4

Resilience

. . . but do not become attached to it.

THE PRACTICE of embodied mindfulness takes us deep inside our innermost experience and initiates a process of softening or dissolving. Starting out from a place that both looks and feels to be very much like a solid, rocky mountain, we gradually realize that our true nature is more akin to water, constantly flowing and moving, spilling indiscreetly over its banks in rainy season, drying up when its source is not nurtured or replenished, making its eventual and natural way to the ocean, into which it merges, living out its destiny amid the tidal flows and surges of its new home, at some point evaporating and floating upward, where it recombines and recondenses with other droplets of water and forms a cloud that, when the climate and time are right, will relax and surrender its weight to the pull of gravity, drop back down to the earth, and begin its cycle of life all over again.

The illusion of solidity is undermined even further when we realize that our physical bodies are composed mostly of water. More than 80 percent of our cells, our tissues, our bones, and our organs are made up of water, and some anatomists have even gone so far as to wryly define human beings as a strategy on the part of water to transport itself from place to place. Because water is our most predominant element, it is the qualities of water that best describe our innermost essence and sense of self. When we truly are able to align the physical body and then surrender its weight to the pull of gravity, we begin to experience ourselves as phenomena of motion and flow, constantly shifting our shape to conform to the container or situation in which we find ourselves, resiliency allowing the tidal movements of our life force to ebb and flow at will, to crash upon the beach of our lives in a series of waves, and to interact with whatever we find there.

Even when the body is at rest, we can feel the current of the life force passing resiliently through us like a river of sensations, bubbling, flowing freely with no blockage or restrictions, dancing through our tissues.

As every high school chemistry student knows (and as every child is taught and admonished by his or her parents), water is also an extremely effective medium through which electrical impulses can freely travel and transmit their charges. The water of our bodies is the place where the palpable elements of our physical form interact with the mysterious, invisible current of our life force. Like electricity moving through water, the flows and impulses of our life energy charge through the watery medium of our bodies, animating our physical form with the recognizable characteristics of human life. The inner landscape of our physical, emotional, mental, and even spiritual lives has little to do with images of hardened rocks and high mountains. We are much more like pools and swamps in which life explodes and frogs play.

If we observe a human cell under a microscope, our connection to the flowing nature of water becomes even more apparent. The individual cell dances and moves. It gyrates and shimmies. Like the single-celled amoeba, it expands and contracts in an endless cycle of pulsation, shifting the contours of its shape and extending itself outward only to contract again back down into itself. Our cells are like dancers at a rave, moving without stopping all through the night, responding to the electronic beat of the music, taking occasional water and food for energy. In the case of our cells, the beat is provided by the electrical impulses of our life force, which continually animate the cell, causing it unendingly to dance and move. It is a beat that never stops as long as we are alive.

We can actually feel this watery, cellular dance through paying attention to the minute tingle of sensations that exist on all parts of our body. Sometimes these sensations are consistent and discreet in their appearance. Like lights flickering on and off in a distant city, they band together into a uniform shimmer whose greater mass gently hums and vibrates. At other times, the dance sets up a chain reaction of motion that, like a wave moving through water, can affect and pass right through the surrounding cells and tissues, inviting them to participate and respond in the larger surge of motion. It is an invitation that they can’t refuse. Like flocks of thousands of starlings coming together at sunset in endless, dazzling variations of group massings and dissolvings, the ebbs and flows of the life force pass from one cell to the next, binding them all together in unique patterns of fluid motion whose overall form is constantly changing and shifting from moment to moment. To a body that is aligned and relaxed, these surges can be easily experienced and identified as flows of sensation that organically build and subside as they move through different parts of the body. Sometimes these surges are primarily physical in their form. Other times they are permeated with rich feelings and emotions. Our physical health and emotional wellbeing are dependent on our ability to recognize these internal motions and allow them to pass freely through the conduit of our bodies with as little interference as possible. Anatomists and biologists will argue endlessly over the definition of life. All of them will agree, however, that observable, felt, and resilient motion is a primary characteristic of this mystery that they are attempting to define.

