Community- Library- Awareness
COMING HOME TO OUR BODY, The Gound of Basic Acceptance
"There is one thing that, when cultivated and regularly practiced, leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and dear comprehension, to vision and knowledge, to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body." The Buddha, from the Satipatthana Sutta
Bringing Basic Acceptance into our life starts at this most basic level-becoming aware of the sensations that are continually taking place in our physical being. By inhabiting my body with awareness, I was discovering the roots of my reactivity. I had been avoiding the unpleasant sensations that make up fear and sorrow. By opening mindfully to the play of sensations, the grip of my anger and stories naturally loosened.
This is how an embodied presence awakens us from a trance: We free ourselves at the ground level from the reactivity that perpetuates our suffering. When we meet arising sensations with Basic Acceptance, instead of losing ourselves in grasping and resisting, we begin the process of freeing ourselves from the stories that separate us. We taste the joy of being fully present, alive and connected with all of life. This was the Buddha's promise: Mindfulness of the body leads to happiness in this life, and the fullness of spiritual awakening.
We experience our lives through our bodies whether we are aware of it or not. Yet we are usually so mesmerized by our ideas about the world that we miss out on much of our direct sensory experience. Even when we are aware of feeling a strong breeze, the sound of rain on the roof, a fragrance in the air, we rarely remain with the experience long enough to inhabit it fully. In most moments we have an overlay of inner dialogue that comments on what is happening and plans what we might do next. We might greet a friend with a hug, but our moments of physical contact become blurred by our computations about how long to embrace or what we're going to say when we're done. We rush through the hug, not fully present.
Sincerely explore for yourself, are you here or not? Are you in your body or oblivious, or only aware of parts of it? When I say, "Are you in your body?" I mean, "Are you completely filling your body?" I want to know whether you are in your feet, or just have feet. Do you live in them, or are they just things you use when you walk? Are you in your belly, or do you just know vaguely that you have a belly? Or is it just for food?
Are you really in your hands, or do you move them from a distance? Are you present in your cells, inhabiting and filling your body? If you aren't in your body, what significance is there in your experience this moment? Are you preparing, so that you can be here in the future? Are you setting up conditions by saying to yourself, "When such and such happens I'll have time, I'll be here:" If you are not here, what are you saving yourself for?
I first discovered that my body was alive with a universe of sensations during an introductory yoga class I took during my sophomore year in college. Near the end of the yoga class the teacher asked us to sit quietly with crossed legs on the floor, making sure that our hands were resting easily, comfortably on our laps or legs. She told us to take a few deep breaths, explaining that the breath offers a natural pathway out of our minds and into our bodies.
She then directed us to explore the aliveness of our body. "Let your entire awareness be in your hands," she said. "Relax and soften them, feeling your hands from the inside." She guided us in slowly feeling each finger carefully from within, each palm, the tops of our hands, our wrists. I became aware first of tingling, then of pulsing areas of pressure and heat. As I relaxed into feeling the sensations in my hands, I realized that there was no distinct boundary, no sense of a defined shape to my hand. All I could perceive was a changing field of energy that felt like moving points of light in a night sky. It suddenly occurred to me that this vibrant aliveness was always going on without my conscious awareness. I had been missing out on a lot of life.
Our teacher then invited us to explore this presence and aliveness throughout our body. I noticed the knots in my shoulders, and within a few moments they relaxed simply in response to my attention. I could feel a tingling warmth spread down through my arms. As I brought awareness to the hardness and tightness in my stomach, that area also softened and loosened. I could feel energy streaming up through my chest and down through my legs. My whole body was a living, breathing field of energy. I felt a wave of gratitude-in just moments my world had become distinctly enlarged and dazzlingly alive. While I didn't know it at the time, my teacher had introduced me to meditation.
Meditation practices in all traditions typically use postures, like sitting up cross-legged as we did in the yoga class, to enable the body to be stable and still. When we are quiet, we can more readily notice our changing stream of experience: of vibration, pulsing, pressure, heat, light, tastes, images and sounds. Yet, as we quickly discover when we close our eyes to meditate, this inner world is often covered over by waves of emotions-excitement or anxiety, restlessness or anger-and an endless stream of comments and judgments, memories and stories of the future, worries and plans.
