Stress Meditation- Library
Traditional Indian Teaching on Body Awareness
BODY SENSATIONS
DEEPENING EXERRCISE of BODY SENSATIONS
THOUGHT CONTROL
BREATHING SENSATIONS
STILLNESS
BODY SENSATIONS
One must become aware of certain body sensations of which one is explicitly not aware. To go around by yourself to become conscious of your toes, your feet, your legs, your knees, your thighs, your buttocks, your waist, your stomach, your chest, your shoulders, your fingers (starting from the tips), your forearms, your elbow, your arms, your full back, then again your shoulders, your neck, your chin, your lips, your nose, your cheeks, your ears, your eyes, your forehead, your head, upper side of your head and backside of your head.
Do not dwell for more than two or three seconds on each part of your body. REPEAT it again and again for five minutes. This act of yours brings a sense of relaxedness. BIGGEST ENEMIES: Nervous tension, living too much in head i.e., to remain conscious of the thinking and imagination and to remain conscious far too little of the activities of the senses. It is a must to remain in the PRESENT and not in past and future.
One must master this technique of sense awareness. One must learn to get out of the area of thinking and imagination and move into the area from Head to Heart i.e., feeling, sensing, loving and intuiting where contemplation takes birth, prayer becomes transforming power and a source of delight and peace. A few of you may feel an increase in Tension.
Note what part of your body is tense and see exactly what the tension feels like. Become aware of the fact you are tensing and note exactly how you are doing this. Note means not to reflect but to feel and sense. You pick up no sensation. Why? Your sensibility has been dead from so much living in head. Our skin is covered with trillions (3 Powers of a million) of bio-chemical reactions that we call sensations and you are finding it hard to pick up even a few of them? You have hardened yourself not to feel may be due to some emotional hurt or conflict that you have long since forgotten. And your perception, your awareness, power of concentration and attention are still gross and underdeveloped. It is as a means for attaining relaxation and stillness.
GET IN TOUCH WITH SENSATIONS AGAIN AND AGAIN without naming limbs and organs as you sense. If you notice an urge to move or to shift your posture or position—do not give into it. Do continue this exercise for a few minutes. You will gradually feel a certain stillness in your body. Go on with your AWARENESS exercise and leave taking care of stillness. If you are distracted, get back to awareness of body sensations, moving from one to another, until your body becomes still once again, your mind quietens, you are able to sense again stillness that brings peace and a foretaste of contemplation and of God.
HOWEVER, DO NOT explicitly rest in the stillness. Because resting in it can be relaxing and even delightful. BUT in it there is DANGER of mild trance or mental blankness which is not good for contemplation. It is like a sort of self-hypnosis that has nothing to do either with the sharpening of awareness or with contemplation. IMPORTANT: DO NOT DELIBERATELY seek stillness or silence within you and not EXPLICITLY REST in it when it occurs.
BUT SEEK SHARPENING OF AWARENESS. In moments, stillness becomes so powerful that all exercise and all your efforts become impossible. Then it is no longer you who go in quest of stillness. But stillness takes possession of you. THEN you may safely, and profitably, let go of all effort and surrender to this overpowering stillness within you.
DEEPENING EXERRCISE of BODY SENSATIONS
The body sensations exercise is so simple, in fact, as to prove disillusioning. To advance in it, you have to preserve in simplicity. Resist temptation to seek novelty, but try to seek DEPTH. You have to practise second exercise over a long period of time.
You may ask for benefits. Don’t ask. Do what you are asked to and you will discover yourself. TRUTH is found less in words and explanations than in action and experience. So get to work, with faith and perseverance. Close your eyes. Repeat previous exercise of body sensations for five to ten minutes.
NOW CHOOSE JUST ONE SMALL AREA OF YOUR FACE, PICK UP EVERY SENSATION. At the beginning you may not feel. Continue previous exercise, then enter in this area. Be aware of the type of sensations that emerge; itching, pricking, burning, pulling, vibrating, throbbing, numbness....... If your mind wanders, bring it patiently back to exercise.
THOUGHT CONTROL
By doing previous awareness exercises, your mind may be distracted. To deal with such situation, you shall keep your eyes half closed resting on an object or one spot three feet ahead of you. You are not to focus on the object/spot. By doing this, you may have trouble with your wandering mind. No cause for alarm. You practise control over your wandering mind with patience and perseverance. Gradually you will succeed.
To deal with distraction of mind you may follow any of the two ways:
a) You have to follow your thoughts as a puppy in the streets follows any pair of legs it finds in motion. It does not care for the direction where they are moving. After some seconds, you shall make yourself aware that you are thinking. You may say to yourself interiorly that I am thinking ......... thinking ...... thinking. By this you will be aware that thinking process is going on.
b) The other way to overcome distraction is to observe your thoughts as a man stationed at his window watching passers by on the street. After doing this for a while, you shall keep yourself aware that you are thinking .... thinking .... thinking .... You may do any of the above two exercises for not more than five minutes. Thinking tends to stop by making yourself aware of it. A distraction charged with strong emotion: love, fear, resentment, sorrow will not easily yield to this exercise. Other exercises discussed hereinafter shall help you in that.
BREATHING SENSATIONS
(Become aware of sensations in various parts of your body)
Become aware of the air as it comes in and goes out through your nostrils.
