How to Meditate (4 page)

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BODY SCAN

An additional way that I find effective to check in with myself—and call myself into the present moment before I begin a meditation session—is to do a body scan. You can start by standing up and allowing for a deep inhale and exhale. You can do a complete body scan really quickly, and the idea is to place your mind on each body part so you can get a sense of how that body part feels in the present moment. So, for example, you might call yourself to the soles of the feet because you’re standing, and you notice what is going on there. Perhaps your soles are numb; perhaps they feel awake and tingling. There will be parts of the body, as you go through it, that you probably won’t be able to feel. If you get to pain, no problem—just allow yourself to notice and feel it. But still, place your open awareness on each part of the body. This is an exercise in mindfulness, an exercise in attention to the physical body.

So first, begin by standing for a minute. You can have your eyes open, or you can have your eyes closed. Just place your mind, your light, your gentle attention, on each part of the body. I like to allow myself about ten seconds of silence with each body part.

Start going through your body. The soles of your feet. The back of your ankles. Your calves. The back of your knees. The back of your thighs. Your buttocks. The lower back. Middle back. Upper back and shoulders. Your arms. Armpits. The back of the upper arms. Elbows. Back of the lower arms. The back of the hands. The palms of the hands. Back of the fingers. Tips of the fingers. The front of the hands. Front of the lower arms. Front of the upper arms. Your shoulders. Back of the neck. Back of the head. Back of the ears. Top of the head. Forehead. Eyes. Nose. Your cheeks. Your mouth. The lips. Tongue. Teeth. Your chin. Throat. Chest. Solar plexus. Stomach. Genitals. Front of the thighs. Knees. Shins. Top of the feet. The top of the toes. Having done all that, see if you can feel now some sense of the whole body: standing, relaxed, maybe not so relaxed, but standing in the present moment.

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THE SIX POINTS OF POSTURE

A
t this point, you’ve stabilized the mind as best you can. You’ve called your attention to the present moment. You’re almost ready to begin the formal practice of meditation. But before you begin, how should you sit?

Always in meditation, in no matter what tradition you’re taught, there’s a lot of emphasis on a nice, straight posture so that you’re not slumping and so the energy can move freely through your body. Attention to a relaxed yet strong posture is also conducive to comfort. The way I’ve been taught to attend to posture during meditation is to keep my heart open—open heart and strong back. Actually it’s a gesture of enormous bravery to sit up when you find yourself slumping, when you find yourself closing down. You can actually help your mind and heart to open by sitting with an open front. So the head and the torso, which is from below your neck to your waist, is like a straight line that just drops from the top of the head down through your body. Whenever you find yourself slumping, just lift up again. Open your heart.

Good posture for sitting meditation—a posture that allows us to be relaxed and settled in our bodies—involves attention to six points: seat, hands, torso, eyes, face, and legs.

SEAT

To begin, you want to find a nice, stable base. Sometimes I call it a flat bottom, but it’s basically just a stable base. People sit on different things: some people sit on the flat ground, some people sit on gomdens, some on zafus, some on chairs. We each need to find our own way to this sense of being well balanced. We each need to find a good base.

HANDS

The hands, generally speaking, are in the “resting the mind” mudra, which involves just resting them on your thighs, palms down. If the hands are too far back on the thighs, then it pulls your body out of alignment, which can add stress and pain to your sitting posture. Also, if the hands are too far forward it pulls your body out of alignment. You have to find your own place of comfort where you feel well aligned, so that the torso is upright and comfortable and you’re not leaning forward or backward.

If you are feeling drowsy, an alternate posture for your hands could be the Zen mudra, where you place one palm over the other and you make an oval shape by joining your hands. The thumbs almost touch, but not quite. You don’t let your hands sit in your lap, but instead you hold them up a little bit. This particular mudra is extremely helpful if you’re spacey or tired because you need to have a little more awareness to hold the hands up and keep the thumbs from touching. The Zen mudra keeps you more alert.

Notice what works for you with the hands: you can use the Zen mudra to wake yourself up, or you may just prefer the “resting the mind” mudra.

TORSO

When we talk about the torso, we want to think of relaxation as much as possible. To be upright, but also to be relaxed. I was taught to visualize a straight line that starts at the top of my head and goes straight down into the cushion. If I had a sense that this straight line was tilting forward or bending over or becoming somehow crooked, then I would remind myself to lift up again.

I was often given the instruction to have a sense of an imaginary string at the top of my head that was lifting me up. This image can be quite helpful because it often brings a feeling of lightness and relaxation to the body. But you have to be careful that your shoulders don’t lift up as well. Be aware of your shoulders, and sometimes you can actually purposefully lift them and then drop them down—that’s an old yoga trick—and that can help relax the shoulders, an area of the body where we have a strong tendency to tighten up.