The Buddha called our persistent emotional and mental reactivity the "waterfall" because we so easily are carried away from the experience of the present moment by its compelling force. Both Buddhist and Western psychology tell us how this happens: The mind instantly and unconsciously assesses whatever we experience as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. A titillating thought or tingling sensation-pleasant. A bad smell or sudden, loud sound-unpleasant. Noticing our breath-usually neutral. When pleasant sensations arise, our reflex is to grasp after them and try to hold on to them. We often do this through planning, and with the emotional energies of excitement and yearning. When we experience unpleasant sensations, we contract, trying to avoid them. Again the process is the same-we worry and strategize, we feel fear, irritation. Neutral is our signal to disengage and turn our attention elsewhere, which usually means to an experience that is more intense or stimulating.
All our reactions to people, to situations, to thoughts in our mind-are actually reactions to the kind of sensations that are arising in our body. When we become riveted on someone's ineptness and are bursting with impatience, we are reacting to our own unpleasant sensations; when we are attracted to someone and filled with longing and fantasy, we are reacting to pleasant sensations. Our entire swirl of reactive thoughts, emotions and behaviors springs from this ground of reacting to sensations. When these sensations are unrecognized, our lives are lost in the waterfall of reactivity-we disconnect from living presence, from full awareness, from our heart.
In order to awaken from this trance, the Buddha recommended "mindfulness centered on the body." In fact, he called physical sensations the first foundation of mindfulness because they are intrinsic to feelings and thoughts and are the base of the very process of consciousness. Because our pleasant or unpleasant sensations so quickly trigger a chain reaction of emotions and mental stories, a central part of our training is to recognize the arising of thoughts and return over and over to our immediate sensory experience. We might feel discomfort in our lower back and hear a worried inner voice saying, "How long will this last? How can I make it go away?" Or we might feel a pleasant tingling, a relaxed openness in our chest and eagerly wonder, "What did I do to arrive in this state ... I hope I can do that again:" We practice by seeing the stories, letting them go and dropping under them into the living sensations in our body.
We cannot cut through our chain of reactions if we are not mindful of sensations. S. N. Goenka, a contemporary teacher of vipassana meditation, warns us that if we just pay attention to passing thoughts, for instance, "deep inside, a part of the mind keeps on reacting. Because with the thought, there's also a sensation. You must not miss this root."
The basic meditation instructions given by the Buddha were to be mindful of the changing stream of sensations without trying to hold on to any of them, change them or resist them. The Buddha makes clear that being mindful of sensations does not mean standing apart and observing like a distant witness. Rather we're directly experiencing what is happening in our body. Instead of seeing our hand as an external object, for instance, we carefully feel into the energy that is our hand in any given moment. We train to experience the body from the inside out.
Rather than directly experiencing sensations, we might have the notion that there is "pain in my back:' Maybe we have a mental map of our body and a certain area we call back. But what is "back"? What happens when we let go of our picture and directly enter into that part of our body with awareness? In a similar way, what happens to pain when we don't label it as such?
With a mindful attention we can investigate and discover what our moment-to-moment experience of pain actually is. Perhaps we feel pressure and an ache that seems localized in a small area. As we pay deeper attention, we might notice heat or tightness. Maybe we become aware of throbbing or a sudden shooting sensation or pulling and twisting. Perhaps the sensations are no longer pinpointed in one place but begin to spread and loosen. As we continue to pay attention, we might become aware of flowing sensations arising, becoming distinctive, blending into each other, vanishing, appearing elsewhere.
Seeing this fluidity in our experience is one of the most profound and distinctive realizations that arise when we become mindful of sensations. We recognize that there is absolutely nothing solid or static about our experience. Rather, the realm of sensations is endlessly changing-sensations appear and vanish, shifting in intensity, texture, location. As we pay dose attention to our physical experience, we see that it does not hold still for even a moment. At first this can be uncomfortable, even frightening.