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Do not concentrate on the air as it enters in lungs, but limit awareness to nostrils breath.
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Do not control your breathing.
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Don’t attempt to deepen it. It is not breathing exercise, but breathing awareness.
Whenever you are distracted, return with vigour to your task to enable you to make you aware of each breath. Continue this exercise for ten to fifteen minutes. This exercise may be difficult for some of you in comparison to previous exercises; but it is most rewarding in sharpening awareness, bringing calmness and relaxation.
HOWEVER, in attempting breathing awareness DO NOT tense your muscles. Determination must not be confounded with nervous tension. You may be distracted at the beginning but you must keep returning again and again to the awareness of your breathing the mere effort involved in doing this will bring beneficial effects that you will gradually notice.
After developing some proficiency in this exercise move on to somewhat difficult and more effective variant:
a) Become aware of the sensation of the air passing through your nostrils. Feel its touch in which part of the nostrils you feel the touch of the air while inhaling .... and in what part of the nostrils you feel the touch of the air while exhaling .......
b) Become aware of the warmth or coldness of the air .... its coldness when it comes in, and its warmth when it goes out.
c) Also be aware of quantity or volume of air that passes through one nostril is greater than the amount that passes through other .....
d) Be sensitive and alert to the slightest, lightest touch while inhaling and exhaling .... STAY with this awareness for ten to fifteen minutes. In case you put in more time, you will get better results.
Warning, DO NOT stay on breathing awareness alone for many hours over a period of more than two or three days. Although this exercise brings you great peace and a sense of depth and fullness that delights you but prolonged concentration on breathing is likely to produce hallucinations or to draw out material from the unconscious that you may not be able to control.
STILLNESS
Modern man is unfortunately plagued by a nervous tension that makes it almost impossible for him to be quiet. If he actually wants to learn to pray he must first learn to be still, to quieten himself. In fact, this very quietness and stillness frequently becomes prayer when God manifests Himself in the form of STILLNESS.
Repeat the exercise of becoming aware of sensations in your bodywhole body. This time start with the top of your head and end it with the tips of your toes, omitting no part of the body. Beware of every sensation in each part.... You may find some parts of your body completely devoid of sensation.... Dwell on these for a few seconds—if no sensation emerges, move on......
As you become more proficient in this exercise you will, hopefully, sharpen your awareness to the extent that there will be no part of your body in which you do not feel several sensations.... For the time being you must be content to dwell briefly on the blanks and move on to the parts where you feel more sensations Move slowly from head to foot.... then once again, from head to foot..... and so on for some fifteen minutes. As your awareness sharpens you will pick up sensations that you hadn’t noticed before.... you may also pick up sensations that are extremely subtle, too subtle to be perceived by any but a man of deep as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of concentration and deep peace. Now become aware of yours body as a whole. Feel the whole of your body as one mass of various types of sensations.... Stay with this for a while, then return to the awareness by parts, moving from head to foot.... then, once again, rest in the awareness of your body as a whole......
Notice now the deep stillness that has come over you. Notice the complete stillness of your body.... Do Not, however, rest in the stillness to the extent of losing awareness of your body.... If you are getting distracted, give yourself the occupation of moving once again from head to foot, becoming aware of sensations in each part of your body. Then, once again, notice the stillness in your body. If you are practising this in a group, then at occasions, notice the stillness in the whole room.
It is very important that you do NOT move any part of your body while doing this Sadhana. This will be difficult at first, but each time feel the urge to move, or scratch, or fidget, become aware of this as sharply as you can.... Don’t give in to it.... It will gradually go away and you will become still once more........
It is extremely painful for most people to stay still. Even physically painful and you become physically tense, spend all the time you need becoming aware of the tension.... where you feel it, what it feels like.... and stay with it till the tension disappears.
You may feel physical pain, rather severe pain. No matter how comfortable the position or posture you have adopted, your body is likely to protest against the stillness by developing aches and pains in various parts. When this happens, a serious Sadhaka MUST RESIST the temptation to move limbs or read just posture so as to ease the pain. Just become keenly aware of the pain.
Your awareness may wholly be absorbed by the acute pain. You may start sweating, may be profusely. Your mind may think that you are going to faint with pain; at such moment firmly decide Not to fight it, Not to run away from it, Not to desire to alleviate it, but to become aware of it, to identify with it. Then you may see that the pain sensation is broken into its component parts and you may be surprised to discover that it is composed of many sensations viz., intense burning sensation a pulling and tugging, a sharp, shooting sensation which may merge every now and then.... and a point which may keep moving from one place to another.... This point you may identify as pain.... As you will keep up this exercise, you shall find that you are bearing the pain quite well i.e., pain without suffering.
Every Sadhaka has to experience some types of pains, as indicated above, until his body becomes accustomed to remaining perfectly still. Deal with the pain through awareness. When your body finally does become still, you will have a rich reward in the QUIET BLISS that this stillness will bring you. The temptation to scratch is another frequent temptation with beginners. This is because, as their awareness of their body sensations sharpens, they become aware of itching and pricking sensations that were there all along but were hidden to awareness because of the psycho-physical hardening that most of us submit our bodies to and because of the grossness of their awareness. A Sadhaka must resist such temptations during awareness Sadhana.