CHAPTER SEVEN

MEDITATION FOR BODY AWARENESS

The Importance of Body Awareness

We carry our bodies around with us from the cradle to the grave. For much of the time, we are unaware of them unless they are giving us trouble. This is reasonable enough; the mind should be free to concentrate upon other things. However, this lack of body awareness means that the tensions discussed in the previous chapter can all too often creep up on us unawares. Children and adults alike may get out of bed in the morning in a rested and relaxed state, but by the evening be like coiled watchsprings, irritable and irritating, yet without any real awareness of when and how relaxation gave way to non-relaxation.

Tensions can even develop during pleasurable activities. If you are a car driver, demonstrate this to yourself by trying a simple little experiment. Without relaxing your attention on the road ahead, check your shoulder, neck and back muscles from time to time. The likelihood is that you will find them tense. Relax them, then try again a little later. Once more, you are likely to find they have tensed up. None of this tension is necessary in order to drive the car. Now check which muscles really do need to be involved.

Unless you are engaged in a difficult manoeuvre, often it is only those of the hands, the lower arms and the feet.

Try the same exercise when sitting at your desk, or when engaged in some domestic chore, even when talking to others – particularly if they are people you don’t know well or with whom you feel rather uneasy. Notice the tension. If it isn’t in the shoulders and the neck, check the eye muscles, the muscles of the forehead and scalp, the hands, the stomach and the knees. Again, in many cases you will find that unnecessary strain has unconsciously been allowed to build up.

Body awareness prevents this strain from happening, and the best time to learn body awareness is in childhood. A good exercise to use with children is to ask them to sweep their awareness through their bodies starting with the feet. This technique is detailed in the following exercise. Young children also like to play games which involve moving awareness around the body in response to instructions from a partner.

EXERCISE 9: Experiencing Body Awareness

Ask the children to shut their eyes, then touch each child lightly on the backs of the hands, the face and the arms with a variety of different objects (a feather, the bristles of a toothbrush, a piece of apple, a leaf or flower, a glass bottle, a piece of material and so on). Then ask them to identify the object which is doing the touching, and the area that is being touched. Ask them to be aware of the different sensations involved. If these sensations can be named, so much the better, but this is not essential – the purpose of the exercise is to increase body awareness rather than to test vocabulary.

Next ask the children to put their awareness in different parts of the body as called out by you. (‘Be aware of your left knee, now the middle finger of your right hand, now your nose, now your mouth, now your toes . . .’) If this proves difficult, the children can be asked to move the part of the body concerned each time you call it out.

Finally, ask the children to allow their awareness to move around the body, starting either with the feet and moving upwards, or with the head and moving downwards. You can extend the game by trying to ‘guess’ in which part of the body the child is placing his or her awareness (slight involuntary movements often give the necessary clues).

Children can be helped to feel the difference between tension and relaxation by being asked to tense the muscles at each of the points you mention, and then to let the tension go. Few of them ever have any real difficulty with this.

Body Awareness and Consciousness

A valuable side-effect of the last exercise is that from an early age children can be helped to see that consciousness does not live in only one part of the body. Usually when Westerners are asked where their consciousness is, they reply that it is in the head, or just behind the eyes. This is in fact pure habit. In the East, people are often more likely to point to the pit of their stomach, the solar plexus, the place where emotions are most keenly felt, and where we have the highest concentration of nerves in the body after the brain.

The truth is that consciousness is not located exclusively in any one part of our anatomy. Certainly the brain is involved in consciousness, but this doesn’t mean that consciousness resides inside the brain. If we cut a finger, the consciousness of pain is felt in the finger, not inside the head. The reason we imagine we live in our heads or just behind the eyes, is that under normal circumstances visual sensations are the ones of which we are most readily aware.

Read this paragraph, then try for yourself the following experiment. Close your eyes, and ask yourself where your awareness happens to be now. Nine people out of ten will answer that it is in the sensations felt by their closed eyelids. This experiment demonstrates two things. Firstly, you don’t ‘live’ behind your eyes – you’ve just proved that by moving your awareness to a place in front of your eyes, namely to your eyelids. And secondly, you’ve demonstrated how fixated most of us are on the sensations around our eyes. Even when they are closed, our awareness lingers around the sensations closest to them.

