Hello and welcome back to your daily meds.
If there is one quality you really want to bring to your meditation,
It's being relaxed.
It's watching time.
Sitting on the banks of the river and gazing out,
Except that you're facing inwards.
The most important measure of whether you're developing a practice or not is when you finish,
Do you want more?
Or are you exhausted?
If you're exhausted,
You won't want to come back to it.
And if you do,
You won't come back to it with a relaxed attitude.
I am absolutely convinced that everybody has meditation within them.
And there is a place and there is an attitude and you have to find that.
And that is the body itself,
The mass of it,
The meat and gristle and bone and blood.
Your body takes care of all of that.
Unlike the decisions we make in the upper brain,
Which are sometimes quite risky,
The intuitive decisions we make tend to be much more reliable.
So at the beginning of the meditation,
You want to get in touch with that.
Just take the breath and follow it.
Come into your body.
It's yours.
It's like an old chair.
You can just sit in it.
You've adapted to it and it's adapted to you.
It fits.
And you just sit and feel around you what's happening.
Is there any tension down there in your feet,
Your toes or your ankle?
When you feel tension,
When you become suddenly conscious of it,
Then you'll feel your muscles unclenching.
It's automatic.
It's an instinctive reaction.
If you're not conscious of the tensions in your body,
You'll continue to hold them.
That's why mindfulness is important.
Being mindful of your body is not just a precursor to the higher meditations,
Mindfulness of your feelings and your thoughts.
The body grounds you.
Be with the breath.
Feel at home.
Enjoy it.
And it's easy to do that.
Just sit here and watch.
No goal.
Eyes wide open.
Figuratively,
Perhaps literally.
It's up to you.
You do what you want.
Let your body make those little decisions.
And try and keep your mind even,
Level,
Just watching.
Transparent.
No judgment.
But curious.
You want to know what's happening.
It's only natural.
So look and see what's happening in your body.
Continuing.
Is there any tension in your ankles?
In your knees?
Perhaps in your hips?
In your stomach and abdomen?
Feel any stress there and feel your body letting it go as you become conscious.
And rise up now into your chest.
Feel your back.
Lower back,
Middle,
Upper.
Into your shoulders.
And now feel your arms and hands and fingers.
Nice and relaxed.
Into your shoulders and neck,
Where there might also be tension.
See it.
And see it dissolve.
So sometimes it gets locked in a little battle of I should,
I shouldn't.
It's hard to let go.
There's too much conversation going on inside us.
Or we've forgotten how to let go.
We've been tense for that long.
So be gentle.
Just pay attention to that.
Oh,
My body's not relaxing normally.
This is a particular knot.
And you've become aware of it.
That is insight.
That's something you can work with.
Bring your attention up into your face.
All those little muscles.
Raise the tension.
Watch it dissolve.
Ooh,
M wasted.
And then when you're ready to bring your attention to your mind,
To your feelings and thoughts,
You're very relaxed and you're less liable to get caught up in them.
You see how you feel,
Whether it's good or bad,
And you see the thoughts that come out of that,
But you don't hook onto them,
Don't identify with them the way we normally do.
Watching is a lot more relaxing than hanging on.
Remember the point of meditation is to understand your mind and how it works.
And your mind begins in the flesh and blood of your body.
Out of that grows your nervous system and your brain and your mind.
That's all for now.
See you next time.