Resilience, the allowance of free and unhindered motion that wants to pass through the medium of the body, is the third and final leg of the stool that forms the posture of meditation. First, we work to align the physical body. Then we allow it to surrender its weight to the pull of gravity. Finally, we realize that the body needs constantly to move in natural and resilient patterns of motion if the alignment and relaxation that we have worked so hard to establish are going to extend themselves over time into the actions and movements of our life. Holding still is antithetical to the condition of relaxation. If we are going to sustain the grace of relaxation over an extended period of time, the body must continually move and respond. The current of the life force needs to pass through the vessel of the body as effortlessly and languorously as ocean water lapping back and forth through a thick bed of sea kelp. To the degree that this current can continue to pass freely through the body, we feel sensations, hear sounds, and see the objects of vision without the distorting overlay of the dust of the mind that separates us from the immediacy of experience through its continual commentaries about that experience. If the free and organic movement of that current becomes blocked, however, holding and tension are re-created in the body. Our bodies become brittle, the awareness of sensations becomes numbed, and the internal monologue of the mind becomes activated.

The importance of resilience to the practice of mindfulness cannot be overemphasized. It is what allows us to remain mindfully relaxed in the middle of the ongoing parade of visual, auditory, and tactile appearances with which our conscious mind is continually bombarded. Resilience enables us to take the calm and centered awareness that is the natural fruit of extended practice out into the movements and tasks of our everyday lives. Through resilience, the natural passage of our lives can become the stuff of our practice. Without resilience, the body will lose its relaxation and will begin instead to react to the objects and events that present themselves in our sensory fields. We see something that we like, and we attach ourselves to that vision, even though it may be fading before our eyes. We feel something that we enjoy, and we attempt to preserve the feeling forever, even though we know that sensations are constantly changing and that any attempt to preserve anything is futile. We hear a noise that displeases us, and we brace our body in an attempt to block it from our awareness.

If we wish to remain mindful over a succession of moments, we need to let go of our attachments to any part of the passing show of appearances to which we are constantly exposed. Attachments, be they holding something close to us or pushing something else away, cause holding and tension in the body and the mind. Both our bodily ease and our mindful presence suffer. Attachments of any kind block the flow of life energy that could otherwise be felt to circulate freely through the body. When this feeling energy is free to move in spontaneous, organic, and resilient patterns of motion, we stay naturally present and mindful. As soon as we attach ourselves to any aspect of our experience, any small bubble in the ongoing stream, we inhibit the free flow of sensations, reintroduce stillness back into our bodies, and inevitably generate involuntary thought, which once again obscures the clear and deep surface of the mirror of our being.

A mirror never hankers after a reflected image once it has passed. It simply moves on to the next image, and then the next one and the next one after that. If we can emulate the mirror and not hold on to any object, image, or event, but simply remain relaxed and aware of whatever is set in front of us in this very moment, then our condition of mindfulness remains steady, and we are not lured away from the brightness of life into the dark caverns of our involuntary thoughts. An object appears, and it passes away just as quickly. Everything is in motion. We don’t have to brace ourselves or hold on to anything. If we, too, can encourage softly resilient motion to enter into our bodies, then our mirrorlike ability to remain mindful is not sullied. Paradoxically, we remain steady in our mindfulness through surrendering to the constant, subtle, resilient motions that can be felt to animate our bodies. If we brace ourselves against this impulse to move, we become like still photographs, a moment frozen in time and removed from the very alive and cinematic current of our lives.

What is being suggested here is nothing less than turning yourself into that most elusive of mechanisms, a perpetual-motion machine. In truth, it is just an acknowledgment of what you already are. Every moment of every day—from the very first moment of your conception deep inside your mother’s womb, through your transition into independent life and the drawing in of your first inhalation, down through all your days and nights until you exhale one last time—you are in motion. Your cells spin and dance, even when you lie down to take your rest and sleep. The movement of your blood—now carrying oxygen to distant cells, now removing gaseous waste back to your lungs, where it can be expelled—is a twenty-four-hour-a-day assembly line. It never shuts down. The urgency to breathe never leaves you for a moment. Your body expands and contracts continuously as you breathe. To be alive is to move. The only time that your body can become truly still is in the minutes and hours after your last and final exhalation, when the rigor mortis associated with death sets in.