Each time we let go of our story, we realize there is no ground to stand on, no position that orients us, no way to hide or avoid what is arising. One student at a meditation retreat told me, "When I am mindful of sensations for more than just a few seconds, I start getting anxious. I feel like I should be watching out, looking over my shoulder. It feels like there are important things that I am overlooking and ought to be thinking about:" It is easy to feel that something bad will happen if we don't maintain our habitual vigilance by thinking, judging, planning. Yet this is the very habit that keeps us trapped in resisting life. Only when we realize we can't hold on to anything can we begin to relax our efforts to control our experience.
Sensations are always changing and moving. If we habitually interrupt and constrict their natural process of unfolding and transformation by resisting them or trying to hold on to them, by tightening against them in our body or telling ourselves stories, it's like damming up or diverting the course of a river. It's easy to let the river flow when sensations are pleasant. But when they're not, when we're in emotional or physical pain, we contract, pull away. Seeing this and learning how to meet pain with Radical Acceptance is one of the most challenging and liberating of practices.
REACTING TO PAIN WITH FEAR: "SOMETHING IS WRONG"
When I first got pregnant my husband and I decided we'd have a home birth, without drugs and assisted by a midwife. We considered childbirth a natural process and, since I wasn't high-risk, I wanted to be in the warmth and familiarity of my home, not a hospital. My hope was to be as wakeful and present as possible during the birth, and while I knew the pain would be intense, I trusted that my meditation and yoga practices would help me to "go with the flow" When labor began I was rested and ready. Knowing that resisting the pain of contractions only made them worse, I relaxed with them, breathing, making sounds without inhibition, letting go as my body's intelligence took over. Like any animal, I was unthinkingly immersed, instinctively responding to the drama unfolding through me, riding the pain as a natural part of the process.
Then suddenly something shifted. When my son's head started crowning, the pain level shot up: It was no longer something I could breathe into and let surge through me. This much pain has got to mean something is going wrong, I thought. My whole body tightened, and my deep slow breaths turned into the shallow, quick breathing of panic. All my confidence was gone, all my resolve to relax into the waves of pain forgotten.
Like every aspect of our evolutionary design, the unpleasant sensations we call pain are an intelligent part of our survival equipment: Pain is our body's call to pay attention, to take care of ourselves. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is known worldwide for his Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts, where he teaches mindfulness practices to patients suffering from chronic and acute pain. He writes: Symptoms of illness or distress, plus your feelings about them, can be viewed as messengers coming to tell you something important about your body or about your mind. In the old days, if a king didn't like the message he was given, he would sometimes have the messenger killed. This is tantamount to suppressing your symptoms or your feelings because they are unwanted. Killing the messenger and denying the message or raging against it are not intelligent ways of approaching healing. The one thing we don't want to do is to ignore or rupture the essential connections that can complete relevant feedback loops and restore self-regulation and balance. Our real challenge when we have symptoms is to see if we can listen to their messages and really hear them and take them to heart, that is, make the connection fully.
Sometimes the messages that we receive are a call for immediate action: Burning heat-we pull our hand away from the fire. Weakness and headache-we get something to eat. Acute chest pains and shortness of breath-we call 9II. At other times pain asks that we protect ourselves from further injury by resting, staying still. With childbirth, pain keeps us absolutely focused, instinctively participating in the demanding process of labor. As we are dying, like an animal that seeks solitude, pain might guide us to find an inner sanctuary of quiet and peace. If we accept pain without the confusion of fear, we can listen to its message and respond with clarity.
Yet, as I experienced in birthing, intense pain, even when it is part of a seemingly healthy process like birthing, is alarming. When I reacted with fear, I added to the unpleasant sensations the feeling and belief that something was wrong. Rather than practicing Radical Acceptance, my body and mind reacted by resisting and fighting the pain. While fear of pain is a natural human reaction, it is particularly dominant in our culture, where we consider pain as bad or wrong. Mistrusting our bodies, we try to control them in the same way that we try to manage the natural world. We use painkillers, assuming that whatever removes pain is the right thing to do. This includes all pain-the pains of childbirth and menstruating, the common cold and disease, aging and death. In our society's cultural trance, rather than a natural phenomenon, pain is regarded as the enemy. Pain is the messenger we try to kill, not something we allow and embrace. At that point of intensity in childbirth, I was fully at war, pitted against the pain. My midwife, used to seeing fear and resistance in response to pain, immediately assured me, "Nothing's wrong, honey ... it's all completely natural, it's just painful:" She had to say this several times before I could let it begin to sink in and, in the midst of the burning pain, the explosive pressure, the tearing and exhaustion, remember again to breathe deeply and relax. It was just pain, not wrong, and I could open up and accept it.
