Try to really stay with your body. This is what you’re mindful of: the body. It’s a constant process of release and downward flow. As you’re paying attention to your body, you might notice that your posture will call to you off and on for slight adjustments. Try to listen to your body and see what might be needed. Your body actually tells you. As you learn how to listen to your body, over time you’ll find the posture that you need.
When you have finished, you can simply sit in the openness and blissful relaxation of the body or, if you wish, return to a more formal meditation technique.
EARTH DESCENT/BREATH
A. Earth Descent/Breathing, Lying Down
In order to carry out the earth descent/earth breathing, begin, again, by assuming the lying down posture. In order to enter the earth practice, now do a very abbreviated form of the ten-points practice (five to ten minutes).
Now you’re going to connect with the earth under you. You do this by letting your body sink down into the earth. It’s not going to be your physical body, of course, because your physical body remains on the surface. But you’re going to visualize your awareness extending down from your ten points—two feet, two buttocks, midback, two elbows, the two shoulder blades, the head.
As you relax and release through those ten points, your awareness is going to travel down into the earth. So the process of relaxation and of letting go of the tension, as we do in the ten points practice, actually becomes a vehicle for us to descend into the earth. Awareness is not restricted to the body, as many of you know. We can send our awareness beyond our body in many different ways. Not only in Buddhism, but in modern experimental research (such as scientific researcher Russell Targ’s research into “distance viewing”), it is clear that our awareness is not confined to the physical envelope of our body.
You begin on the in-breath, going in and being in the body as a whole; on the out-breath, you’re going to descend down about a foot into the earth. Just let your awareness drop. It’s as if it just falls down of its own accord. On the out-breath, you’re letting go. It’s as if it’s your final breath. On the out-breath, you let go, and as you let go, your awareness drops. In-breath, be in the body, out-breath, let go and drop into the earth about a foot.
Then, on another out-breath, drop two feet. Then three feet. And then ten feet. In-breath, you’re in the body; out-breath, you just drop down ten feet.
Then on the out-breath dropping down ten feet, this time, you can just stay there. When you breathe in there, ten feet down, don’t come back up. Just let your awareness abide beneath you about ten feet.
Then, go down twenty feet and stay there.
On each out-breath, go down a little bit further. On the in-breath, you’re not going to come back up, but just stay where you are. On the out-breath, go down further. So, out-breath, twenty feet. Hang out there. Out-breath, thirty feet. Out-breath, forty feet. Out-breath, one hundred feet. Out-breath, two hundred feet. Notice what your awareness is like when you’re down two hundred feet. Notice its qualities. It may be just open and empty, and maybe dark. But look and see what it’s like for yourself. You’re moving into the darkness. The darkness holds the totality. It’s your darkness, your totality.
Then drop one thousand feet. Then a mile. Then just explore around you. Let your awareness drop just as if you tossed a stone off the edge of a cliff. Your awareness just drops down a mile. It just drops. See what that space is like when you’re down there.
The deeper your awareness goes into the earth, the more you relax and the less wound up you are with the gripping on the body on the surface that goes with the ego.
Work with this. In the beginning, it’s not easy. It’s unfamiliar. But there’s always a sense on the out-breath of just relaxing and letting your awareness drop.
If you find yourself thinking and centralizing back up in the body, just let go again. Let your awareness drop. Don’t worry too much about the distance; just let your awareness drop into the darkness and try to stay with it, hang out there. You can keep on with the process of descent, on and on and on. You can do it for ten minutes or for half an hour or more. As you become more familiar with the process and more skilled, you will find it more and more interesting.
This is the earth we are dropping into, this is the experience of the earth, as opposed to what we think. We have all these ideas, but this, when we drop our awareness down, this is what we find. Open, empty, peaceful, dark, and somehow warm and reassuring, perhaps surprisingly so. We might not think that space could be warm and reassuring, but the space of the earth is. Everything is accepted. Everything is accommodated here. Out-breath, just drop down into it.
After exploring this for a while, perhaps the ten to forty minutes suggested above, take a moment or two to gather yourself. When you feel ready, you can sit back up. As you’re sitting back up, try to stay connected with the big space under you.
B. Earth Descent/Breathing, Sitting Up
Now you’re going to carry the earth practice into the sitting up position. We begin this by feeling the perineum. Your perineum, as mentioned earlier, is located right between your sitz bones, in between the genitals and the anal area. In many people, there’s strangely quite a lot of tension there. There’s a kind of holding back in the perineum, which is a holding back from the earth. The disconnected, pathological ego doesn’t want to be connected with the earth, because once we connect with the earth, everything starts opening up.