One of the great tragedies of spiritual practice is that stillness is presented and promoted as an ultimate value without a thorough examination of what stillness within a spiritual context might actually mean and refer to. Certainly, the mind needs to be trained so that the incessant parade of unwilled thoughts can be stilled and quieted. The body, too, needs to be trained and explored so that the pressures and blockages that cry out for release (and that cause a constant shuffle of nervous tics and habits) can be effectively relieved, enabling the current of the life force once again to move freely, softly, and gently through. Both of these conditions, however, are realized through allowing subtle, resilient motion to pass through the body in an unending, gentle stream of energetic waves and pulses. If that urgency to move, and to allow the current of the life force to pass through the body, is restricted and contained, the mind becomes agitated and excited and the body becomes pained and eventually numbed.

Within a spiritual context, stillness of the body refers to a condition not of rigidity but of quiescence and can best be experienced through the organic, resilient movements that occur naturally within and through a body that is deeply relaxed. Quiescence appears as the middle ground of natural resilient motion that exists between the extremes of holding the body rigidly on the one hand and indulging in extraneous motions and nervous tics (the rapping of pencils on desks, the twiddling of thumbs, the incessant tapping of feet) on the other. Through these very subtle and natural movements, the mind calms down and becomes still. The relaxation of the body is like the opening up of a dam that has long kept the free flow of water contained. The water now is able to move and flow. The nervous tics and habits of the body can all now subside, as you no longer have to brace yourself against the urgency to move.

The resilient motions that want to occur in our bodies range from the most dramatic physical expressions, during which the physical body is moved through space, to the most subtle, internal movements and surges of the river of sensations that animates our bodies. These deeply subtle movements that occur through our allowing the current of the life force to ebb and flow at will can rarely be seen, but they can certainly be felt. To the degree that the physical body moves with grace and coordination and the sensations of the energetic body flow freely through, the mind stays as clear as a receptive mirror, and the condition of mindfulness manifests naturally and spontaneously. The involuntary monologue of the mind simply withers in the presence of this quality of natural, resilient motion, which dissolves the solid ground on which the mind’s thoughts and fantasies can establish and attach themselves. Stillness of the body is the breeding ground for involuntary thinking. Remove the stillness, and the mind becomes stilled. It’s as though the aspect of mind that tends to lose itself in involuntary thought were incapable of hitting a moving target.

The problem, of course, is that we live in a culture that encourages us to stand and sit still, not to move or express ourselves, not to contact, let alone yield to, the current of the life force that wants to race through our bodies, creating spontaneous motions and expressions, allowing us access to the full, rich spectrum of human experience. Instead, we are trained to hold our bodies still, to limit the broad range of playful gestures and movements that might naturally want to occur, and to conform to a quality of cultural consciousness that itself is dependent on this very stilling of our urgency to move and respond. Our culture teaches us to become formidable and solid bulwarks, poured-concrete footings that create breakwaters around which the swirling waters of life need to alter their natural course and pattern of flow.

Although breakwaters perform an important and appropriate function in certain areas of our lives, they are not the only way in which it is valuable to interact with these waters. If we dig our heels in and resist the flowing nature of life’s energies, forcing them constantly to submit to our design and pass around rather than right through ourselves, we may create a temporary illusion of control over the powerful forces of nature, but it is an illusion nonetheless and one that will create serious problems as we move through life. If we fight with the current of the life force (which is inherently so much more powerful than we as individual bodies could ever be), we will ultimately end up estranging and separating ourselves from the very source that nurtures us in the first place. Is it any wonder, then, that the impulse to brace ourselves against the deepest expression of our nature can only result in physical impoverishment and mental limitation? The body becomes numbed and painful in its losing battle to contain the expressive impulses of the life force, while the mind is not allowed to connect with its deepest possibilities and instead must content itself with the ongoing involuntary monologue, which becomes profoundly boring within ten minutes of waking in the morning.

