Basic Meditation Instruction

Basic, simple and easy to follow meditation instruction as we also practice during our meditation retreats. Meditation helps you meet life with more steadiness and clarity. It softens stress, clears mental clutter, and gives you a moment to breathe before reacting. Over time, your focus sharpens, your emotions feel easier to navigate, and your days carry a deeper sense of calm. You become more grounded, present, and alive.

Transcript

Hello and welcome, Dear meditator. It's my pleasure to guide you in this meditation and it's a meditation as we practice it during our meditation retreats and this one is for you, At home or at work or at school or wherever you would like to do it and whenever you would like to do it. And for your own convenience, You can just check how long this meditation instruction is exactly and then you can decide how long you would like to continue meditating and for your own convenience, You can set a meditation timer or you can set an alarm or if you don't feel like, You can just meditate until you don't want to meditate anymore. So take your time for that now, You can pause and come back when you are ready. So, The meditation instruction, The way we practice it during our meditation retreats consists of three parts. We have the sitting posture, We have our attention, Which is on our breathing and we have the practice of coming back to our breathing the moment we notice we are distracted by thoughts. And it's a simple and easy to follow along instruction and we are going to walk through the three parts, Step by step. So, The first part is the sitting posture. You can sit on a chair or you can sit on a meditation cushion or a meditation bench. It doesn't really matter where you sit on or for that matter how you sit. Most important thing that it's a comfortable sitting position where you can maintain for the duration of this meditation instruction or even longer if you would like to continue meditating afterwards. If you are sitting on a chair, Make sure that your feet are flat on the ground, That your legs are approximately hip width and that your knees are bent in about a 90 degree angle. And don't lean back to the back of the seat or the chair. Make sure that you are sitting in an upright position. And if you sit on a meditation cushion or a meditation bench, You can sit in a cross-legged position or you can sit in a kneeling position. As I said before, It doesn't really matter how you sit. We want to have a fairly active position, An upright position, And we will start with the surface that we are sitting on. And if you are sitting on a chair or a meditation cushion or a bench, Start by feeling your sitting bones. Feel how they touch the surface that you are sitting on. And if necessary, You can remove or move a little bit to the side some of the flesh of your buttcheeks so that you are really in this solid and grounded position where you can really feel that you are sitting on the surface. And basically, Now that we have established the foundation of our sitting position, So from how we sit on a meditation cushion or a bench or a chair, We can start to move upward with our attention. So our back is straight, Our spine is straight, And it has a natural curve, So allow that, But the main position of the spine is somewhat upright. And the front of the upper body is soft, The belly area is soft, Allowing space for the lungs to expand once we breathe in, And allow for the belly to come back in once we breathe out. And our chest is soft and open, And that gives us a strong back and a soft front. The upper arms, They rest downward in alignment with the upper body, So if you would look from the side, You could see that your arms and upper body are in the same line. And your lower arms, You can lift them and place your hands on your thighs with the hand palms down. And this creates a natural, Relaxed position, The shoulders are relaxed, The arms are just hanging down and are resting on our thighs or on our lap. And then if we move a little bit upward, Our neck is in a straight line, In alignment with our spine, And we allow the head to tilt a little bit forward, So just a few centimeters or inches down with the chin to create an elongated spine and neck. And this relaxes the back of the neck. And in this position, Your gaze, Your eyes naturally go downward a little bit, And you can allow your gaze to rest on the floor if there is an open space in front of you. It's about one and a half to two meters, About one and a half meter if you're sitting on a meditation cushion or bench, And about two meters if you're sitting on a chair. And you allow the gaze to rest on the floor, You don't have to look at anything, You don't have to focus on anything, You can allow your eyes to rest and be soft. And if you feel like you can close them a little bit, But in this practice we don't close them completely. We allow the eyes open and we allow ourselves to stay connected to the world that we are living in. And to finish up our posture, We have our jaw, And you can open your jaw slightly so that your teeth are a little bit away from each other. So you're just slightly unhinging your jaw, And at the same time you keep the lips together. So the mouth is closed, The lips are closed, And the teeth are a little bit away from each other. And you rest your tongue on the lower part of your mouth, And then the tip of the tongue you allow to touch the inside of the upper teeth. And this basically creates a relaxed posture in your mouth and also opens up the throat completely to allow the breathing to come in effortlessly, Unobstructedly. And in this way we have our complete meditation posture. And you can just, If you feel like, Just check for yourself again how you're sitting, And maybe even step by step feel into your body how you're sitting. And if your posture is still in the meditation posture, The way we just practice it. Now the second part of our meditation is the attention, Or the conscious attention, Or the awareness. And in our meditation practice we allow the meditation to focus on the breathing. And the breathing happens naturally, It goes in and out, And we don't have to force anything, We don't have to change anything, We just notice how the breathing is coming in and moving out of our body. It's about feeling the body breathing. You don't have to think about anything, You just feel how the body is breathing. It happens by itself. This is the nature of our breathing. And maybe you can notice that the moment you have placed your attention on the breathing, Maybe after a while you notice you get distracted. Thoughts come up, Emotions, Sensations. For our meditation practice, If it helps, You can label it thinking, And then you just come back to the breathing again, Gently, Come back to the breathing with your attention and again feel how your body is breathing. The thoughts, Emotions, Sensations, They all just appear and disappear in your awareness. And every time you notice that you drift off, The moment you notice is the moment you're waking up and the moment you can return to the breathing. So, To summarize again, Check in with your meditation posture, Allow your awareness to be on the breathing, And the moment you notice you are distracted by thoughts, Feelings, Or sensations, That's the moment you can choose to come back to the breathing. You can do this gently, Kindly, And compassionately. This is the end of the meditation instruction, And from here I leave it up to you if you would like to continue meditating, Or did you stop meditating. Thank you so much for joining, I wish you well in your meditation practice, And would love to see you at one of our retreats.