Being alive includes feeling pain, sometimes intense pain. And as we know, pain does not necessarily end in the joy of a healthy newborn. Sometimes it doesn't end at all. When it is a sign of injury, it can lead to loss in our capacity to move our body freely. It can lead to death. Given the very real relationship between pain and loss, no wonder we add on the belief that pain means "something is wrong:' No wonder we respond with fear and compulsively try to manage or eliminate our pain.
But as I learned in childbirth, pain doesn't have to lead to suffering. The Buddha taught that we suffer when we cling to or resist experience, when we want life different than it is. As the saying goes: "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. "When painful sensations arise, if we meet them with clarity and presence, we can see that pain is just pain. When we are mindful of pain rather than reactive, we do not contract into the experience of a victimized, suffering self. Reacting to sensations with fear, perceiving them as "wrong," initiates the trance. As the Buddha taught, when we grasp at or resist this ground level of our experience, we set in motion a waterfall of reactivity. Fear, itself made up of unpleasant sensations, compounds the pain-now we want to get away not only from the original pain but also from the pain of fear. In fact, the fear of pain is often the most unpleasant part of a painful experience. As Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, "When you see and feel the sensations you are experiencing as sensations, pure and simple, you may see that these thoughts about the sensations are useless to you at that moment and that they can actually make things worse than they need be:' When we assess physical sensations as something to be feared, pain is not just pain. It is something wrong and bad that we must get away from.
Our fear often proliferates into a web of stories. For four years I struggled with chronic illness. One of the hardest parts was how being sick became a comment on who I was and my inability to take care of myself "properly." Each time I went through a bout of fatigue or indigestion, my mind would flood with stories and interpretations: "Something's very wrong ... maybe I'm seriously sick:" I'd dwell on how I might have caused the problem. "My immune system's down. I pushed too hard and didn't get enough sleep ... I've been drinking too much black tea, the acid must have affected my stomach:' Along with a wave of tiredness or stomach cramp would arise the feeling of personal weakness, of shame. Pain was bad; it was my pain and it signaled some sort of character flaw.
When we are habitually immersed in our stories about pain, we prevent ourselves from experiencing it as the changing stream of sensations that it is. Instead, as our muscles contract around it and our stories identify it as the enemy, the pain solidifies into a self-perpetuating, immovable mass. Our resistance can actually end up creating new layers of symptoms and suffering. Perhaps the judgments and worries that tightened my muscles against the pain increased my exhaustion. When we abandon our body for fear-driven stories about pain, we trap the pain in our body.
In moments of acute pain, our fear intensifies and the experience of "something is wrong" drives an urgent, immediate battle against pain. A friend of mine went through excruciating pain when a fragment of disc came loose and began pressing on a portion of his spinal cord: "It felt like someone had poured gasoline on my left leg and lit it:" The pain was relentless and all-consuming, and he tried everything he could to escape its intensity. At one point he was taking two strong narcotics, steroids, an anti-inflammatory, and two strong sedative muscle relaxants. The drugs would knock him out for a while, but when he awoke he'd be in agony until the next dose. "Pain has a unique quality," he wrote me. "The stronger it is, the less aware you are of the rest of the world. If it is severe enough, in the end, there is only you and the pain locked in a delicate duel:"
When, instead of Radical Acceptance, our initial response to physical pain is fear and resistance, the ensuing chain of reactivity can be consuming. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat our pain. This same process unfolds when our pain is emotional-we resist the unpleasant sensations of loneliness, sorrow and anger. Whether physical or emotional, when we react to pain with fear, we pull away from an embodied presence and go into the suffering of trance.