To practice mindfulness effectively, we need to be willing to risk being fully alive and responsive, even when that aliveness and responsibility trigger expressions, gestures, and bodily movements that may not conform with the learned, and deeply held, habits and patterns of behavior that have been accepted as normal within the world in which we live. By embracing the lived expression of the body as the foundational experience on which the practice of mindfulness can be built, we may find ourselves grappling with uncomfortable dilemmas. Often the grains of nature and culture are at cross-purposes to each other, and we may be forced to choose which of these grains we ultimately wish to align ourselves with. If we choose to align ourselves with the grain of nature, we are eventually led very deeply into the mystery and lived experience of our bodily presence.

Gradually, we come to realize that to live gracefully as a human, we need to acknowledge the greater sea of gravity in which we pass our lives and to align ourselves in such a way that the energy field of our body relates in a harmonious way to the greater energy field of the earth’s gravity. We next come to realize that our birthright on this planet is to live in this body in as relaxed a condition as is possible and appropriate. Only in such a relaxed condition can we feel the free flow of the life force coursing vibrantly through our body. Only in such a relaxed condition can our minds function in their natural capacity as mindful mirrors, free from the tendency to react to anything and everything that comes before them. And if we truly want to nourish this condition of relaxation, sustaining it over time, we will become aware that the body must learn to yield to its impulse to move. Energetic flows of sensation build in the body, and we learn to allow them to pass through us without having to brace ourselves against them. Chills and a sense of rapture naturally arise, passing through and over our body in waves of visible bumps, like geese migrating south for the winter. We learn that these energetic flows, that the very sensations of the body itself, are not our enemy, as certain philosophies and even religions would have us believe. As we learn to open our body to allow these surges and subtle waves of sensation to pass through our physical frame, we also open a door that grants us access to deeper and deeper awarenesses of self. If we wish to maintain our relaxation, we realize that we need to learn how to let the body move through physical space with coordination and grace. Internally, we experience the resilient motions of our body’s sensations. Externally, we feel the body moving through space as though we were dancers on a stage.

We are, every one of us, dancers on the stage of life. Whether we subscribe to this notion or not, it is true. How we move is a direct reflection of how and who we are. Many of us unfortunately choose to blunder our way through the dance steps of our lives, tripping over our own feet and inadvertently stepping on the feet of others as we go. Some of us withdraw like wallflowers into the corners, hoping that no one will frighten us by seeking us out and inviting us to dance. But if life is a dance, why not get good at it? Why not approach this dance as any other art form, practicing the motions and movements, gradually bringing ever greater refinement, sophistication, grace, and art into what we are doing?

The practice of embodied mindfulness transforms the passage of our life into the classroom through which we can learn how to bring the resilience of graceful movement into our dance. To stay mindful for more than a fraction of a second at a time, we need to bring alignment into our body, we need to relax, and then we need to get very good at allowing resilient motion to animate our body. Unlike the professional worlds of ballet or modern dance, however, the practice does not favor certain body types over others. Remember, we are all participants in this dance of life. Tall, short, stout, thin, we all can learn how to excel in the dance of embodied mindfulness.

Everyone’s movements and dance will be unique. Our neighbor’s movements will never look like ours, nor should they. Only if we hold our bodies still, dress in similar outfits, and limit the movements that our bodies are capable of making do we start looking suspiciously like one other. As we keep on allowing resilient motion to animate our bodies and our lives, our minds become clearer, and we realize the truth that everything is in motion, that everything is constantly changing from one micromoment of experience to the next. By revealing the truth of change, the practice of mindfulness shows us that there is no ultimate place on which we can hang our hat, that everything, the awareness of our self included, is constantly shifting and changing from moment to moment. Through the practice of mindfulness, we realize that we can give up the goal orientation that often colors our search to find ourselves. Instead, we can dive right into the waters of our life and just begin to swim and body-surf, resiliency responding to the changing nature of the water and waves. Through the practice of mindfulness, we realize that we do not have to attempt to become anything or anybody and that there is no fixed goal or final destination that we need to create or arrive at. We are just a process that moves, and no part of us is ever fixed. As we increasingly learn to align ourselves with the grain of nature, we dismantle the unnecessary breakwaters that we have built to protect us from what we may have perceived to be the fearful threats in the world around us. Indeed, resilient movement is the enemy of fear, just as stillness is fear made real.

