Oakville Zen Meditation
Two-three minutes centering space
You don’t have to meditate formally to practice mindfulness-based awareness.
This short and easy “on-the-go” exercise will provide you an opportunity to:
1) Step-out from our autopilot behavior and ongoing mental agitation.
2) Reconnect and experience with the present moment, its content, your body and true surronding true surrounding genuine reality.
3) Reduce stress.
There are 3 steps to follow. They can be done in sequence1-2-3 or simply by picking one of your choice and another one during the next exercise.
1) Start with posture:
Adopt an erect and dignified posture, whatever sitting, standing, walking. Being still is better.
2) Focus on your breathing to be in the now and to anchor y our restless mind:
Notice the physical sensation of your abdomen moving outward during in breath and inward
during out breath. You may try to slow it down somewhat by prolonging little bit your expiration.
3) Practice awareness by asking to yourself: “ What am I experiencing right now”?
Through our consciousness we are experiencing concrete reality at 4 levels:
1) Where & what are my body sensations:
Our body is a perfect proxy of our conscious & subconscious mind.
By scanning your body from head to toes to seek and feel if there is tension, resistance,
tightness, pain, mild tremor, rapid heart rate.
The most frequent locations are: head (headache), neck, shoulders, back, abdomen.
2) What are my current thoughts and emotions?
Acknowledge them as simple mental noise. Do not push them away.
3) What Am I doing right now?
4) What my current environment is made of?
Space, sounds, color, temperature, people, time, events, current, etc.
After some practice, you will notice that all steps can be done within 2 to 3 min. during the day and even can be repeated.
This simple body-mind exercise will relax you by:
→Reconnecting to the genuine reality of the current moment whatever exciting, pleasant, unpleasant
or routine it is.
→Disconnecting from our:
Non-stop autopilot behavior.
Incessant activity of your restless mind.
Thank you.