The positioning of the torso is an expression of being awake and attentive. The front of your body should remain open with a strong back, and the whole body should be as relaxed as possible. So right now when you’re settling in, if you feel that your shoulders are lifted up and tense, try to drop them. Relax. If your body is bent over so that your heart area and your stomach are collapsed, lift yourself up so there’s a sense of uprightness and energy, which is held in balance with relaxation.

And again: keep the heart open. When we get tired, we tend to hunch over and close down in the front of our body and in our heart, whether we’re doing meditation, sitting at our desk, or having a meal. By opening the front of the body, we often feel a sense of lifting up. It allows for the winds of moods and feelings to flow through the body much more easily. And if your posture is upright and the winds of experience move through your body with ease, then your mind can settle much more easily.

EYES

Often I notice meditators practicing with the eyes closed, but I suggest that you meditate with the eyes open, even if you’re used to meditating with eyes closed. Open the eyes, because it furthers this idea of wakefulness. We are not meditating in hopes of going further into sleep, so to speak. We’re not internalizing. This isn’t a transcendental type of meditation where you’re trying to go into special states of consciousness. Rather, we meditate to become completely open to life—and to all the qualities of life or anything that might come along. We are training in a kind of ultimate equilibrium or equanimity, which is not based on the outer circumstances being still, but on the mind being able to be flexible and open. We are cultivating the ability to stay present with whatever is coming up on the outside or on the inside—whether it’s churned-up emotions or difficult outer circumstances.

There are many meditation traditions that encourage closed eyes—but the closed-eyes approach does not encourage the sense of presence in the moment that we are seeking. The tradition of closing the eyes comes more from the Southern tradition of Buddhism—the Theravadan tradition—and the intention with this kind of practice is a more internalized sense of meditation. In some of the traditions that instruct meditation with closed eyes—such as Hindu traditions—what is being cultivated is a kind of bliss state, or a rising-above kind of state. Tibetan Buddhism, in particular, is about being awake to whatever is arising.

Keeping your eyes open leads you toward the recognition that every moment and every place is the sacred world, and each one offers an opportunity to awaken to your life. With eyes open, you remain gently alert to whatever is going on rather than withdrawing, which is what happens when we close our eyes. Keeping the eyes open is very significant in terms of generating a sense of all-inclusiveness, which is where we learn to feel settled in our life no matter what storms or joys pass through.

So keeping the eyes open actually demonstrates this intention to stay with the present. It is a gesture of openness. We include whatever might occur during our meditation session; we’re not looking around the room or allowing ourselves to become distracted. Often during group practice, people will be sitting next to you and in front of you, and there might be movement. There are visual things of all kinds happening in the room, and our meditation is designed to lead us toward being able to accommodate whatever might occur, rather than creating a situation that’s totally free of any obstacles. We’re opening toward working with the obstacles as path, rather than trying to be free of any obstacles.

I suggest that you place your gaze downward about four to six feet in front of you. If your mind is very wild and you want to find more stability, experiment with setting your gaze a bit closer. However, the head doesn’t bend over; the head is always positioned as if you were looking straight ahead. But the eye gaze can be quite close in, as if you were looking right down your nose.

You can experiment with different eye gazes. The one I just described is close in. You can also set your gaze farther out, which is a more raised gaze. When you use a more raised eye gaze, you will see colors, you will see movement, and you will be aware of the light in the room—and that’s intentional. You can experiment with maintaining a short, soft focus with whatever is around you.

FACE

Allow your mouth to be slightly open—just slightly ajar so that the air can move equally between the nose and the mouth. It’s not wide open. Another person wouldn’t really even notice your open mouth. This is actually quite helpful, because it relaxes your jaw.

Keeping your mouth slightly open also relaxes the face and the neck—and in that way also relaxes the shoulders. You will often notice if and when you get tense because your jaw might clench. If this happens, just notice that and let your lips part ever so slightly—so it is not even visible. Sometimes I give this instruction and I look out and I see all these gaping mouths—a room full of fish! That is not the idea.

In meditation, we put a lot of emphasis on trying to minimize a sense of struggle. We go through a lot with meditation—physical discomfort and mental discomfort—because everything comes up, and so we put a lot of emphasis on not struggling. So if you’re hurting, you can make slight adjustments to try to get comfortable in your body. Notice if your face or your mouth is holding tension in any of the tiny muscles. Notice, and then let the tension go.

LEGS

The legs should be crossed comfortably in front of you. Sometimes people need to raise their seat because their legs don’t go down. Sometimes people can sit completely flat. But however you sit, you don’t want your knees to be higher than your waist because that will really cause you a lot of pain.

If the cross-legged position is nothing but painful for you—or if it exacerbates any injuries—I suggest you use a chair. Even if you sit in a chair, you can still work with the other five points of posture. Sit in the chair with your spine erect, heart open, palms on your legs, and your face, mouth, and gaze relaxed.