Ask the children where they feel themselves to ‘live’ within their bodies. If they say in their heads or behind their eyes, ask them to try the experiment I’ve just described. When their consciousness has moved into their eyelids, ask them to move it further – to the tip of the nose, for example, then down to the lips, to the throat as they swallow, to the trunk as they breathe in and out, to the backs of their thighs resting against the chair on which they are sitting, to the soles of their feet touching the ground. If they have difficulty with the exercise, ask them to place their finger on the parts of the body as they are mentioned.

EXERCISE 10: Co-ordinated Movement

Another valuable exercise in body awareness for children is to practise co-ordinated movement. Ask them to hold their hands in front of their chests, palms facing towards each other and about six inches apart. Now tell them to move their hands further and further apart, while trying to remain aware of both hands, as if they were connected together by invisible cords. Then get them to bring the hands together once more, and take them apart again. Ask the children now to be aware of the parts of the body involved in this movement – the lower and upper arms, and the shoulders.

Now ask them to bend forward and touch the floor, putting their awareness in their fingers as they reach out towards the ground. Then repeat the exercise, but this time with the awareness in the small of the back, and with the arms, hands and fingers hanging loose, simply obeying the force of gravity.

Avoiding Physical Strains

In addition to building body awareness, the previous exercise is a wonderful way of avoiding back strains later in life. All too often when we are told in childhood to touch our toes, our awareness goes straight to the sensation of reaching downwards with the fingertips, and the back (from where the movement actually comes) is ignored completely. The usual result is that the back tenses up, the last thing we want to happen as tension is the major cause of back problems later in life. If the awareness is placed in the back, however, and the arms, hands and fingers allowed simply to dangle in front of the body, the feeling is quite different. The back is much more relaxed, and the exercise becomes much easier. Try it for yourself. If you suffer from back ache, it’s one of the best ways of re-educating your mind to be more aware of, and much kinder towards, the muscles and ligaments upon which our upright posture depends, and which all too often begin to give us trouble as we grow older.

Kinhin

In Zen Buddhism, there is a walking meditation called kinhin. In kinhin, the meditator practises what might be called stillness in movement. Each foot is lifted slowly and with infinite precision, and placed exactly the same distance ahead (usually about four inches), and the weight allowed to flow evenly forward. There is nothing forced or jerky or unbalanced about any aspect of the movement. The meditator is literally meditating upon each minute shift in position by the body. For him or her, the body is a complete unit rather than a set of separate, uncoordinated parts, and the mind is at one with the body, rather than distracted by its own thoughts. The moment the concentration wavers and the meditator loses this mind-body connection, the inevitable result is a stumble and a loss of physical balance.

Chrissy

Chrissy, a young teenager who had found great difficulty in keeping still during sitting meditation, took to kinhin at once. It was noticeable how balanced her body became as she moved slowly forward; there was no hesitation and no wobbling, an indication of the depth of her concentration. After the session, she stayed behind to talk about her experience, explaining that her meditation had ‘included all of me, as if my mind was moving physically with my body’. She was fortunate in having a long straight path in her garden at home which was ideal for kinhin, and she took to using it for her meditation, retreating to the upstairs landing on wet days. In addition to helping steady her mind, she found that kinhin made her more aware of her body throughout the day, thus improving her posture and helping her feel more confident about the way she looked.

In the following exercise, the children are performing a version of kinhin. In doing so, they are carrying their body awareness into the movements of everyday life, and helping not only to maintain a state of relaxation, but also to still and focus the mind. This exercise cannot be practised too often.

MEDITATION 4: Moving with Awareness

If you are working with a group of children, and have a large room in which to operate, ask them to move round as softly and gently as they can, as if they were treading on eggshells, or stalking someone through the woods and avoiding stepping on twigs. Tell them to be aware of each movement they make – the thigh muscle as they lift the back leg and move it forward, the foot as it comes to the ground, the trunk as it advances in space, their hands and arms as they help maintain balance, and so on.

Self-Awareness

A development of body awareness is self-awareness. This is more subtle, and is often only suitable for older children, but the aim is to be aware not just of bodily movements, but of the strange, abstract, mysterious ‘self’ that lies behind them.

