In 2020, beginning shortly after the onset of the COVID pandemic, I started an online meditation group at Spirit of the Lake (recordings available here). Those 30-minute meetings ended up being a lot like episodes of Pretty Good Meditation, with me talking to people and not a lot of discussion.
Breath control can help us fold our awareness inward. Scanning the body and can help us relax. In this meditation, we pay attention to our breath, physical sensations, and mind, relaxing into the present moment and the mystery of life.
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The breath is a common focus during meditation. Breath meditation can help cultivate mindfulness and the ability to stay present with life. In this meditation we practice paying attention to the breath, whether we feel it most at the tip of our nose, the chest, or the belly. We do these practices to train the mind to stay present and experience the natural rhythms of life.
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The first foundation of mindfulness is contemplation of the body (kayanupassana). When you learn to listen to your bodies and stay with sensations, you can become more grounded and less reactive. Contemplation of the body helps you make friends with your body, and accept the fact that this body is not "your" body, but rather just a temporary form. A large body of scientific research suggests that simply paying attention to your body helps ward off disease, improves cognitive and emotional functioning, and much more. However, simply staying present with the sensations in your body is as simple as it is challenging.
Many of us get so wrapped up in the things around us that we rarely pay attention to the spaces between things. And yet space is always present. In this episode, we pay attention to the space between breaths, between our thoughts, in our physical world, and that surrounds sound. Developing a more spacious view of the world helps to open the mind, dissolve boundaries, and let go of the ego.
To leave a comment about this episode, visit matthewtift.com/prettygood/28. To suggest a topic for a future episode or tell me more about yourself and why you are listening, visit matthewtift.com/contact. The theme music is "Maxixe" performed by Edson Lopes under CC BY 3.0.
Learning to breathe and relax can deepen your capacity to stay present to the events of your life. This meditation can provide space for you to notice as feelings and thoughts arise, shift, and fade away. Rather than push away emotions, this practice allows you to tune in to those emotions and learn how to ride the waves of sensations that we each experience throughout our lives.
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Breath is an ever-present aspect of life, which is part of the reason why "mindfulness of breathing," or ānāpānasati in Pāli, is probably the most common form (object) of meditation. Typically, the practice involves focusing attention on the physical sensations caused by the movement of the breath, the in-breaths and the out-breaths. Mindfulness of breathing is a feeling practice, not a thinking practice.
Between each in breath and out breath, there is a pause. Between each out breath and in breath, there is a pause. We can use these pauses as the focus in our meditation.
To leave a comment about this episode, visit matthewtift.com/prettygood/2. The theme music is "Maxixe" performed by Edson Lopes under CC BY 3.0.
