Meditation Practice…
So it’s always good to take a few deep breaths into the belly. And counting the breaths can be a really good extra anchor in the body. Most of you know this practice; maybe a few of you haven’t done it before, but it’s good to be reminded about this technique because it can be really valuable.
You breathe in through the nose and as you breathe out you silently count, o-o-one from the abdomen with the breath. Breathe in… two-o-o. And if you can get to ‘ten’ without losing count simply go back to ‘one’ again. If you get to ‘two’ and lose it, go back to ‘one’; it doesn’t really matter.
It’s a really good way of seeing how much thinking is going on, and just a great extra anchor in the body.
So it’s good to use it at the beginning of a sitting or at any time that your mind is particularly busy or when it just occurs to you to start counting.
This isn’t about stopping thinking. It’s about getting to the source of the desire to think. So you don’t look for the source of the desire to think. You don’t look for anything, but you watch.
When you realise you’ve been lost in thinking, you bring your attention back to your body, primarily the breath in the abdomen but there might be some strong sensations in the body that help to bring you back. It doesn’t matter whether they’re pleasurable or painful.
It takes a great effort at times to really be in your body because for most people during their lives they’ve spent so long avoiding being in the body that it doesn’t even feel natural to be in the body.
Thinking is an out-of-body experience – it’s all it is.. it’s an avoidance of being in the body. And where you want to be is here, now – nowhere else. Nowhere else is better that now. You might think it is. You might reminisce about past times: pleasurable and painful.
So make the effort to keep coming back to your body. Keep it simple. It doesn’t need to be complicated. And you need to practice. That’s what this is all about. It’s a practice.
From Adelaide Weekend Retreat, 3-4 Oct 2020.