In the next exercise, the children carry out a task with their attention centred all the time upon a part of their upper body, and to be aware at the same time of the person to whom it belongs. Obviously the task you choose for them must be such that they can carry it out in perfect physical safety, but the idea of centring upon a particular part of the body will already be familiar from previous exercises.

MEDITATION 5: Self-remembering

Choose a simple activity such as a walk around a garden or a playing field, which can be done individually and in silence. Ask the children to focus upon their left arms (or their right arms if they are left-handed), and explain the activity as follows:

• This is a simple game in which you have to see if you can carry out a task while keeping your attention focused upon your left arm. The task is to walk around the playing field, remembering your left arm all the time. Be conscious of its movement as you walk, of how the muscles feel, of whether it is hot or cold, of how it relates to the rest of your body. If you forget your left arm, bring your attention gently back to it.

At the same time, be aware of the person to whom the arm belongs. Be aware of the person who moves this arm, who feels the sensations within it, who can clasp or unclasp the fingers, who can use it to touch things, who can make it obey his or her wishes. Try to keep this awareness at all times.

The exercise should only take a few minutes if you decide to use it with younger children, but with those who are older it can go on for a quarter of an hour or more.

Follow-up

The exercise should be repeated on a number of occasions, varying the part of the body which the children are remembering (legs and arms are best, as they are the most involved in movement). You can also vary the task, so that it includes movements other than walking.

Discuss with the children any difficulties they may have had, and if they found that their self-remembering was easier when they were focusing upon one part of the body rather than another, or when engaged in one task rather than in others. If it was, they may be able to suggest a reason, thus showing an increasing readiness to explore their experience of living in and with their own bodies.

More Advanced Self-remembering

At its deepest level, self-remembering is being aware of the fact that we are conscious, that we are always the agent in our experiences of the world. There is no need to try to explain this rather difficult concept to younger children. It is more important for them simply to experience it, and thus to allow this level of consciousness to develop of itself, than for them to become lost in attempts to talk about it.

The next exercise works at this deeper level. It is similar to the last one in that the children are asked to engage in a simple, safe task such as walking around a garden or a school playing field, but this time their remembering is directed somewhat differently.

MEDITATION 6: Inclusive Self-remembering

Introduce the activity as follows:

• We’re going to try a game similar to the one in which we concentrated upon a part of the body, but this time, as you walk around, I would like you to repeat quietly to yourself, ‘I am walking’, ‘I am seeing or hearing . . .’ whatever it is you are seeing or hearing etc. If thoughts come into your mind, don’t follow them, just tell yourself, ‘I am thinking’. If you feel an emotion of any kind, tell yourself, ‘I am feeling . . .’ whatever it is you are feeling.

When the exercise is finished, the children will want to share their experiences with you. After you have listened to them, ask simply, ‘Who is this “I” who was experiencing all the things you have just been talking about?’ Don’t press for an answer (which in any case is always difficult to put into words). The question itself will be enough to set the children wondering.

After pondering the question ‘Who is this I?’, one group of adolescents quickly decided it was nothing to do with their names, their relationships, their appearances or even their personalities and the things they liked and disliked. They concluded it was best described by such things as ‘just being alive’, ‘an experience of being’, ‘knowing I’m here’, ‘happiness, sadness, whatever I’m feeling at this moment’, ‘just mind’, and ‘nothing in particular’. It was clear they had made a good start, and would continue to ponder the question.

The Nature of Things

As we grow older, we take not only the outside world and the business of living, but also the individual who is doing this living, very much for granted. We become our own habit. We stop asking questions about ourselves, our origins, our destiny, and about the strange fact that we should exist at all. The purpose of the following exercise is to help the children not only to keep alive their wonder at themselves, but to help them (if they wish) to go deeper in their exploration of this wonder.