Dancing on the Earth

Ordinarily, we conceive of the body as a solid object and experience the mind as an ongoing flow of thoughts and stories. When we bring the posture of meditation into our lives, however, our awareness of body and mind changes dramatically. Body now becomes an ongoing flow of sensations not unlike a mass of individual droplets of water in a swiftly moving stream, while the involuntary activity of the mind gradually slows down until it evaporates, revealing in its place its mirrorlike nature: steady, calm, and aware. When the body is still, the mind becomes overly active. As we learn to bring resilient movement into the actions and motions of our body, our mind becomes quiet and still and our deeper nature is revealed.

The movements of the body that allow for this naturally quiescent and mirrorlike condition of the mind are never contrived or forced. They are always spontaneous and organic. They are not predetermined movements that the mind initiates and controls. They are movements that the body makes on its own with no preconception, rehearsal, or forethought. Envision for a moment a tidal pool or coastal estuary in which long individual strands of sea kelp have come together in a thick and densely packed tangle. The lapping movement of the water washes against the strands of kelp, and the kelp responds. It moves this way and then back. It bumps up against its neighbors and then accommodates its shape to its new situation. The round ball at the head of the kelp strand bobs and weaves, and the movement is resiliency passed along the length of its body. Sometimes the tail of the kelp is tossed up on a wave, and the movement that has been initiated is transferred back up the length of its body until even the round ball of its head nods and bobs in response.

When you practice mindfulness, you come to realize that you are so much more than you may originally have thought yourself to be. You gradually open to an awareness of what has been referred to in the perennial philosophical traditions as the great ground of being, this substratum or sea of experience in which all the individual events and objects of the world float and move. The ground of being is not some sort of philosophical platitude. It is as concrete and real as your body itself. Keep the body still, your awareness of sensations contained, and your mind active, however, and the ground of being stays as hidden from view as the elusive Himalayan snow leopard. Relax into yourself through mindfully applying the principles of the posture of meditation, and it bounds into view like the friendliest family cat. In fact, it reveals itself as having been present all the time. You were just looking in the wrong direction. In the early part of this century, a Western mystic who took the name Wei Wu Wei resurrected an archaic term to describe this exact situation. The word is obnubilate, defined as “to miss the obvious by looking in the wrong direction.” Do you obnubilate? Sometimes? Often? Never?

This ground state is vast and oceanic. It is large enough to contain all your thoughts, sensations, and sensory experiences and everybody else’s as well. For a moment, let yourself imagine that water possesses a consciousness much like your own and that it can know itself. Can you imagine how awestruck a mountain stream would be when its waters finally reach the ocean and it understands its destiny and recognizes the source to which it has always been flowing? That’s how big the great ground of being appears as you learn to kindle an awareness of the sensations of your body, accept the feeling exactly as it is, and then yield to the motions that inevitably want to occur. Furthermore, the ground of being is never dry, static, or sterile. It’s like the ocean. It’s moist, filled with the seeds of life, manifesting through subtle organic movements that ebb and flow. The current of the life force that animates your body is the messenger of the great ground of being. It’s your personal link to this most transpersonal of phenomena. When, through the practice of mindfulness, you open your awareness and recognize the presence of this current, you realize that your physical body is not unlike the individual strand of kelp floating in the larger tidal pool. And as you learn to yield to the penetrating and moving presence of the ground of being, your body naturally begins moving in response, again much like the strand of kelp. Resilient motion in the body occurs through yielding to the tidal motions and current of the great ground of being and allowing the individual limbs and cells of the body to respond naturally and organically.

In truth, you are this movement. It has been here all along, waiting patiently for you to acknowledge its presence and wisdom and to respond accordingly. So as you begin to experiment with allowing natural and resilient patterns of movement to occur in your body from moment to moment, the first thing to remember is that you are not superimposing anything on yourself but are simply relaxing back into yourself and allowing the tidal movements that are naturally occurring all the time to rise up to the surface of your body and, literally, to move you. To bring resilient motion into the action of your body is simply to acknowledge what you are in truth.

