Meditation Made Easy

by Lorin Roche

  Invisible motion is part of every breath—there are very slight motions of the head with every in- and outbreath, in addition to the not-so-invisible motion of the ribs expanding and contracting with the breath. Learning to appreciate these minute motions will enrich your meditative experience. Explore Stillness in Motion on its own, and give your body a chance to get used to it. Then include it in your longer meditations.

  Even though I have decades of meditation experience, it would probably take me days to get into this meditation, doing it a few minutes a day. If I did it just the right amount per day, then my body would look forward to doing it. If I overdid it, the meditation would start to feel like work rather than a delight.

  I could learn more quickly if someone guided me through it—I'd save a few days. But this is the kind of thing you can learn on your own if you are patient. There are quite a few steps, and you want to approach those steps in such a way that you get intimate with each one and one step naturally flows into the next.

  It is not as complicated as learning to sew, or cook, or sing. In meditation you want to learn a thing in the same easy way that you will do it, because meditation is about learning to do almost nothing. You are paying attention, but it feels easier than watching TV or even sleeping. Although this meditation is classical, it is also akin to what some singers learn.

  One breath is the basic unit of learning in meditation. Three breaths is the beginning of a cycle of going into meditation. Most of what you learn about meditation will happen because you stay with an experience for fifteen seconds or longer, instead of five. When you take a few conscious breaths after reading something, you shift your sensory focus from words to feeling your body. When you do this, your body gets to assimilate the learning.

  The first time you do this exercise, give yourself fifteen minutes when you are relaxed and, preferably, outdoors. Do the movements extremely slowly and with playful ease. Do the movements over and over so that your body becomes accustomed to them, and so that you can get used to detecting the subtle pleasurable sensations.

  After you become familiar with these movements, you may find that you can experience the effect in a few seconds.

  There is no hurry. Take your time. I have met many people who have taken an earnest, diligent approach to learning yoga breathing techniques. The problem is that the attitude can persist. Years later, breath is still something to be controlled. Enjoy your breath. If you explore, you will find what you enjoy, in your own sweet time.

  Each of the Obstacles is an Ally in disguise. You will have to learn this for yourself, and it will take time. The learning is a lifelong adventure. Thoughts are your brain at work, and it's good that your brain works. Each emotion is a relationship between something in you and something in the outer world, and it is good to be related to the world. Even moods represent inner callings that need attending to.

  Remember—meditation is not about slowing down. Meditation gives you the ability to speed up as well as to slow down. You will also know your body's rhythm more intimately. You will be better able to move at your own pace. Everyone's pace is different. Often in meditation, the brain seems to speed up, thoughts race around for a while, then suddenly there's stillness. It's unpredictable.

  If you find yourself in a long series of thoughts, you sometimes have the option to pay attention to the sensations underlying the thoughts. If you scan your body, you may find that you have sensations in your throat, heart, or belly that correspond to the emotional dramas your brain is sorting through. Let your attention be called there, and breathe with the sensations.

  Watch basketball or another sport in which the players are running around keeping track of many fast-moving bodies. Look at the expression on the players' faces—they are almost blank with total concentration.

  Meditation is an unusual skill in that you learn it by resting. That is the practice: resting in yourself with attention. You learn meditation by doing exactly the kind of things that got you in trouble at school: looking out the window and daydreaming, or closing your eyes and drifting off. As you read this book, the more you drift off and make your own associations, the better.

  Whenever you come across something you want to know, reread it a few times. It takes a while to sink in. After reading it, close your eyes and pay attention to your breathing for a minute. That will let the learning settle into your nerves and reflexes. Meditation is more like a sport than a mental skill.

  The time you give to meditation, it will give back to you. I have consistently found that meditation gives me back more time than I give it. You'll know you have been meditating because you are more relaxed as you go through your day and night.

  Always keep in mind that meditation is very simple. All you have to do is breathe. Your body will go into and out of meditation spontaneously. It can feel like a conscious nap. Read at your own pace and explore meditation at your own pace. We are all different in our learning styles and speed. Honor your own individualistic way of learning as you explore the exercises in this book.

  Introducing a little meditation in your life can be as simple as taking time to watch the sunrise—not just for a two-second glance but for minutes. It can be as simple as taking a full minute of breathing in the delicious smell of your food before you begin eating.

  Don't limit your range. Give yourself—your body—full permission to nod off or fall completely asleep, go silent, be very busy, have rapid thoughts, or become completely excited. It is typical for a meditator to range over time between comalike sleep (usually for twenty to forty minutes) while working off the sleep debt and times of incredible inner wakefulness. The nervous system is exercising its full range of motion and balancing itself.

  This process takes place only to the extent that you feel safe. Any fear in your body blocks the process. This in itself is safe and self-regulating, because it avoids any sense that “something is happening to me.” The fear keeps you from settling down deeper into meditation. Going step-by-step gradually dissolves the fear.

