Letting Go Meditation
Preparation: Sit in a comfortable position. If you are sitting on the floor, I always recommend sitting up on a folded blanket – ideally, you want your knees to be just below your hips. This will help you sit for longer periods without the extra stress in your back.
When you are in a comfortable seated position, place your hands in a comfortable position. I generally recommend interlacing your fingers and placing them on your lap or just in front of your lap, or simply place one palm on top of the other. Ok, now close your eyes and settle into a relaxed posture. Find your breath moving through your nostrils and gentle keep your attention on it. Let your thoughts just move through your mind without giving them any attention. Relinquish your mind’s thoughts and images as they arise. If you get distracted, no matter; gently come back to your breath with an alert, yet relaxed awareness.
1. Now, when you feel settled, have a little think about something that happened to you today, or yesterday, that annoyed or frustrated you. Bring it up in your mind.
2. Now notice how it feels in your body. Where do you feel it the most?
3. Stay with it for a moment and be aware of these sensations like you are watching them from a distance.
4. Now, but instead of resisting it, as we normally tend to do, this time allow it to “run its course” without any resistance in you. Relax into it, no matter how pleasant or unpleasant.
5. Keep watching the sensations, the feelings the emotions swim around inside but do not engage in them, just watch them and relax into it.
6. Eventually, in a matter of minutes usually the intensity of it fades away into insignificance. How long does it last before it starts to fade away?
7. Continue to be free of resistance until most of the feelings have subsided.
8. When you are ready to come out of it, open your eyes and relax your posture.
If you feel up to the challenge you can always bring to mind another past event that brings up in you feelings of anger or frustration. And again repeat the process. Watching the sensations in the body, and then letting them run their course without any resistance until they eventually run out of stream.
After some time of practicing this technique you can apply it to gradually larger and larger events or circumstances where it brings up intense emotions, feelings and sensations in your body. This is a very powerful technique that can help us all to relieve any oppressed and suppressed emotions, in particular anger, fear and grief.
Walking Meditation
Walking mediation is suitable for wood element in particular because the liver energy loves to move. We can use slow and mindful walking as a way to train our minds and enhance our ability to be in the present moment.
There are four primary movements of the feet when we walk and these are the movements that we focus on when we practice walking mediation.
1. In standing, allow your arms to rest by your sides. Generally the gaze is diagonally downwards to the ground about 10 meters in front. This helps to reduce mental activity and it also reduces distractions in the field of vision.
2. Bend your knees slightly. Relaxed posture.
3. On the 1st movement of the foot - Start to slowly raise the right foot off the floor
4. On the 2nd movement – slowly glide the right foot forward through the air
5. On the 3rd movement – slowly place the right heel of the foot on the floor and start to shift your body weight forward onto the right foot
6. On the 4th movement – come to place the ball of the foot onto the ground and draw all your body weight forward onto the right foot
7. Now, we move to the left foot and go through the 1-4 movements again on this foot.
8. The challenge of this meditation is to remain completely aware of every one of the 4 movements without getting distracted or rushing through it.
Try practicing this for at least 5 minutes and work your way up to 10 minutes per session. This meditation is a great complement to other meditational practices because it develops focus, concentration and mindfulness.