When pain is traumatic, the trance can become full-blown and sustained. The victim pulls away from pain in the body with such fearful intensity that the conscious connection between body and mind is severed. This is called dissociation. All of us to some degree disconnect from our bodies, but when we live bound in fear of perceived ever-present danger, finding our way back can be a long and delicate process.
TRAUMATIC FEAR: DISSOCIATING FROM OUR BODY
Neuro-psychology tells us that traumatic abuse causes lasting changes by affecting our physiology, nervous system and brain chemistry. In the normal process of forming memories we evaluate each new situation in terms of a cohesive world view we have formulated. With trauma, this cognitive process is short-circuited by the surge of painful and intense stimulation. Instead of "processing the experience" by fitting it into our understanding of how the world works and thereby learning from it, we revert to a more primitive form of encoding-through physical sensations and visual images. The trauma, undigested and locked in our body, randomly breaks through into consciousness. For years after the actual danger is past, a person who has been traumatized may relive an event as if it were continually occurring in the present.
Unprocessed pain keeps our system of self-preservation on permanent alert. In addition to sudden intrusive memories, a wide range of situations, many non-threatening, may activate the alarmingly high levels of pain and fear stored in our body. Our partner might raise her voice in irritation, and the full force of our past wounds-all the terror or rage or hurt that lives in our body--can be unleashed. Whether or not there is any present danger, we feel absolutely at risk and compelled to find a way to get away from this pain.
In order to make it through this severe pain, victims of trauma dissociate from their bodies, numbing their sensitivity to physical sensations. Some people feel "unreal," as if they have left their body and are experiencing life from a great distance. They do whatever they can to keep from feeling the raw sensations of fear and pain in their body. They might lash out in aggression or freeze in depression or confusion. They might have suicidal thoughts or drink themselves senseless. They overeat, use drugs and lose themselves in mental obsessions. Yet the pain and fear don't go away. Rather, they lurk in the background and from time to time suddenly take over.
Dissociation, while protective, creates suffering. When we leave our bodies, we leave home. By rejecting pain and pulling away from the ground of our being, we experience the disease of separation loneliness, anxiety and shame. Alice Miller tells us that there is no way to avoid what's in the body. We either pay attention to it, or we suffer the consequences:
The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, and conceptions confused, and our body tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptible as a child, who, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.
HEALING OUR WOUNDS: RETURNING HOME TO OUR BODY
In both Buddhist psychology and Western experiential therapy, this process of experiencing and accepting the changing stream of sensations is central to the alchemy of transformation. Emotions, a combination of physical sensations and the stories we tell ourselves, continue to cause suffering until we experience them where they live in our body. If we bring a steady attention to the immediate physical experience of an emotion, past sensations and stories linked to it that have been locked in our body and mind are "de-repressed:" Layers of historic hurt, fear or anger may begin to play themselves out in the light of awareness. Like Rosalie, when we feel and release the past pain held in our body, we become increasingly free to meet our present feelings with a wakeful and kind heart. We discover, as Rumi writes, "The cure for the pain is in the pain:"
In order to go through her pain in a way that would lead to "the cure," Rosalie needed to feel a degree of safety. A basic sense of trust had been emerging for her since her journey. Our relationship was a haven for her-she trusted that I really cared about her, and she relied on my support as she reentered her body. Her experience with the fairy had revealed her own inner wisdom, her urge to protect herself and her longing to be awake and whole. What was now giving this trust its deepest roots was actually taking the risk to open mindfully to sensations. Each time she could sense her body from the inside and accept the sensations that were arising, even the most frightening ones, she felt more confidence about her capacity to be at home there. She could handle whatever came up. She could find the cure through being with the pain.