You need to identify this holding back or this tightness in the perineum. Just see if you can do that. As you identify what’s there, see if you can relax. See if you can feel that your sitz bones are actually sinking down on your cushion. Relaxing the perineum means relaxing the anal area and also the genital area. There’s a lot of holding there for all of us, whatever your gender or sexual orientation may be, whatever your fear of just letting go, of letting ourselves sink nakedly, connecting to the earth. See if you can find the tension and then relax it.
You have to keep coming back to the body. What you notice is that when you’re there, you relax, and then you think of something, and all of a sudden it’s tight again. It’s a process. You have to really be in the perineum, and you have to stay there. Every time you start to freeze and pull back, you have to release and open.
The next step is to begin the breathing. You’re going to breathe from underneath you up into the perineum, feeling and visualizing bringing your breath through the perineum from under you. You’re going to reach down ever more deeply into the earth. You’re going to drop your attention down, and breathe from that place. So, try dropping your attention, your awareness, about a foot under you, then breathing up from that place. Your attention is a foot under you, but you have a feeling of breathing your breath from that place beneath the perineum where your attention is staying. You’re bringing it up, breathing the earth energy up. And as you breathe, the perineum and the sitz bones relax further and descend toward the earth.
Now you go down two feet, breathing up from a point two feet under you. You’re opening a channel from the earth two feet under you up into the body, through the perineum. Then three feet, and five feet, and ten feet.
Do this for a couple minutes. Your attention now is about ten feet under you, and you’re breathing up from that point. Bring up, breathe up the energy of the earth in through the perineum. You’re leaving your attention about ten feet under you, but there’s a general sense of breathing up through the perineum from that point about ten feet under.
Now go down fifteen feet. Your attention is fifteen feet down under you: that’s where your main locus is as you’re breathing up into the perineum. Now, just see if you can go down one hundred feet, and breathe up from that point.
You’ll notice that to do this requires a constant dialogue with your body. You’re constantly feeling tension that needs to be released. You may have to adjust your posture throughout this, because the more deeply you’re connected to the earth, the more your body will communicate what needs to happen on the
surface. Be fluid, be flexible. Just try to relax completely.
As you do this—as, indeed, with the other somatic practices—you may find strong emotions surfacing, emotions of sadness, grief, or distress, or, equally, emotions of relief, gladness, or even joy. There is no problem with these emotions rising to the surface. There is no problem with us bursting into tears or into laughter when we are alone or when we are in a room practicing with others. When I teach the Meditating with the Body programs, in a group of fifty or sixty people, there is almost always an undercurrent of tears from one or more of us. It is a sign that the practice is actually opening us up beyond and beneath our habitual limits.
Just be one hundred feet down, breathing up. Let your awareness be open, and surrender into the space.
The conversation continues between your body and your awareness in the earth under you. You’re working with it, you’re present, you pop back up to the surface in discursive thinking, then again you drop down. The body needs to relax further. You open, then you start coming to the surface and shutting down, then you open again and drop. Working with the earth in this way is a very dynamic process. There’s constant, constant adjustment and working with it: opening, shutting down, catching yourself, opening, dropping down, breathing up from that point below.
After doing this for a while, until you feel satisfied or completed for now, just sit for a minute without doing anything, making no effort at all. See how your body feels and how your mind feels. Just notice. Use no technique at all. Then, remaining connected with the depth and openness of the earth, just keep sitting in that way, or return to a more structured meditation technique.
THREE-FOLD BREATHING
A. Threefold Breathing, Lying Down
This practice is done in the same lying down position described earlier. If you like, once again, you can do an abbreviated ten-points practice, lying down, to prepare yourself for the threefold breathing.
With your hands folded as in the lying posture, bring your attention into the lower belly, between the perineum and the navel, and breathe into the space of this region. On the in-breath, allow the cavity of the lower belly to expand, imagining that it is a balloon that fills up; on the out-breath, let the balloon collapse. Notice if you feel any tension or constriction around this open cavity. If you do, relax the tension and let it go. Then come up to the front of the lower belly and see if you can relax the front abdominal muscles. Notice if you are carrying tension in the sinews of your inner thighs and in the area around the anus. Just feeling the tension in part of your body invites whatever release. On the in-breath, notice the tension, and on the out-breath, try to completely release. Explore this whole region, including in your exploration your perineum, your sacrum, your pelvis, your hip joints, and the front, back, and sides of your lower belly. On the in-breath, identify areas of tension, and on the out-breath, invite those areas to release and let go. Feel the entire inner space of the lower belly. Do this for a few minutes.
Now bring your hands up to the mid-chest and cross them left under right at the base of the junction of the lower ribs, over the xyphoid process, the bottom tip of the sternum. Feel the space between the breastbone and the back of the spine and breathe into this cavity. Imagine that there is empty space in this area, and that you are drawing breath into this open cavity at the midchest. On the in-breath, the cavity in the midchest fills with prana, your inner breath or life force, and opens up, and on the out-breath, release and relax. Again, you can visualize that you are filling a balloon in the midchest, letting it collapse on the out-breath.
