Day 9: Mindfulness of the Body
Jack: In recent days, you’ve been practicing how to bring a mindful attention to your home base of the breath. For the next four sessions, we'll continue with the breath as a primary anchor but also widen the experience of mindfulness by exploring more fully the realm of sensations in the body in a direct, non- judgmental way. For many people, one of the first insights at this point in the mindfulness daily program is realizing how rarely they're aware of what’s happening inside their bodies. A grade school teacher asked her class what they thought was the purpose of the body. Their response, to carry their head around. In our culture where we spend an average of eight hours a day on a screen, our focus and sometimes addiction to the virtual world means we're not usually aware of body sensations.

Yet even though we're not usually aware of it, every one of our experiences whether it’s love or hurt, anger, thinking, an addictive behavior, is fueled by physical sensations. When you're angry with a colleague for not doing his or her share of work, that anger is arising along with the sensations in the body. You might feel burning, tightening, maybe a swell of energy that initially feels good but becomes uncomfortable, unpleasant. On the other hand, when you’re attracted to someone, you’re responding to the pleasant sensations: the lightness of joy or delight, a swelling of the heart that you experience when you think of that person or are near them. When we’re not mindful of what’s going on in our bodies, we can be driven by these sensations rather than having the freedom to pause and make wise choices.

With mindfulness, when we feel the burn of anger, we can remain present with it rather than lash out. When we feel the pleasurable rush of dopamine in romance, we might mindfully notice it rather than obsessively pursuing the object of our desire. We’re conditioned to pull away from unpleasant sensations and try to hold on to pleasant ones. This means we’re continually reacting with grasping or pushing away. With mindfulness, we learn to stay present with whatever sensations we’re experiencing just letting them rise and pass like the breath. However, remaining present with strong sensations such as anger, anxiety, pain, or craving is not so easy, especially if we’ve experienced intense or traumatic physical or emotional pain. We want to run away, numb out, somehow avoid the sensations.

A cartoon I like shows two dogs meditating. One saying, “I’ve found the real challenge in mediation is learning to stay.” And so it is. As we learn to simply remain present with sensations, we not only free ourselves from the old patterns of reactivity. We also receive the gifts of an embodied life. One master when asked why he meditated responded, “So that when I walk from here to the side of the road.” Our body lives in the present moment. When we’re in touch with our body, we’re here available for life. The key to wakefully inhabiting our bodies is to fully experience sensations just as they are with a friendly attitude. You’re coming into a relationship with the most immediate, direct expression of this mysterious life.

So, let’s explore this together. Please allow yourself to settle into a comfortable seated position. Take a few full breaths. And then, allow your breath to be in its natural rhythm. Take the first moments to collect your attention with the breath. Relax with the inflow and outflow. Feeling the breath with a calm, clear attention. Now, with your eyes still closed, raise one hand up in front of you in the air and begin moving it slowly from side to side at a distance of about a foot. As you do this, feel the sensations from the inside out. Let go of all ideas of what the hand looks like and directly experience the energy, aliveness, tingling, pressure, warmth or cool, hard, or soft. The direct experience of this hand. Now, gently rest your hand down and bring the same attention to your other hand, the one that’s been resting in your lap. And sense both hands now as a field of aliveness.

Feeling the hands from inside out.

Is there any boundary that lets you know where your hands end? Can you imagine and sense the sensations you experience floating in the space of awareness? Continue to receive these sensations feeling them from the inside out. Just as a cup is filled with water, this body is filled with awareness. Now, shift your attention to your feet, and see if you can sense the same edgeless dance of energy there. And now, let yourself feel this energetic aliveness, the tingling and warmth and cool and pressure. Feel the legs. Sense it in your pelvis and your torso. Your arms. Your neck, and head, and face. Rest in mindful presence feeling the whole energetic aliveness of the body. And finally, bring your attention back to your primary anchor of the breath. Enjoy feeling the breath from the inside out. An intimate, receptive presence of each breath.

Or if you’ve had difficulty with the breath as an anchor, you might rest your attention in the sensation of the hands or the feet. Or for some, you might find it helpful to feel both the breath and the sensation in the hands. Just like the breath, sensations in the body can serve as a powerful anchor for presence, a home base, that you can return to again and again. To deepen mindfulness of the body as you move through the day, you might periodically pause. Feel your breath. And then along with breathing, sense your hands from the inside out. This bodily awareness can help you be more present in any activity and better handle any situation you find yourself facing.
© Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
Reprinted by permission.