"Melting and Opening, Opening and Melting...."
Real transformation takes place at the level of the body. When we sit in meditation we’re not just resting in an abstract present moment, but in this breathing, aching, pulsing and tingling moment of the body. It’s when we can sit with our fear, anger or lust without adding resistance to the experience, that we know we are treading the path towards freedom. We are no longer stifling our body but allowing it to bubble and shift, express and metabolise whatever arises, freed from indulgence or repression. It’s like a cloud passing through the sky or a wave moving across the water.
This is acceptance of our physical experience. Once we relax and allow this moment of the body to be exactly as it is, change happens automatically.
Over the past 6 months or so I’ve been working with a client suffering from a high level of social anxiety. When I first met him he was unable to give me eye contact, his posture was closed and contracted. He was nervous and fidgety. He told me he found it extremely difficult to be around other people and could hardly walk down the street.
We began by exploring the Brahma Viharas, the traditional Buddhist attitudes of love, compassion, joy and acceptance. He practised generating these mind-states towards himself and the people he encountered every day. Such states of mind are powerful and often act like medicines, healing our anxious minds and opening our closed hearts. With practice, he began to feel more at ease in his own skin and more comfortable around others. He told me that his mental chatter had reduced dramatically and that he found it easier to fall asleep each night.
He recently asked if we could also explore the body-scan practice as he had found my online guided version extremely helpful. I thought this was a great idea as it would allow him to work directly with the habit energy of tension in his body. We began in the feet, soaking into them with total concentration and then travelling up through the body, allowing all sensations (gross or subtle, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) to be fully felt without resistance. He was incredibly focused and remained physically still (absolutely motionless in fact) for the entirety of the practice which lasted 25 minutes.
As the practice finished (by resting as wide-open awareness), I looked up to see a completely different person gazing into my eyes. His posture was now upright and present (almost regal), his eye contact direct and unabashed, and he wore a huge smile of surprise and some relief.
“It was when I got to my thighs that every started to change” he told me. “Everything started melting and opening. As I moved up my body all the tension I noticed also began to melt and open…I think that’s the most relaxed I’ve been in my entire life.”
By intimately meeting his tension without resistance, a transformation had taken place. This wasn’t just physical relaxation, but emotional and mental quietude. This was Samadhi. He was acutely aware and present, but his mind was free of thoughts, concepts, past, future, doubt and suffering. When awareness meets tension, it melts and opens. What remains is a sense of boundless space which is effortlessly welcoming.
This is why our meditation practice should always include an awareness of the body. Meditation has always been an embodied practice. You are an embodied awareness. Changing our patterns, habits and reactions may sound like a good idea on paper, but to do that we must learn to sit with all of these Old Friends and locate them in the body. Do they live in the belly or chest? The throat or head?
You can experiment with watching these feelings, reactions and long-held tensions when they arise. What happens if you don’t interfere, don’t touch them, don’t poke them? What happens next? This isn’t just your homework for this week but for the rest of your life.
This is how we undo the knots that have both entangled and strangled us, starving us of our vital life energy which has been captured and held in repetitive loops of suffering. Through meditation we free this energy and feel more alive, we free ourselves from our habits and feel more spontaneous and present, we free ourselves from our past suffering and cease tying new knots in the future.
November 1-Day Workshop: The Buddha’s Body: A Journey into Embodied Mindfulness
Train/Explore with me (online or in person)
Thank you Mike!
So true!
What wise words.
Being Awareness Bliss!