The next exercise continues and extends the philosophical theme of the previous exercise and introduces the concept of things ceasing to be themselves. The exercise is a valuable adjunct to formal meditation in that once again it takes the children deeply into the nature of ‘things’. Meditation helps the mind to penetrate into its own nature and into the whole experience of what it is to be alive. If we are not to remain strangers in the world, never seeing below the surface of things, we need to escape from a stereotyped, restricted way of looking at and understanding our surroundings. Children experience life with a freshness and a sense of novelty which brings with it mystery, excitement and limitless possibilities. If we can help them to retain this freshness, rather than smothering it with the notion that things are merely what they seem, and that there is only one ‘correct’ way of looking at the world, then they will continue to have access to the richness and originality of thinking that underlies not only creativity, but also that curiosity and excitement which is essential to a joy and delight in living.

EXERCISE 11: When Do Things Cease to
Be Themselves?

This exercise can be presented theoretically, but it gains a great deal if it takes the form of a practical demonstration. Show the class an object that can be dismantled, piece by piece. It may be a model aircraft or car, or a box or a doll’s house that slots together, or something you have made specially for the purpose. Ask the children to name the object. Then begin to take it to pieces, asking them after each piece is removed whether it still continues to be the car, the house or the box that it was at the start. Many different opinions are likely to be given, but the children will gradually come to see that the car, for example, isn’t the wheels, or the engine, or the seats, or the doors, or the body, or any of the individual components. So what is a ‘car’? Does it really exist? Or is it simply a collection of separate objects, none of which is itself a car? By the same token, what is a table when we separate it into four legs and a top? What is a chair when we take it apart in the same way? What is a tune when we take away individual notes? What is a word when we take away individual letters? And so on.

What we are really doing with this exercise is showing that the whole is greater than the mere sums of the parts. By putting things together in a certain way, whether those things be wheels, table or chair legs, the notes of a piece of music or the letters in a word, we create something that is much more than the total we get when we add up a line of figures. But what is this ‘something’? Can it really be said to ‘exist’? And yet quite clearly it does. We can experience it, think about it and talk about it.

Finally, the children can apply the same exercise to themselves. Are we merely a collection of bits and pieces, arms, legs, brains, thoughts, stomachs and so on, or is there something more? If so, what is it? And when people change their moods, the way they look or the way they talk, are they the same people? Are the children the same people that they were last year, the year before that, or the years before they started school?

Questioning Oneself

There is another form of meditation which further extends exploration into the nature of things. It is suitable for older children, particularly adolescents.

It would be a mistake to introduce this self-questioning meditation before the other exercises we have detailed so far, as until the meditative practice is reasonably well established, children and adults alike can become distracted by the novelty of the technique, with the result that they not only fail to master the more basic meditative skills, but they also fail to get answers to their questions at anything other than the conscious level, and may finally come to reject the exercise as being of little use to them.

MEDITATION 7: Self-questioning

Explain to the children that self-questioning consists of using a question as the focus for meditation, repeating it on each breath (as with a mantra – see Chapter 4). The specific questions the children choose to ask are very much up to them. But generally, the questions should relate to their own being, rather than to external events. They may want to ask how they can help others more, or be better liked, or work harder, or find long-term goals, or where happiness lies, or (at the deepest level of all) ‘Who am I?’ Explain that the difference between this and the usual way in which we question ourselves is that:

• the mind is in a focused and concentrated meditative state

• a single question is used, and the mind is prevented from straying from it

• no attempt is made to answer the question consciously; in fact conscious attempts are distractions to be avoided

• the meditator waits patiently for the answer, without urgency or anxiety; of course he or she would like an answer, but if it fails to arise, no matter. The importance lies in the question itself, and in the meditator’s recognition that it is worth asking.

Explain that if an answer arises, they should note it, but not explore it. They should either go on asking the question, or return to the breathing or whatever focus of meditation you have asked them to use. It is only after the meditation is over that the answer should be taken up by the conscious mind, and examined for relevance. Also, tell them that if answers come they shouldn’t be accepted slavishly. They are simply food for thought.

Children often feel the need for direction and guidance, and self-questioning during meditation helps them realize they have a wise friend inside them who is always there and always ready to help. But the inner friend, like friends in the outside world, is not infallible. His or her answers must always be scrutinized by the conscious mind, which can then accept or reject them as the case may be.

It is interesting to speculate on where the answers that arise in meditations of this kind come from. Do they originate in creative, insightful levels of the meditator’s unconscious, or do they come from some source outside the mind? The answer depends largely upon one’s own belief system, and it is best to leave it at that.