  Always give yourself permission to say no and not meditate right now. Maybe tomorrow you will find yourself different. Do not feel that you need to impose meditation on yourself. If you can say no today, you can also say yes.

  It's okay if you can't tolerate doing nothing, but that is the place from which you start.

  If you have a lot of noise in your head while Doing Nothing, you may find yourself wanting to take action in some form—clean up your room or clean up your act. All that “noise” or mental rehearsal is not a problem and is not to be resisted. Your brain needs to do it.

  If you find yourself afraid of keeping yourself company, and a certain percentage of people do, then make sure you proceed at your own pace. You could begin by meditating only in places where you feel really safe, whether that is in your room, in a church or temple, at the beach, or in a theater between movies.

  Some people run into tremendous guilt when Doing Nothing. The exercise directly challenges their work ethic—and their fear of nothingness. Many of those people have been unable to work through their guilt. It is simple, though: if you feel bad doing nothing, just keep coming back and facing the feeling directly, and eventually you will win. The problem with not clearing out this feeling is that doing nothing is part of resting. Such people tend to work to exhaustion and then drop. Or they have to drink or smoke to get into rest. Or have sex as an escape rather than just for fun or love. Lots of people who seem to be happily meditating are tying themselves up in rules out of fear of doing nothing. They have all kinds of invisible rules and regulations.

  If you are tired or under stress, do not do the Feeling at Home exercise unless you seem to fall into it. Instead, find one of the breathing practices to enjoy. Someday soon, when you have more energy for it, come back and explore being at home.

  When we do things habitually, without paying much attention, we ignore feedback from our bodies. Many people, when they start paying attention while eating and drinking, find that they do
n't actually like what they're putting in their mouths. Sometimes they discover they don't like coffee, now that they are really tasting it; they like certain teas or prefer water and juice. Or they find that they are satisfied with just a sip and do not want to gulp.

  Be prepared to study your preferences as you start paying more attention to taste. And take the time to explore what you really love to sip in the morning, at lunch, in the afternoon, and during the evening. If it's good coffee, freshly roasted, have that. If it is herb tea or juice, have it available.

  Some people like to do the same ritual every time they meditate and other people like to do something different each time. It's very individual. You might prefer one way for months or years and then change to the other.

  Laughter may be your ritual. Laughter shatters the grip of small thinking and invites us into a grander scheme of things.

  Just for a moment at the end of the inhalation, attention lights upon a blessed place in the crown of the skull. There is no effort or focusing, only the simple act of touching that place with attention.

  Think of the greatest thing in the world—the moment of orgasm, or perfect peace, or the most beautiful sunlight, or someone you love, or the highest desire you have.

  Pay attention to the overall feel of your body. Notice what happens as you pause for a moment on the inhalation.

  This breath is probably the instinctive origin of tobacco and marijuana smoking. Something as popular as those activities has to have a foundation in a natural movement of the body. We crave the experience of something special in the incoming breath. So why not just let ourselves satisfy this craving with plain old air?

  Yogis have always recommended savoring breath and occasionally pausing at the end of inhalation or exhalation.

  Let's say you have found a vowel combination you particularly enjoy, such as AH-EE.

  Take the time to find the consonants that really spice up the sound for you.

  For example, with AH-EE, if you add sh at the beginning, an n and a t sound, you have Shanti, the Sanskrit word for peace.

  Shanti is pronounced SHAN-TEE.

  Sanskrit is onomatopoeic: it sounds like what it means. Chant SHANTI for ten minutes and see how you feel. This works both ways; if you find a vowel combination that seems to produce a certain effect in your body, you are in a way making up your own Sanskrit. It is good for everyone who uses spoken language to have a feeling for how sound resonates in the body.

  Another sound with AH-EE is Shakti, which is the female aspect of divinity. A woman I know loves to chant Shiva-Shakti, meaning the union of male and female divinity. Shiva is pronounced SHEE-VAH and Shakti is pronounced SHAK-TEE.

  In the worldview that Sanskrit emerged from, everything is divine, including every sound of every letter, including the ones you use all the time without thinking about it.

  At different times of the day, or when you are in different moods, different sounds may call you.

  Ma, the word for mother in Sanskrit, is part of many chants and mantras. You can make up combinations of sounds with Ma: MA EEEEE MA. MA-YA.

  Ram is a wonderful, masculine, radiantly solar sound, often said as Rama or Ra-Ma. So the sound has male and female integrated in it. It is used in many chants and mantras.

  Yah is a fantastic sound. The Germans use it for Yes; vocalists and backup singers use it as a generally affirming filler sound, as in “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” It combines with everything.

