Calming

The calming practice is a basic beginner meditation, although that does not mean that it is not a powerful practice. Developing the calming skill will allow more advanced meditation practices to be accessible. It will also help you to get more from our time together during and between each session.

Goals of the Calming practice

• Learn to experience awareness as separate from thinking

• Learn to focus awareness in specific locations in the body

• Begin to live in present awareness rather than in a thought creation

• Discover what level of tension is held as your baseline state

• Begin to lower your baseline level of tension

• Increase tissue fluidity

• Learn to allow new stresses to pass through the body rather than become held by it

Preparation

Start by lying on your back on a firm flat surface, legs stretched out and arms by your sides. This position is known as Shavasana. You can eventually do the calming practice in either sitting or standing positions but we begin this way to avoid being overwhelmed by the proprioceptive noise most beginners feel merely by sitting upright.

You might begin by doing the Core Breath 10 times.

Bring your awareness to your heart center.

Notice your breath but don't get involved with it.

Notice the general state or gestalt of your whole body, but don't get involved in thinking about any particular sensation. Just notice. If your mind begins to judge, let it go. Just notice what is.

Spend 3 to 5 minutes with your awareness focused in your heart center.

During this time you will likely find that your mind wants to think of other things. Don't get involved with your thoughts. Just let them be. Stay centered in the awareness of your heart center.

If you find yourself suddenly lost in thoughts and are no longer present in the heart center, just be grateful for the fact that you have just woken up, you have remembered yourself, and return again to focusing your awareness in your heart center. Over time, your thoughts will calm down and become less intrusive.

In time it will become easier to experience the difference between thinking and present awareness, and to experience how these two different functions may coexist without struggle.

The active practice

Now we begin the active part of the practice. It's conceptually very simple. We are going to slooowly scan through the body with present awareness from the tips of the toes to the crown of the head.

I like to describe feeling the sensation of warm water very slowly flowing from toes to crown. Almost like standing in a giant bathtub that slowly fills with warm water, you can feel the water level slowly creep up the body as it gets deeper and deeper. but unlike a bathtub where you only feel the water on the surface of the skin, here we want to feel the warmth permeate through all the tissues. As the water level rises, feel all patterns of tension melt away. Feel the tissues soften and expand. Feel any places of thickness or density become light and transparent.

You will likely encounter places that melt immediately and places that don't want to melt at all. If you are pressed for time, just notice the places that don't want to let go and keep the scan going. If you have the time, pause the upward motion of the scan and rest your awareness on the place that is not melting. I find that usually these places will eventually unwind after a minute or two and then I can continue the scan.

Try to honor a scan speed that feels right in the moment. Scan at the level of detail that feels comfortable and useful. Learning to relax muscle groups will come before learning to sense cellular level density and fluidity.

You should feel neither rushed nor tortured in your progress. If you have never done anything like this before, 10 minutes might be a good duration to progress through the body from the toes to the crown. You should have a real sensation of letting go and expanding in the tissues as your awareness scans through the body. As you begin to develop skill in this practice, you might find that 45 minutes is most satisfying. Honor necessity. If you find yourself thinking about the practice, chances are you are no longer doing the practice.

During the scan you may find that your mind wants to think of other things. Don't get involved with your thoughts. Just let them be. Stay centered in present awareness and in the scan. If you find yourself suddenly lost in thoughts and no longer doing the scan, just be grateful for the fact that you have just woken up, you remembered yourself, and return to experiencing present awareness in the scan. Over time, your thoughts will calm down and become less intrusive. The scan will become more and more consistent with less episodes of becoming lost in thoughts.

For some beginners, this practice will perhaps for quite some time be just about becoming aware of the difference between experiencing and thought. For others it will progress to the experiencing of the free flow of chi through the whole body at the cellular or even molecular level. For those in the middle, it is about systematically releasing held patterns of tension.

Comments

This is a scalable practice. That means you can scan at almost any speed and any level of detail in the body. If you are stressed at work, a 5 minute scan can help release loads of tension. You can also scan at a cellular level and take whatever time it takes to release patterns of tension. After years of doing this practice, it can still take me a full hour to do a cellular level scan. But I can now do in 15 minutes what a few years ago took an hour, so it is clear to me that progress happens with practice.

You will likely find that this practice takes you to a more calm and present place than that which you normally inhabit. At first you may only be able to experience this level of calm presence after a half hour or more of effort, but eventually it will become easier to get "there", and eventually your default or baseline waking daytime state will move closer to that which you experience during your calming practice. This has obvious positive consequences in health and in how you navigate your life.