Resilience, then, is not something that can be learned and practiced. It can only be allowed. Even so, there are models and images that can provide helpful instruction and inspiration as you begin to allow resilient movement to enter into your life. The image of the tangled bed of sea kelp can perform just such an instructional function. Walk back out once again to the field or beach near where you live (or your living room), remove your shoes and socks, come to standing, and begin to imagine that you are an individual strand of sea kelp floating perpendicularly in a tidal estuary. Bring alignment into your posture as you stand waiting. Then allow your body to relax.

The very moment that you feel the settling sensation that naturally begins to occur when you surrender the weight of your body to the pull of gravity, begin to allow movement to occur as well. The body may gently rock and sway. You may feel spontaneous quivers or shuddering coming from different parts of the body. Simply allow the movements that inevitably want to occur as the result of your relaxation. Remember that relaxation cannot be maintained if you become frozen or rigid. The body needs, rather, to move and sway for the felt quality of relaxation to sustain itself over a succession of moments. The feeling to move may come from deep within, so it is important to let yourself feel the full range of your body’s sensations as much as you possibly can. The resilient movements that will begin to occur will most likely be subtle and small. A flutter may occur deep within the spine, and like a cat stretching and waking from a nap, your body can respond and allow that flutter to move through you. At first, the movement may be imperceptible to another’s eyes, but you will definitely be able to feel it as a palpable event. It might be a local movement, or perhaps the wake of the movement will form a wave that spreads to other parts of the body.

Just allow your body to move. Move in whatever way feels right. The arms may sway, the knees may bend, the head may rock. Keep the image of the sea kelp in your mind’s eye. Feel the strand of sea kelp in your body. Feel the environment of gravity in which you stand like a sea of salt water in which you could float. Keep relaxing and keep allowing movements to occur.

If moving in this way is quite alien to you (and for most of us, it will be), you may have to create and initiate a movement in the beginning. It’s fine to do that. Pretend that you are that strand of kelp and that you are on a stage performing the dance of the sea kelp. For the first minute or two, your movements may feel a bit artificial or forced. Know that this is fine and just keep moving in this way. You may be surprised to find that within a short period of time, your initial movements have gained a momentum that now begins to create new and spontaneous movements that feel increasingly natural. Once this momentum has been created, the body will begin to respond in all sorts of unusual ways. The body may twitch and jerk one moment and sway smoothly and effortlessly the next. Your feet may stay rooted on the ground the entire time, or they, too, may feel the need to move. One movement begets another and yet another as your dance gains momentum.

Once this momentum has been created, you may realize that it is much easier to yield and allow the body to move naturally and resiliently in this way than it would be to bring the movements to a forcible stop. When you acknowledge how much the body naturally wants to move and when you truly begin to appreciate that the sense of deeper self that you relax into possesses a motive force that wants to move you, it becomes easier and easier simply to become the perpetual-motion machine, moving, swaying, a strand of upright sea kelp coming onto dry land, responding to the force of the greater water in which it floats.

Uncovering the softly resilient movements that organically want to occur is simpler than you might initially imagine. All you need do is open deeply to the feeling presence of your sensations. As you allow these sensations to become increasingly present, you will realize that an inherent feature of many of these sensations is that they also possess an impulse to move, to expand, to billow. This is especially true of sensations of discomfort or pain whose buildup of pressure is a call and virtual plea to allow resolution to occur through movement that is being held back. As you relax into the deep sensational presence of the body and then yield to the motive force that is contained therein, resilient movements will begin to occur spontaneously.

At this point during your dance, it might be helpful to refine the resilient movements that want to occur even further by adding yet another instructional image. Did you ever go ice-skating as a child with a large group of your friends? Do you remember a game that you would all play together called crack the whip? Perhaps eight or ten of you would hold hands in a single line and skate down the ice together. Suddenly, the skater at one of the ends would turn away from the line, come to an abrupt stop, and snap his clasped hand as though he were cracking a whip. The momentum from this one little action would get transferred down the whole line of people so that the person at the far end would accelerate dramatically and get propelled along the ice in a rapid, curving arc like the tip of a whip being cracked through the air.

