We had the fourth meeting of our four week Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  During the month of November we’re focusing on the basics in order to help each other build a personal practice.

We attended to the four foundations of mindfulness:  body, feeling tone, emotions and thoughts.  We enhanced our concentration by sensing into these areas to allow what may be calling out for healing to arise in our awareness.  We enriched the healing experience of meditation by opening to a sense of a healing quality might answer a particular call.   An experience of physical tension could be soothed with relaxation.  General anxiety could be assuaged with peace.  Feeling a sense of heartache could be met with love.  A busy racing mind could be quieted with calm.  In each part of the journey we paused long enough to recall the last time we experienced the healing quality.  We enriched the memory by activating it with as many senses as possible.

Once again we moved in synchrony with the breath and each other during walking meditation.  I deeply appreciate the way we move in unison – it gives me a visceral sense that we are sharing something that is connecting us.

In the second meditation period we called up our most resonant healing quality and extended it out to others that might also benefit from relaxation, peace, love or calm.  We included many:  a loved one, someone with whom we had neutral relationship, someone that we find challenging in relationship and, of course, finally we affirmed healing for ourselves.

Students shared their continuing physical challenges with sitting postures.  My friend Jan helped me to recognize and affirm the importance of achieving the purpose of meditation whatever the form.  The forms we use originate in an ancient culture in which the earliest practitioners had to do a lot of physical work to sustain themselves.  Today, we spend many hours sitting.  We have a wonderful learning opportunity here:  How can we realize the function of meditation while adapting its forms to our bodies today and the many tomorrows to come?

I believe that sitting still is an essential tool in becoming more intimate with ourselves.  We are holding space in which our nature can be revealed.  It’s like tracking a wild animal.  You can’t control it.   You can create the conditions to increase the likelihood you will see it.  As any tracker knows this really requires attention, patience and a flexible way of focusing in which you can narrow and widen your lens.  Only you can know if you are engaged in this manner, whatever position or movement you are doing.

I hope we will all have time to explore this week’s homework suggestions and hold the space in which our “wild truths” can emerge.  You can find it at:

November Introduction to Meditation Class 4 Homework