditative practice or training,
Which is the set of guidelines around mindfulness of the body.
Mindfulness of breath is a subset of mindfulness of the body.
And in a way all of the instructions for meditation with body can be reduced down like a sauce thickening to its essence,
To the instruction to not abandon the body,
To not allow the cognitive process,
The mind's mapping and organizing of the world through story and image and memory,
To unfold in a way that has lost contact with the living body.
So as we begin to sit,
Make the life of the body absolutely the heart of your concern and care.
Be as fully as you can the one who sits in this posture,
The one who breathes,
Who feels and senses temperature,
Movement,
Vibration,
Comfort,
Discomfort.
This is not a way of saying we identify with the body or we somehow make an ego self out of the body.
That's the standard illusion.
This is subtler than that.
This is the proposal that that ego self mostly solidifies when we leave the body in fact,
When we leave into story about the body,
About comfort and discomfort.
Complaining to ourselves about discomfort is not the same as feeling discomfort.
The complaint creates a story and it creates a self,
The one who is not satisfied.
Feeling comfort or discomfort creates nothing new.
It dissolves that which is extra and what remains is a simpler,
Less fraught,
Less psychological experience.
Think of the whole body as a knowing organ.
How do the legs know the sensations of the ground?
Feel the belly and chest knowing the breath as an intimate flow of relationship between the body and that which is around the body.
Self-consciousness of the body is the body knowing itself without thinking about itself.
To practice embodiment is to practice trusting the experience of the body as directly as we can,
More than the stories we tell about it.
We sit together with mindfulness of the breath,
Mindfulness of the body,
Feeling without analysis the rise and fall of the breath.
Rise and fall of the breath through the whole body.
How do the arms experience the breath?
How does the back of the neck experience the breath?
The body rests into itself and the mind rests into the body.
The ego self,
Which rides on the story,
Rests into the bodily self,
Which rides on sensation.
If all of that is abstract,
Just come back to the basic instruction.
Connect with the body.
Sustain attention with the body.
And whenever that attention is broken by story or image,
Come back,
Back into connection.
Reconnect and begin again to sustain that connection.
Starting slowly to love the experience of being present with ourselves.
It's nothing else to do.