Learning to bring Radical Acceptance to our physical experience is usually a gradual process. If we have a large reservoir of fear locked in our body, we begin as Rosalie did, by just "putting our toe in the river," feeling the sensations and then stepping back when necessary. While at times we may encounter no pain at all, at other times the pain may be intense. ""Being at home in our body does not require us to focus for sustained periods of time on overwhelming physical or emotional pain. Especially if we feel worn down, it is wise and compassionate to take breaks, to rest, to direct our attention elsewhere. If we are meditating we might direct loving-kindness to the pain or fear (see chapter 10), or rest our attention in the breath and relax our body as fully as possible. If overwhelming sensations arise during our day, we might listen to music, talk with a friend or read a novel. When we encounter an especially rough patch, we may need the support of a meditation teacher, healer or therapist to help us hold our experience with presence and care. With time, as the good fairy promised, coming home to our body can be our rite of passage. As we bring a gentle attention to the ground of sensations, we free ourselves from the reactive stories and emotions that have kept us bound in fear. By inhabiting our body with awareness, we reclaim our life and our spirit.
LETTING LIFE LIVE THROUGH US:
When we are free of mental concepts and our senses are awake, the sounds, smells, images and vibrations we experience connect us with all life everywhere. It is not my pain, it is the earth's pain. It is not my aliveness but simply life-unfolding and intense, mysterious and beautiful. By meeting the changing dance of sensations with Radical Acceptance, we discover our intrinsic belonging to this world. We are "no thing"-not limited to any passing experience-and "everything," belonging to the whole.
In Roger Keyes's poem "Hokusai Says," the teachings of a wise Japanese artist remind us of our belonging to life, and of our capacity to open to its fullness.
Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing ...
He says everything is alive shells, buildings, people fish Mountains, trees.
Wood is alive. Water is alive.
Everything has its own life. Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you ...
It matters that you care. It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice. It matters that life lives through you . . .
Look, feel, let life take you by the hand. Let life live through you.
As we move from resisting our physical experience to bringing Radical Acceptance to the life living through us, we awaken from trance. We open to the fullness and mystery of our life. Each moment we wakefully "let be," we are home. As the great eighteenth century Zen master Hakuin Zenji wrote, "This very place is the Lotus Land, this very body, the Buddha:" The Lotus Land is the cherished place of awakening that is always here in the present moment. When we meet life through our bodies with Radical Acceptance, we are the Buddha-the Awakened One-beholding the changing stream of sensations, feelings and thoughts. Everything is alive, the whole world lives inside us. As we let life live through us, we experience the boundless openness of our true nature.
Guided Meditation: Developing an Embodied Presence
A mindful body scan is a valuable pathway to embodied presence.
Sitting comfortably, close your eyes and take several long, deep breaths. Then rest in the natural flow of your breath and allow your body and mind to begin to settle.
With a relaxed, open awareness, now begin a gradual and thorough scan of your entire body. Place your attention at the top of your head and without looking for anything in particular, feel the sensations there. Then letting your attention move down, feel the sensations on the back of your head, on either side of your head, through your ears. Notice the sensations through your forehead, eyes, nose, cheeks, jaw and mouth. Be as slow and thorough as you like.
As you continue the scan, be careful not to use your eyes to direct your attention. (This will only create tension.) Rather, connect directly with sensations by feeling the body from within the body. In certain parts of the body it is common to feel numbness or for there to be no noticeable sensations. Let your attention remain in those areas for a few moments in a relaxed and easeful way. You may find that as your attention deepens, when you revisit these places, you become increasingly aware of sensations.
Images or thoughts will naturally arise. Notice them passing through and gently return your attention to the sensations. Let your intention be to release all ideas and experience your physical aliveness exactly as it is.
Place your attention on the area of your neck and throat, noticing without any judgment whatever sensations you feel. Be aware of each of your shoulders from the inside. Then let your attention move slowly down your arms, feeling the sensations and aliveness there. Bring awareness to your hands, making sure they are resting in an easy and effortless way. Feel each finger from the inside, the palms, the backs of the hands-noticing tingling, pulsing, pressure, warmth or cold. Arrive in the life of your body.
Now place your awareness on your chest, exploring the sensations in that whole area. Slowly allow your awareness to sink down into your stomach. With a soft, receptive awareness, take some moments to feel the sensations in your abdomen.
Place your attention on your upper back, feeling the sensations in the area around your shoulder blades. Moving down, be aware of the mid- and lower back, and then the entire spinal column. Continuing to let awareness sweep down the body, feel the sensations that arise through the hips, buttocks, genitals. What are the actual sensations that are arising? Move slowly down through the legs, feeling them from within. Explore the sensations in your feet and toes. At the places where your body touches the chair, cushion or f floor, feel the sensations of contact, pressure and temperature.
