Meditation Made Easy

by Lorin Roche

  Here, for your edification, are a few buzzwords to impress your friends.

  Chakra (pronounced chak'rah). Chakra means “wheel.” Think of the spokes of a wheel coming in to meet at the center. In the human body there are places where nerves and blood vessels and glands come together. These are talked about in anatomy as plexi, as in the solar plexus.

  You can tell where some of them are because they are the places in your body that buzz and vibrate if you are happy, excited, in love. What are the first couple of places you think of? Right you are. The crotch is one; the heart is another; there are several in the head. There is one solar plexus, just where you would expect an “energy center” in the body to be.

  These are called energy centers because they are the places in the body that get energetic when you are excited about something. If you are thinking, it sometimes feels like the energy is in your head. If you are madly in love, it feels like the energy is in your chest, in your heart center. Or maybe lower.

  The heart center is called anahata (pronounced anna-ha'ta.) That's the place that aches when you miss someone and that gushes when you are in love.

  The sex center is a little hard to pronounce. I think that's because they wanted to make sure the kids wouldn't know what they were saying. It's four syllables, svadhishthana (sva-dish-ta'na). This is where the word dish came from, I'm sure.

  Now, see if you can use those words in a sentence.

  As in, “That babe sets me vibrating in two places, and the other one isn't my anahata.”

  And, “Larry, I hate to tell you this, but I want to have a purely anahata relationship with you.”

  LARRY: “But Jane, I am feeling a certain vibration in my svadhishthana chakra.”

  The last chakra we'll talk about, class, is the one you are sitting on.

  “That guy is a real pain in the muladhara.” (It's pronounced moo-la-da'ra.)

  There, you now know the four hippest buzzwords in meditation. Plus, they are fun locations in the human body.

  In general, though, the more Sanskrit you know, the harder it will be for you to find your muladhara with both hands.

  Select something with a smell you want to enjoy. If possible, hold the object in your hand. It could be a piece of orange, a flower, a bottle of perfume, chocolate, wine, a cigar, anything. Try to have fresh air, or clean air, where you are meditating.

  Sit in a comfortable place.

  Place the item near your nose and breathe in its scent.

  Notice where in your nose the sense of smell seems to come from.

  Be aware of changes in the experience of smell as you become saturated with the odor.

  Be alert to sensations coming from your entire body as you breathe the smell in and out. Depending on your mood and the nature of the smell, you might have tingling or melting sensations on your skin or in your belly, genitals, heart area, or legs. The smell might be evocative of emotions. Let those emotions move through you, and attend to them as long as you like; then return to the sense of smell. If the emotions come back and are strong, attend to the places in your body with physical sensations that correlate to the emotion. If, for example, a perfume reminds you of a time or place you once wore it, and you have a longing about that, is the longing in your heart area? Is it in your gut, your belly? Is it in your entire upper torso?

  After several minutes, move the item away, so that there is only the barest hint of its smell.

  After several more minutes, move the item farther away, so that no discernible hint of it remains, only the possibility that a molecule or two of it will reach your nose.

  Yet, stay alert in your nose to the possibility of smell, and continue being aware of breathing, being alert to the presence of nothing in the air. You are alert, you are mindful in the nose, but there is nothing there except pure air. This exercise is really about waking up to smell.

  Over time, this meditation will increase your alertness to smells, even the smell of pure, clean air. You can be sitting under a tree, or on your sofa, and draw in a breath of fresh air and enjoy air. You can draw energy out of air. You can draw calmness out of air. You can draw any quality you crave out of the air. If you cultivate your sense of smell, you will also cultivate your ability to be alert to the whole process of breathing, and your meditations will be that much more enjoyable.

  After air, water is out most essential need. Water has a taste when we are thirsty—it tastes good. Even distilled water tastes good. (You could also use fruit juice or wine for this exercise.)

  Taste a sip of water. Sample it little by little. Do not completely satisfy your thirst until later.

  Notice how the water affects the sensations in your mouth. Where are you experiencing taste? How does your tongue, the roof of your mouth, the back of your throat welcome the water? Have you ever noticed this before?

  Scan your body for sensations that go with drinking water. What happens in your belly? How does your attitude change as you sip?

  After a couple of minutes, gulp as much of the water as you like. Gulp attentively if you can. Notice the sensations in the belly. Check out your body for the subtle, pleasurable sensations of being satisfied.

  When you have gotten used to this technique, you may find that anytime you drink water you can turn on your sense of taste and really enjoy. It may take only two seconds, but you have enjoyed a simple, everyday experience.

  If you like, you could use a sip of water at the beginning of a meal to key you in to enhanced taste. You may find that this helps you eat only as much as you need, and enjoy it more, without getting into control issues with food. This is one of the purposes of having wine with meals. There is so much to smell in a glass of wine, and every sip has such a complex taste, that the whole body is prepared for sensual enjoyment of food.

