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All meditations essentially start
the same way. We need to take a few moment to relax. This, of
course, brings up the question, “What exactly do we mean by
relaxed?” To be relaxed, both our body and our mind, is close to the
point of allowing ourselves to fall asleep.
To fall asleep, we need to be free from the tension and worries of
the day in both mind and body. The mental processes and especially
the imagination and that aspect of our being that gets us close to
the origin of our thoughts works best when the body and mind are
loose. By loose we mean something beyond freedom from tension. What
we refer to is much like that flexible and nonrigid body of a very
young child and the spontaneity of the play of a child’s mind.
To help us to loosen up and become relaxed, the traditional method
has two parts. The first is to calm the mind and this is normally
done by focusing our attention and awareness on our breathing. All
that needs to be done is to focus our attention and awareness on our
breathing. It is to focus on the flow of air as it enters our body
and leaves our body. We feel the air expanding our lungs and bring
in as full a chest and diaphragm of air that we can. We hold it for
a moment and slowly releasing the air, following it as it goes out
of our body and feel our diaphragm gently push the air out of our
lungs as completely as possible. We only need to do it a few times
or until we find our mind relaxing and letting go of all those
squirrels that are running around in the cage. As we focus our mind
this way, we may also find that the muscles of our body begins to
let go of some of the tensions that they may be carrying. After we
have done that a few times, we continue to breath in this fashion
and turn our mental attention to our body.
The second part is to calm the body. As a starting point to relax
our body, we choose some part of the body and it doesn’t matter what
we choose. At a comfortable pace, we focus our awareness on that
body part and being to move our attention and awareness over our
entire body releasing any tension that we may feel in any part. As
we release the tension we may even find thoughts or images arises as
to the nature of the cause of the tension, Or, they represent some
aspect of our being that is associated with that tension. For
example, start with the toes. As you continue your breathing, at a
comfortable pace, bring our attention to toes. Then move up the foot
into the body slowly bringing our attention and awareness to the
ankle, the calves, the knees, the thighs, the hips, the genitals,
the abdomen and lower back, the solar plexus and the middle back,
the chest and upper back, the heart, the shoulders and the
connecting back muscles, down to the upper arms, the elbows, the
fore arm, the hands, the fingers, back up the arms to the neck, the
jaw, the noses, around the eyes, the forehead, over to the ears, the
back of the head, the top of the head.
Having relaxed the mind and body, we are then ready to move into the
meditation technique of our choice. It does need to be noted, that
how much of this process we need to do to relax and loosen our body
and mind is unique to us and we should use what is effective for us.
That is, we are both comfortable with the process and we are getting
the results that we desire. For some, just sitting and choosing to
relax is sufficient. For others, the conscious relaxation process
described here is essential. One way to see how relaxed we are is to
see how fast we can fall asleep when we are not tired from either
lack of sleep or having done exhausting work. On this note,
exhausting work and exercise are sometimes quite useful to help us
to relax and remove body tension.
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