  Here are some more sounds you might want to play with:

  Am ah hum

  Ra mah hum

  Mah yah hum

  Oh mah nah

  Somanah

  Sonojah

  Hri-yah

  If you are more comfortable using something religious, take Jesus' name, the way it is sung in hymns, Jesu. Jay-su. In Spanish, Hey-soos. Or if you are a Rastafarian, Yah is a wonderful sound. Hallelujah and Alleluia are ecstatic sounds. One of the most beautiful sounds in any language may be Allah. Listen to that: “All” and “Ah.”

  Yahoo is a wonderful mantra.

  Sound is a very simple experience. You are built to use sound and do so all the time. Sound meditation is just riding sound into silence. Remember, every experience that arises in you during meditation is actually part of your own experience; it is not unique to meditation. It's just that you are awake while being deeply relaxed. You have these experiences all the time when you are asleep. Every mental picture, every wave of thought, emotion, and sensation is part of your meditation experience. Accept it all. Be like the Statue of Liberty, welcoming all immigrants.

  Have a clock or watch nearby so that you tell how long you have meditated.

  When the time is up, take a full three minutes to sit there before opening the eyes fully. For two minutes, just be aware that you are going to come out of meditation, and start to move, shift, yawn, stretch, breathe deeply. The last minute, experiment with opening the eyes briefly and then closing them again. Slowly let your awareness expand into the space that you were perceiving before you started meditation.

  Close your eyes and pretend you are taking a nap—only you don't have to fall asleep. This is a conscious nap. You can make things very cozy. You can build a fire in the fireplace, wrap yourself in a blanket, and just look at the fire. Or you can lie down. If you fall asleep and have a real nap, no problem. Just do the exercise when you wake up.

  How does doing this exercise differ from being a couch potato? You are intentionally doing nothing. You do not even have to approach meditation as a technique, although you may if you wish. Notice what your attitudes are, and do not defend yourself against anything. Whether you are reverent, irreverent, bored, happy, tired, or excited, welcome it all. You cannot fail.

  Pray and then meditate. You could say your favorite prayers to create an atmosphere of safety, and then let go and Do Nothing.

  Touch different textures, such as fur, silk, velvet, wool, carpet, wood, and glass. Touch different areas of your skin. Have someone touch you all over very lightly. Have someone breathe on your skin. Experiment with different pressures, light and strong, fast and slow. In terms of touch, meditation sometimes feels like the most delicate foreplay imaginable.

  You can also do the Feeling at Home exercise with experiences such as feeling intensely alive, being extremely alert, being flooded with gratitude, and experiencing love. Each of these will teach you something different about your natural gateways into heightened attention. Cultivating your attention in this way will be a great gift to your life and to your path in meditation.

  The secret is so simple that it is easy to overlook. When you bring up a memory and breathe with it in the present moment, your entire nervous system is alerted to that way of functioning and, if it is appropriate, will make use of those sensory pathways.

  In private instruction, I spend much of the time listening as people tell me about their experiences of being at home, being in love, being in gratitude to be alive. As they access the memories, they go into meditation spontaneously, in their own natural way. Then I interview them while they are meditating and have them teach me about their individual paths.

  You can do this on your own. It may take a little longer because no one but you is there holding the space for you. But you can do it. If tears come, let them come. If regret comes, let it come. You are not doing anything unnatural to yourself; you are simply engaging in an honest process of reflecting on and learning from your experiences.

  Over time, you may find that once you open the gate, these experiences come of their own accord, each seeking to give you its gift. Accept the gift.

  This exercise is not just an indulgence. Doing it for even a few seconds a day gives the body a sense of remembered wellness. This strengthens the immune system, reminds you of what life is all about, and makes you emotionally more resilient and self-sufficient.

  Each of these spontaneous experiences is your teacher. Your task is to savor these experiences periodically and let them instruct you. It is a body-bas
ed teaching: your nerves practice doing what is involved in the experience as you remember. This gives your body permission to feel the same way when you are meditating. And ultimately, you will meditate every day if you feel safe doing so. You will learn to function in a state of relaxation, without pushing your panic button all the time, if you feel safe to do so. You will learn to move through your world with your senses wide-open. The Feeling at Home exercise will not interfere in any way with your ability to panic if you really need to, or if the emergency response is needed. This exercise just clears the roadway, making you better able to feel at home in the world if it is appropriate to do so.

  Invisible Motion of the Head

  With the eyes open, make the tiniest motion of the head you can notice. The movement could be left to right and back or a slight tilting of the chin up and down. Allow the eyes to close—or not—of their own accord as you let your senses inform you of this minute movement. (This exercise is an elaboration on the Salute to Balance.)

  Continue to track the sense of motion, and notice the feelings you have in your skull and elsewhere as your attention engages with the vestibular sense and the joint sensors in the vertebrae of your neck.