This is a primary practice I use throughout the day. I find it quite natural and beneficial, and wish to share it with others. A few benefits are detailed below after the practice instructions.
Feel free to contact me with any comments or questions.
Sitting practice
- Put the body into a comfortable, relaxed and alert sitting posture that is aligned with gravity.
- Beginning at the top of the head and going down the body, notice any tension and relax it.
- Once you reach the bottom, begin lightly observing the whole body experience all at once and relaxing tension anywhere that it is noticed.
- Expand this practice to include noticing and relaxing tension and disturbance anywhere within the experience of body and mind.
- Continuously observe and relax any tension or disturbance throughout all experience.
Walking practice
- Begin walking at a comfortable and relaxed pace.
- As you walk, notice the sensations related to movement.
- Footfalls, legs moving, arms swinging, clothing touching the body, the air moving across the hands and fingers, etc.
- Using the sensations of movement as an aid, relax any tension that is noticed that gets in the way of natural, relaxed movement.
- Expand this practice to include noticing and relaxing any tension within the experience of the whole body.
- Expand the practice to include relaxing any tension experienced within the body, as well as anywhere else in the experience.
- Continuously notice and relax tension throughout all experience.
Benefits
- Lowers tension and develops familiarity around how to relax. Health benefits associated with relaxation happen naturally.
- Decreases tendencies toward reactivity (especially during the meditation practice).
- Develops seclusion of mind that is not reliant on external stimulus or perceived surroundings.
- Leads naturally to emptiness and non-abiding without doing. This practice is the ceasing of doing.
- Develops tranquility and mindfulness in a balanced way.
- First the more gross (and easier to stay with) phenomena related to the body/touch experience are observed. As tranquility and mindfulness sharpen, the rest of the senses, and the mental experience begin to integrate seamlessly into the practice.
- Can lead into jhana.
Dharma roots
This practice has ties to these aspects of Dharma
- The four noble truths:
- Noticing and understanding stress.
- Noticing what causes stress.
- Directly experiencing the release and ceasing of stress.
- Noticing how the 8 fold path enables and empowers us to release and experience the ceasing of stress.
- The 5 aggregates subject to clinging can be clearly observed.
- Body/touch, and the other body senses
- Feeling tone
- Labeling and conceptualization
- Volitions and impulses
- Consciousness that divides the world into objects
- The 6 sense organs, their objects and the consciousnesses related to them can be clearly observed.
- Touching, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and mind.
- The release of daratha/disturbance that is the theme throughout the descent into emptiness in MN 121 central to this practice.
- The transient, unsatisfactory, not-self, conditional, and disturbing aspects of how delusion acts in relation to experience are clearly observable.