Ah HO! Great Spirit and happy Monday to you all!
So many of you have really enjoyed the meditations I’ve shared with you recently on my blog/vlog — Entering Your Inner Cave and The Divine Mirror — I thought it was time to share another one…
There’s so many things going on in the world right now that it can be very challenging to stay focused on what you need to get done, not to mention taking good care of your self.
This week on my blog/vlog, I want to share the no mind meditation, an approach based on Rudolf Steiner’s teachings called “sleeping awake” that I share a lot with my clients who have busy minds (which is most people) and don’t believe they can meditate.
Getting started
Here’s how to get started…
Find a place where you can relax in a comfortable position. Take deep, slow breaths through your nose for anywhere from two to six minutes.
There’s a variety of techniques you can use, but the goal is to get some carbon dioxide retention to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and calm the sympathetic or fight-or-flight nervous system.
As you bring more awareness to your breath, feel the air moving through the turbinates of your nose and tickling the hairs inside.
By doing this, it brings your mind to a point of focus, gives you a chance to put your awareness on something specific and enables you to push all of that extraneous noise into the background.
As you feel a sense of calm, simply bring your awareness to your inner self. While you’re breathing, fill a space inside your body.
Feel the dimensions of your rib cage changing as you breathe. Feel the weight of your body either sitting in the chair or lying on a bench or the ground.
(If you’re standing, just feel the weight of your body going through your feet.)
What we’re doing is we’re giving the mind an activity to do, but we’re also using our awareness to become conscious of the things about which we aren’t normally aware when we’re trapped in our heads.
As you bring your self into your body, make an agreement with your self to let your mind relax. This is very much like perceiving your mind as a muscle.
If you’ve just finished a hard set of squats or dead lifts, you can go sit on a bench or lay on the floor and it’s very easy to completely just let yourself go and allow the weight of gravity hold you to the earth.
This meditation is very much like visualizing your brain as a muscle and you’re just relaxing it and allowing your face and facial muscles to relax too.
If your mind gets busy, you may notice your tongue tightens up. Just keep your facial muscles relaxed, let your tongue stay soft, keep breathing through your nose and expand your belly.
Hold onto the concept in your mind that you’re going to fall asleep yet remain awake. If you think of this as keeping one eye open, you won’t go to sleep or become unconscious…
That’s the start of this meditation exercise, and you can watch the rest of my vlog for more guidance.
I like to do this simple no mind meditation in the sauna after a day full of client meetings, podcast interviews and course reviews. It works wonders to calm my mind, and I know it will work well for you too…
Love and chi,
Paul
