In this meditation, we’ll settle into the body, find a steadier ground beneath fear and anxiety, and get a felt sense of the courage, open-heartedness, and basic goodness that are already here inside you.
This meditation went with my talk on Why Good Boundaries Make Better Relationships, which you can see here: Why It’s So Hard to Set - and Keep - Healthy Boundaries.
This guided meditation focuses on establishing a sense of presence and stability. By grounding the body, regulating breath, and releasing anxiety, the practitioner moves toward a state of inner peace and recognizes their innate basic goodness and open-heartedness.
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So, related to boundaries in a sense, is to take your place. Establish your own sense of place.
And it can be really useful to wiggle a little in your seat. Perhaps you're standing or walking
or lying down, that's fine. Get a sense of your body, particularly aspects of your body that are
comfortable for you to tune into. Breathing, if that's comfortable for you, with your eyes open
or closed, knowing the place where you are in reference to your environment.
Every mammal needs a burrow. You're establishing yourself in your burrow, your place.
As a foundation for meditation, it can also help to establish your place in reference to gravity,
the forces that are pulling you toward the center of the earth in a kind of line.
And you can also imagine that line extending upward out into space to infinity. That might
lead you to sitting a little more upright, quality of dignity through the brain's reticular
activating system. The physicality of uprightness also tends to promote alertness
and a steadiness of presence, establishing a stability of presence, a sense of here-ness
and now-ness. If it's comfortable for you being aware of breathing, for example,
being particularly aware of breathing sensations in the lower abdomen, the base of the torso,
breathing into that area and releasing from that area as you exhale. And as you do this,
allowing a greater and greater sense of the physicality of here-ness, grounded,
plopping here. And now being more aware of breathing in the area of the diaphragm,
under the ribcage. For a few breaths, you can breathe particularly fully into the area
of the ribcage, even putting your hand on it to feel its movement as you inhale and exhale.
And as you do this, you can gently scan for any anxieties, any bracing, guarding,
fearfulness, and see if you can release these anxieties as you breathe into your diaphragm
and exhale from your diaphragm. And as you do this, see if you can find in your own ways
qualities of peacefulness, even qualities of a kind of courage, a kind of fearlessness
in simply the realness of who you are. As fears release, what remains
is the all-rightness of who we are already. This might show up for you as a sense of
don't have to be so worried, don't have to be so constrained, allowed to be me, fears falling away.
As we meditate, it's really fine to have a state of being as an object of meditation,
perhaps with a background, ongoing sense of breathing, and in the foreground,
resting increasingly in wholesome qualities of feeling grounded and centered,
feeling peaceful and courageous and at ease, sort of marinating in these qualities of being
as what's called a concentration practice. And then being aware of breathing in the area
of the heart, chest, and finding related feelings of open-heartedness,
lovingness. You might be finding related qualities such as friendliness, appreciating others,
kindness, compassion, knowing the lovingness that naturally radiates outward from you,
your basic goodness. Can you find confidence in your basic goodness, knowing that
we can still make mistakes, we can still be hijacked by reactive patterns, while
innately, underneath all that, is basic goodness, your good intentions, your good heart,
your open-heartedness. As an object of meditation, can you rest in the knowing
of your basic goodness? Can you rest in the feeling of your basic goodness?
And in our last few minutes, letting go of conceptualizing and labeling,
simply being at ease, breathing in, breathing out, receiving and releasing.