  Your experience may be different each time you do this exercise. It will depend on your state of relaxation, how hydrated you are, the outside temperature and humidity, your emotional state, where you are, and the particular water you are tasting. Emotions may come up that relate to times when you were really thirsty. Pictures may come into your head. Be with the emotions and pictures, and when they fade away, return to the sense of taste. Every time your mind wanders, it is clearing out cobwebs and bringing the richness of memory to the present moment.

  Let your eyes move around and then alight on some color that calls you. Allow your eyes to rest on the color. The eyes may move, but they can also feel at ease. Ask yourself, what colors or sights do I crave right now? Would you like to be in Tahiti, looking out over the ocean? In a forest or in the mountains? Looking at the body of your lover? Let images stream though your mind's eye if you like. There is sometimes a sensation of being touched by light, when the light is right and the mood is right. Be alert for subtle sensations in the eyes as you notice your reaction to color.

  The eyes can feel extraordinarily restful while we are seeing. Sometimes we reach out to grab the world with our eyes, but we can also experience being receptive to color—which is the case in reality. Although the eyes move, it is the electromagnetic spectrum entering the eyes that makes the molecules excited.

  Now let your eyes move around and alight on some texture of the visual world. Texture is the surface of the objects you are seeing. Choose a texture that appeals to you and be aware of it for half a minute.

  Do the same with the depth of field. Notice that you can tell how much empty space is between you and all the objects you see. Notice the empty space, the air between you and the objects you are seeing.

  Become aware of your peripheral vision. Rest the eyes on some spot in front of you, and with the peripheral vision, see to the left and right, above and below.

  Notice the element of shape in the objects you are seeing. And if the objects are moving or static, how they sit in space.

  Just touch on these items for half a minute or so. Your aim is simply to notice some of the range and quality of vision, and to stay there for a few seconds.

  Sit in
a place where there is a sound you like, perhaps the sound of a fountain or a bird. Or sit where you are and listen to the sound of life around you, whether it is distant traffic, kids playing in a yard, the television in the next room, or someone walking back and forth above you.

  After listening with the eyes open for a minute or two, close the eyes and continue listening. Let yourself keep track of what is going on, and notice the three-dimensionality of sound. If you have two functional ears, you can locate noises in all directions, including up and down.

  Begin to pay attention to the relative quiet between sounds—if there is any. If not, then notice the space between you and the source of the sounds. You can usually tell, by listening, how far away the source of the sound is.

  Put your attention in the ears themselves and be awake there, listening and feeling. This will be easier if the sounds around you are not too loud.

  Starting at the top of the head, with an extremely light touch, move down the midline of the body. Move extremely slowly. Use one hand, perhaps the middle finger. Go as far down as you feel comfortable.

  Experiment by moving your hand or finger away from the body, then back in slowly. Notice the point at which you can tell that your finger is about to touch.

  Notice which areas of the body crave to be touched lightly. Explore the forehead, the eyelids, the lips, the hollow of the throat, the area between the breasts, the belly, and if you are so inclined, areas around the genitals.

  Hold the hands in front of the chest, palms inward, and move them in and out a few inches as you breathe. On the inbreath, let the hands come all the way in and lightly touch the chest. On the out-breath, move them slightly out.

  Each area of the body has its own relationship with touch and preference for kinds of touch. The lips, hands, and genitals have lots of nerve endings.

  Let one or both of your hands move as if you were gesturing in a conversation. But let the movement be very slow. Now close your eyes and continue, noticing not only the sensations in your arms and hands, but those all over your body.

  Let the movements gradually become slower and slower until you are moving so slowly that even you can't tell if you are moving or not.

  Stand with the eyes closed and swing your arms from side to side. Move with vigor and enthusiasm and then slow down gradually. Notice how you detect movement. Notice how it makes you feel, how it changes your mood.

  Still standing there with eyes closed, know where your joints are in space. You can tell instantly. Simply notice that you know where your joints and limbs are.

  Sitting with eyes closed, tilt your head very slightly one way and then the other: left, then right. Notice the sense that informs you when your head is at the centerline. Let your movements be tiny, a fraction of an inch.

  After you get used to the small head movements, explore doing tiny spiral or circular motions around where the center is, around where perfect vertical is.

  There is an exquisite feeling right at the vertical. You can sense this if you are moving slowly enough. Continue to play with being off-center, then “falling upwards” toward center. When you get used to this sense of vertical, through playing around with being slightly off-balance, there comes a sense of great pleasure in being upright.

  This exercise lets you play with orbiting through your senses and observing something in each.

  Sit or stand anywhere you like and let yourself “get in” for a minute. Do any settling-down movements that you want. Stretch or yawn. Then notice the ebb and flow of your breathing.