Now open your attention to include your body in a comprehensive way. Be aware of the body as a field of changing sensations. Can you sense the subtle energy field that vitalizes and gives life to every cell, every organ in your body? Is there anything in your experience that is solid, unmoving? Is there any center or boundary to the field of sensation? Is there any solid self you can locate that possesses these sensations? What or who is aware of experience?
As you rest in awareness of your whole body, if particular sensations call your attention, bring a soft and allowing attention to them. Don't manage or manipulate your experience, don't grasp or push anything away. Simply open to the changing dance of sensations, feeling your life from the inside out. If no particular sensations call your attention, remain open to feeling energy simultaneously in all parts of the body.
If thoughts carry your attention away, gently note, "Thinking, thinking," and then reconnect with the energetic field of aliveness. Rest in this awareness of your living being, letting life live through you.
The body scan from head to feet or feet to head can be repeated over and over during a single meditation sitting. You might do a full scan, rest in attention of the whole body for a few minutes, and then scan again. You might do an initial scan slowly and then subsequent scans more quickly. You might choose to scan once, and then continue to practice by attending to predominant sensations and, whenever possible, the whole field of bodily sensations. Experiment and find out what most helps you in sustaining a relaxed and wakeful presence in your body.
In daily life, return to the experience of your body as often as possible. You can readily arrive in your body by relaxing and softening through your shoulders, hands and belly. As you move through the various circumstances of your day, notice what sensations arise in your body. What happens when you feel angry? When you are stressed and racing against time? When you feel criticized or insulted by someone? When you feel excited or happy? Pay particular attention to the difference between being inside thoughts and awakening again to the immediate experience of sensations.
Guided Meditation: Basic Acceptance of Pain
We cultivate Radical Acceptance of pain by relaxing our resistance to unpleasant sensations and meeting them with non-reactive awareness. This exercise is especially useful if you are presently distressed by physical pain.
Find a comfortable position, sitting or lying down. Take a few moments to become still, relaxing with the natural rhythm of the breath. Gently scan through your body, relaxing your brow and jaw, dropping your shoulders and softening through your hands. Try not to create any unnecessary tension in your body.
Where is the area of strong discomfort or pain that calls your attention? Bring a receptive attention directly to the unpleasant sensations in that part of your body. Notice what happens as you begin to be present with this pain. Is there an attempt, however subtle, to push the pain away? To cut it off, block it off, pull away? Is there fear? You might notice how the body and mind clench like a fist in an attempt to resist pain. Let your intention be to remain present, allowing the unpleasant sensations to be as they are.
Soften any reaction against the pain, allowing the fist of resistance to unclench and open. The more you can connect with open and spacious awareness, the more you will be able to be present with sensations and allow them to unfold naturally. Experience your awareness as the soft space that surrounds the pain and allow the unpleasant sensations to float in this awareness.
Resting in this openness, now bring a more precise attention to the changing sensations in the area of pain. What is the experience actually like? Do you feel burning, aching, twisting, throbbing, tearing, stabbing? Does the pain feel like a knot, a constricting band? Does the area feel as if it is being pressed down or crushed by a great weight? Are the unpleasant sensations diffuse or focused in their intensity? How do they change as you observe them? Investigate with a non-reactive, soft attention. Allow the sensations you may feel as a solid block of pain to unfold and move in their natural dance of change.
When resistance arises, relax again, reestablishing a sense of openness. Be aware of your entire body, including the areas that aren't painful. Let the body become like open space, with plenty of room for unpleasant sensations to arise and dissolve, fade and intensify, move and change. No holding, no tension. Inhabit the sea of awareness, and let any painful sensations float in an accepting openness.
Try not to judge yourself for reacting when pain feels like "just too much:' Take care of yourself in whatever way provides ease and comfort. Over time if you practice mindful presence of pain for even a few moments at a time, equanimity will increase. You will be able to more readily let go of resistance and open to unpleasant sensations.
By Tara Brach, Reprinted with Permission