The Vastness of the Body
La vastedad del cuerpo
Rest in the wide field of bodily sensation and breath, letting tension and busy thoughts soften without forcing them.
The Vastness of the Body
Just bring your attention,
awareness, or whatever you want to call it.
It's just the knowing of sensation,
experience of body, skin, flesh.
It's known directly as this very hazy, buzzy, tingling, moving experience
that can be explored with a sense of very gentle focus.
And so the body is always experienced.
In the waking state, there is always an experience of sensation,
just like there's always the experience of sound and sight.
Where attention goes
Then what we call attention moves around.
This kind of focus is very often involved in spinning around in thoughts,
focused in the activity of the mind.
And that's fine.
Trying to stop that is an impossibility.
The attempt of stopping that feeds it.
So what can happen is just recognizing that there's a lot more happening.
The focusing on thoughts is the problem, let's say.
It's not about what the thoughts are doing or what's happening in the mind.
And so the antidote is recognizing there's a lot of sensation experience happening,
a lot of sounds and colors and shapes, even with eyes closed.
And the breath can be this anchor of constant sensation.
Wide sensation
And if we're very attuned to the sensations,
we might even notice the pulsing of the heart can be felt in the skin.
A subtle but wide pulsing,
in congruence with the breathing.
Just notice this wide experience of sensation,
not focused on a particular sensation at first.
Just all skin, all body, all breathing.
It is almost inseparable or indistinguishable from the space around.
Noticing tension
And if there's an experience of tension,
let it remain.
Try to avoid the immediate response of trying to release.
So if there's tension in the back or the shoulders,
let it remain and don't try to release it.
Just recognizing, noticing what's happening with
feet, ankles,
knees,
hips,
lower back, belly, chest,
upper chest, shoulders.
Do not try to release anything. Just notice.
Elbows, wrists,
hands,
neck,
back of the neck,
lower back of the neck,
upper back of the neck,
that meeting with the skull,
throat.
Notice any tension in the tongue,
in the eyes,
the back of the eyes.
Breathing and release
Now, as everything is noticed, as the breathing continues,
as the inhale comes,
let it widen the experience of sensation,
wide and soft, beyond the apparent boundaries of the skin and the body.
Let the inhale go upwards into the neck,
into the throat, the back of the eyes,
through the tongue.
In the exhale, now invite deep release, deep relaxation,
letting the body naturally release and relax fully in the exhale.
Gently inflating like a somatic balloon in the inhale.
Fully relaxing in the exhale at every level:
the head, eyes,
throat,
shoulders, arms,
belly.
Everything is floating.
Everything is suspended in a perfect balance.
Held in balance
A body in a room,
on a chair,
on a couch,
perfect balance,
completely contained and held.
A beautiful force holding it into the chair,
the vast pressure of air containing it,
allowing an easy inhale.
The perfect balance,
the beautiful cosmic planet revolving, perfect balance,
everything moving.
Every cell,
every neuron firing,
every sound,
every air molecule,
every sensation,
every perception,
every thought,
everything around us vibrating, alive.
Vast, infinite.
The vastness of experience and this vastness of the infinite mystery of this world,
this creation,
the beauty of the intricacy of all perception.
All sensations and reverberation of the skin,
sounds,
such richness.
Always present,
always new and alive.
The thinness of thought
And in that context, in that openness,
the knowing of that reality,
what the mind is doing is so limited.
Just a thin veil of imagination and interpretation.
Like a very distant humming,
a distant radio or TV that we can barely hear or see.
When there is a full immersion with reality,
the reality of thoughts is so thin.
No need to fight with it, control it.
It can just be ignored and forgotten.
Keep letting the inhale and the exhale bring forward
the experience of sensation and world,
perception,
sounds,
colors,
shapes.
Notice how there is no end to it.
And at any moment that you notice the mind becoming a center of attention,
don't try to stop it, change it, or control it.
Let's bring that intimacy with the vastness of the body and sensations and perception.
Let the mind become distant and narrow in contrast.
Letting tension undo itself
And the same with the tensions in the body.
Instead of trying to undo them,
let the vastness of the sensations and the movement of breathing
do the massaging and releasing on its own.
It's the focus on small and narrow aspects of experience that creates the tension.
And the experience is always vast.
The vastness, the infinity, is always here.
It's beyond dimensions, prior to them.