  Begin to speak softly, saying “Now I am aware of seeing…” Continue by saying whatever comes to mind that is visual, whether it is in the outer world or a mental image. The sentence can be said very slowly. Go on like this for a minute or so, just speaking the sentence “Now I am aware of seeing…”

  When you get to the word seeing, say whatever image your mind or eyes are on at that exact moment. As in “I am aware of seeing the rain.”

  Switch to another sensory mode, “Now I am aware of smelling…,” and say whatever you are smelling.

  Continue this way, starting each sentence with “Now I am aware…” and then choosing another sense. Improvise off your immediate perceptions.

  The time you spend on “getting in” to meditation is necessary, because it is not your personal will that makes meditation happen. Meditation is an activity of your total being, and you cooperate with it. Your contribution is to create conditions under which it can happen—you are inviting meditation to happen by the way you pay attention. When you take this approach, not only is meditation easy, it is effortless.

  You are creating conditions under which your deepest desires can come to the surface to be attended to, and it is your movement toward fulfillment in life that drives the meditation. Meditation is not a discipline imposed from above; it comes up from the ground.

  Take your time getting to know each of the stages and feeling each one throughout your body. Once you have done this, each stage can happen with a thought, or you may linger in one or more of them. It will be different every time you meditate.

  If you neglect any of these stages, your meditation and your development will suffer. In my work, I have met and spoken with thousands of meditators with many years of experience, and quite a few of them have missed these simple stages. Thus, meditation still feels like an imposition to them, even after years, and they still don't know what effortlessness is.

  Meditation may have made you aware of something that needs medical attention. If so, go get it checked out.

  If one of your senses is impaired, you can still salute it. You can even salute its absence! Whenever we are deprived of one sense, the others become more sensitive to compensate. So if any of your senses are impaired, be creative in inventing and adapting. I have always envied people who speak ASL (American Sign Language) and other sign languages, because they are so beautiful to watch. Someday I want to meet a meditation teacher who is deaf and has explored the use of sign language in meditation.

  In the All Senses meditation, what happens is that your primary perceptions, unsocialized, get a chance to come out without editing. This trains you to let yourself be surprised by perception, to let new and fresh perceptions emerge.

  The exercise also allows you to practice giving speech freely to your immediate perceptions. Since childhood, you may not have had a chance to speak without editing first.

  In the All Senses meditation, you may move through the senses in any order you wish:

  Now I am aware of seeing…

  Now I am aware of smelling…

  Now I am aware of hearing…

  Now I am aware of tasting…

  Now I am aware of touching…

  Now I am aware of moving…

  Now I am aware of balance…

  You may feel that somehow you are violating a taboo by paying attention to your coffee, that there is some sort of rule against actually smelling and tasting for more than a couple of seconds. No one is allowed to have this much fun with something so simple. You may find yourself becoming anxious, even if you have plenty of time to get ready for work. Anytime you break a perceived taboo, a warning buzzer goes off. Pay attention to this and don't push it too much in any one day. Simply notice the rule about not really paying attention, and come back tomorrow.

  You can use sipping your morning drink as a meditation in itself, and also as a way into a longer meditation. Many successful meditators I know use commonplace rituals such as this as a gateway to meditation.

  Tensing and relaxing is a more realistic approach to relaxation than attempting to relax directly. I am not sure what happens when people tell themselves to “relax.” Do they just go limp? Relaxation is not limpness; it is the state of not having any unnecessary tension. As long as we are alive, the muscles are in a slight state of tension—and this is good; it is the way the muscles work. When we are excited, it is a pleasant state of readiness in the body, akin to tension, but more finely tuned. Re
laxation happens naturally in meditation, as a side effect of being more perceptive and at home in ourselves. It's not something to go for directly.

  Still motion is a very worthwhile sense to cultivate. When you get it, your whole meditation practice will be enriched, and “stillness” will seem a very lively event. Give it a chance sometime—if you fall in love with it immediately, then include a little of it in your daily meditation. If it seems strange to you, return again in a week or a month and check it out again. You won't be able to do this meditation if you have had a cold or flu recently or if you are taking medication that affects the inner ear.

  Meditations that involve the neck and head tend to evoke a lot of stretching. This is because paying attention to the head, without telling it what to do, gives the neck muscles permission to seek balance. Almost all movements of modern people involve leaning forward: driving, reading, sitting at a desk, child care, manual labor. You will be able to do this exercise much better after stretching.

  This brings up a major point: it is good, and a success of meditation, if doing an exercise makes you feel restless. Almost all meditators think they have failed when they do a meditation for two minutes, then get restless and start stretching. But this is a major blessing. What has happened is that your body has gone into self-regeneration mode. It is wanting to invent its own yoga postures, which is what stretching is. Think about this sometime, because often what meditators consider their failure is actually a success.