The more space we create in the body, the more the tension in the body begins to make itself known. As you breathe into the cavity at the midchest, notice if you feel any tension in your back (especially in the rope-like tendons that extend on either side of the spine), in your shoulder blades, and in your lower ribs. On the in-breath, fill the cavity at the midchest. At the full culmination of the in-breath, notice the tension surrounding the inner space and feel the fatigue of the muscles, tendons, and bones. On the out-breath, release and let go completely. Check to make sure that you are filling the entire cavity at the midchest with breath, filling the entire midregion, including your sides, the back of the ribs, and the back of the spine. With the in-breath, feel the space expanding outward at the midchest in every direction, and with the out-breath, completely relax. Explore this for a few minutes.
Next, come up to the collarbones, placing your fingers on the collarbones or the fingertips on the outside of the collarbones. Begin to breathe into this region. You are bringing the breath up under the collarbones and trying to lift them up, toward your head, with the in-breath. Notice if you feel any tension, particularly in the arms, hands, fingers, wrists, shoulders, and upper back. On the in-breath, notice any tension, and on the out-breath, relax. See if you can discover the open space right between the collarbones, just below the throat, that creates the empty region of the upper chest. Fill this empty region of the upper chest with prana on the in-breath, and then relax completely on the out-breath. Again, you can use the balloon visualization to help you tune into the filling and emptying of the upper chest.
To finish, return your hands to your lower belly and place them there as in the basic lying down posture. Now briefly work with all three areas of the empty space we have discovered in this practice, beginning with the lower belly, then the midchest, and then the upper chest. You can do this by beginning the breath in the perineum, filling up through the midchest, and completing the in-breath at the collar bones. Do this gently for a few minutes. Then relax your hands by placing them either by your side or on the lower belly, and lie still without any particular technique. Feel the quality of space in your body and rest your attention on that quality of spaciousness and peace.
B. Threefold Breathing, Sitting Up
Once you have become familiar with the threefold breathing practice lying down, you can begin to do the practice sitting up. As with the other body work practices, this is a way of bringing the practice more into the waking, “adult” world, in which we are more engaged with the world around us than we are when lying down. As with the other somatic practices, the sitting up version of the threefold breathing is usually entered from some brief practice of the lying down threefold exercise.
This particular application of the sitting up threefold breathing process emphasizes linking each of the areas with one another, using the breath. Other applications of the same practice put more stress on simply exploring each area in relative independence from the others or on how focusing our awareness of the three regions impacts the way we are able to take our meditation posture.
At the conclusion of the threefold breathing in a lying down position, return your attention to the lower belly and take a few breaths into the perineum, opening and relaxing the perineal muscle. Now sit up on your meditation cushion in a relaxed posture, legs crossed, with hands resting lightly in your lap or on your knees. Try having your eyes either a bit open or wide open (in order to work with both outer and inner awareness).
Continue to breathe in through the perineum, checking your alignment to make sure you are not too far forward or too far back. Bring the breath up through the perineum into the interior of the perineal muscle and into the area around the anus and the sitz bones. Let this area relax, and feel yourself sinking down and connecting with the earth. Now bring the breath into the lower belly, into a point midway between the navel and the perineum that is also midway between the left and right side of the body and midway between the front and the back of the body. Bring your breath in from all directions and breathe directly into this central point in the lower belly. Be sure to breathe in through your perineum as well as through the sides of the body. Breathe into this central point and let the interior of the lower belly fill. Notice the sensations throughout your body as you breathe into the lower belly. Investigate if your belly is open or restricted. If you notice any tension in the lower belly, explore this area and adjust your p
osture a bit forward or backward or a bit to the left or right to see if this creates greater relaxation and openness.
Next, breathe into the midchest just behind the xyphoid process at the base of your sternum. Allow the breath to fill the sphere of the midchest and allow yourself to relax completely on the out-breath. On the in-breath, fill the midchest completely; on the out-breath, relax and open the back, front, left, and right of the midchest.
Then, come up to the area of the collarbones, the area of the upper chest, and breathe into the space between the collarbones. On the in-breath, imagine a balloon is filling up in your upper chest, and on the out-breath release any tension you discover.
Now go back to the lower belly and take three long, slow breaths into the lower belly. Bring the space and awareness you have generated in the lower belly into the midchest and take three long, slow breaths into the midchest. Then bring the awareness and openness of the midchest and lower belly into the upper chest and breathe three long, slow breaths into the region of the upper chest. Then move back down to the midchest with three long, slow breaths and then back to the lower belly with three long, slow breaths.
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