by Lorin Roche
You may find yourself taking a few deep breaths as your body settles into tracking mode. Delicate motion of the head is used in hunting and tracking, and the body knows well how to do it. You use the same senses to avoid becoming prey by knowing if you are being tracked. You may find yourself feeling stealthy. Your sense of hearing may open up to detect variations in the silence.
For now, return to the tiny, just-barely-noticeable differences in motion of the neck. Allow your attention to shift back and forth between those sensations and the sensation of breathing, if that is what happens naturally. Eventually, your body will quiet itself enough to notice the motion very clearly.
Explore whatever movements you want to make, in any direction.
Sign Language
Another way in to hand sensitivity is to observe people talking with their hands. As you move through your day, notice people's spontaneous hand movements and make a mental catalog of them. If you can, talk with some Italians and hang out with deaf people talking in sign language. Then, when you are getting ready to meditate and are alone, say with your hands what you want out of meditation. Make up a prayer in your own talking-with-the-hands language. Say how you feel now and then say how you want to feel after meditation. You may not be able to say verbally what you want, but you may be able to dance it with hand and arm motions.
Rowing the Air
Sitting or standing, draw your hands in toward your chest as you breathe in, and move them away from the chest as you breathe out. Experiment with different distances, just doing what feels slightly pleasurable.
The palms can be turned in toward you through both movements, or you can turn them to face outward when you breathe out.
Let the arms and hands be at ease as you move, the elbows down, the forearms pointing up slightly.
Someday when you want to, play with this exercise for about five minutes. Often that is how long it takes to get used to the movement so that your sensory system can feel the energetic charge building up.
You may feel “something” there between your hands and your chest, something coming into your chest and flowing around. It may feel like the essence of vitality, as when you are at the ocean or among green trees and breathe.
Your hands may become tingly and magnetic, and your heart may feel washed with sparkling air-stuff. An amazing number of people are sensitive to this subtle energy. Sometimes I'll have fifty people in a room do this exercise, and forty of them immediately begin sensing the energy. Since you are on your own, the trick is to be informal with yourself. Sneak up on yourself at different times and check in with what you feel with motion and breath. If and when you awaken to this sensitivity, it will make your breath-awareness meditations that much more interesting.
With new groups and veteran meditators alike, I often walk into the room and have them do this exercise without the slightest preparation or warning. They don't even have time to think about whether they will do it right. I like to listen to what people say as they start perceiving the energy flowing, whether it is between their palms in the Magnetic Hands exercise or between the palms and the heart in the Rowing Air exercise. Everyone is standing around saying things like, Hmmm…warm…magnetic…empty space feels like substance…sort of plasma, charged particles…feels like a ball of light.
Remember—discover, don't impose. If you don't feel anything today, just explore this technique next week, and at a different time of day, or after you have done a different meditation. Or forget about it altogether! Do not judge yourself. There is no one language, no one technique that speaks to everyone.
Greet and Say Good-bye
Here is a simple approach to a heart meditation:
Be there in the heart to greet the incoming breath. Embrace it. Be awake to the gift that life is giving you with this breath.
Say good-bye to the outgoing breath. Let go of it. Be awake to the freedom that comes from letting go of the old air, old thoughts, old feelings.
Expansion and Contraction
Notice that as you breathe in, you expand to encompass the incoming breath.
On the physical level, your rib cage and torso expand.
Tolerate the experience of that expansion continuing.
Savor the sense of expansion evoked by the flow of breath.
As you breathe in, your rib cage expands outward from your center to embrace the new air. With your attention, embrace the new life.
As you breathe in, your being expands to encompass the world.
Be there in the heart as the breath flows in.
Be awake to the gift life is giving you.