We had the Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss today: several guided meditations and a period of mindful walking.  We began by feeling our bodies in the areas of the six points of posture and then entrained our attention on the sensations of breathing.

Students used concentration techniques such as counting individual breaths to sustain their concentration.  While walking we maintained focus by taking a step upon inhaling and landing a step upon exhaling.  Nevertheless, we all lost our attention at times. In his book, Buddhism Without Beliefs, author and meditation teacher, Stephen Batchelor describes the mind’s inherent restlessness:

Focused awareness is both calm and clear.  Just as calmness is prevented by restlessness and distraction, so clarity is undermined by boredom and lethargy.  Drifting between these two poles, we spend much of our time either slightly hyper or slightly depressed.  . . . Distraction drugs us into forgetfulness.  Even when we yearn to be focused on something meaningful, it erupts again.  We cannot switch it off – and the more frustrated we get the worse it becomes.

He suggests embracing whatever mind state we find ourselves in:  accept this is how things are right now.  “Acceptance might even lead to understanding what it is that we’re running from.”  We could even bring a sense of compassion, patience or tenderness to our experience – we all share these very human mind states.

As a kid, I remember nagging my parents during our long road trips between California and Idaho:  Are we there yet?  As an adult I now wonder whether There is the place where we find ourselves suspended between restlessness and boredom.  It’s a place where we can be curious and open:  a place where our questions are as valued as our answers.  I sometimes feel the pull of resistance to experiences that I’ve framed as an obligations.  I want to let go of what I think the experience will be and just jump in.  Perhaps this is the journey we take together in meditation.  We take the plunge and see what happens.

Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class 58 Homework

We had the Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday: several guided meditations and a period of mindful walking.  We entrained our awareness on breathing while listening to silence – even the silence that exists within sound. Our practice was inspired by Matthew Sanford‘s experience of silence in healing after a traumatic injury that left him paralyzed at thirteen.

In The Body’s Grace, the interview with On Being radio journalist, Krista Tippett, Matthew describes the silences of separation, connection and integration.  In his  book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, he recalls an inner silence he was forced into from which he eventually accessed a powerful yet subtle mind body connection.

In principle, my experience is not so different from yours, it is only more extreme. … My mind-body relationship changed in an instant — the time it took for my back to break. But the changing relationship between mind and body is a feature of everyone’s life. We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.

I now experience a different, more subtle connection between mind and body. It does not require that I flex muscles. It does not dissipate in the presence of increasing inward silence.

… It does require, however, that I seek more profoundly within my own experience and do so with an open mind. It means that I must reach intuitively into what may feel like darkness.

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