What this image teaches us is that movement in a body is never localized in any one place in such a way that the rest of the body does not also participate. The motion initiated by the one small gesture of the skater at one end of the line, like an electrical impulse that jumps from synapse to synapse, would get passed from person to person until it reached the skater at the far end of the line. Human bodies are like spiderwebs, remarkably interconnected. Pull at one edge of a spiderweb, and you can see movement occurring in the opposite side of the web. As the old song tells us, “The ankle bone connected to the shin bone, the shin bone connected to the knee bone, the knee bone connected to the thigh bone . . . ” If our bodies are truly relaxed, a movement that occurs in any one small part of the body will set up a chain reaction of events that will eventually be felt as subtle movement in each and every distant part of the body. An individual movement may be thought of as a pebble dropped into a calm pool of water. But if the body is truly resilient and relaxed, concentric circles of movement will be created that spread out from the point of the initial impact all the way to the far shores of the body.

Watch what happens as you now add this image and understanding to your dance of the sea kelp. A flutter of movement occurs in your chest, and resilient movements begin to spread spontaneously through the body as a direct result of the flutter. Perhaps the chain reaction of movement can be felt passing along the shoulder and down the arm. Perhaps the head and neck bob in response. Perhaps the spine undulates all the way down into the pelvis and spreads through both of your legs. When the movement reaches your ankle, a whole other motion may be initiated that spreads back up through the entire body. On and on, the movement proceeds, never stopping, always waiting for the next billow of motion and the chain reaction that the billow inevitably sets up. Let this dance continue uninterrupted for as long as it feels natural to you to do so.

When the next Buddha appears on the earth, it is quite possible that he or she will not just sit silently in what we consider a formal meditation posture. Perhaps this Buddha will stand fully upright as well and allow spontaneous movements to pass through his or her body. Perhaps this Buddha will never sit or stand still. Perhaps it is time for the transmission of teachings to occur through movement rather than through stillness, through gesture rather than through words. Perhaps you are this next Buddha disguised as a strand of sea kelp.

Moving across the Earth

The practice of mindfulness allows us to transform the routine activities and gestures of our everyday lives into sacred action capable of revealing the most profound spiritual insights. The way we stand up from our chair, walk across the room, lean down to pick up the evening newspaper, prepare and eat our food, clean our bodies and our homes, ride in cars and buses, push a cart through the supermarket, pick a box of cereal from the shelf, talk with our friends on the telephone, and interact with our coworkers at our jobs—there is not a single activity or gesture that we can engage in or perform, not a single step or breath that we can take, that does not qualify as a worthy event to which we can profitably bring the full focus of mindful attention.

From the perspective of mindfulness, what we are doing in any given moment matters less than how we are doing it. It is wonderful to train ourselves in something like the Japanese tea ceremony, which requires that we bring mindful attention to the preparation and serving of this honored beverage. How much more wonderful, however, to expand the mindful attitude with which we learn how to prepare and pour tea into all the sundry activities, great and small, that fill up the whole of our days from the moment we come out of sleep in the morning to the last moment of consciousness at night when we lay our heads back down on our pillows and the guardians of our dreams once again take possession of our bodies and minds. When mindfulness is courageously applied from moment to moment as we move through our days and nights, our entire life becomes a tea ceremony.

Who we are is expressed through how we move. The seamless fluidity of Fred Astaire’s movements as he effortlessly squires his dance partners across the floor expresses a quality of graciousness, gallantry, and goodwill completely absent from the jerky and awkward stumblings of Frankenstein. We may not be ballroom dancers or prima ballerinas, but we are all dancers on the stage of life. This is it, the moment of our most important performance. This is always it, right now, this moment. Perhaps the reviews of our dance through life will not come in until just after we offer our final exhalation. Perhaps the reviews will never come in at all. It doesn’t matter. We are dancers of life nonetheless, and we are how we move.

The quality of consciousness that we are manifesting right now is always expressed through our movements. When we are lost in thought, our bodies become still and stiff. We move awkwardly, with little grace or coordination. Our fascination with Frankenstein is that he is an exaggerated caricature of ourselves when we are lost in thought, not wholly present to the fullness of our humanity. Our fascination with Fred Astaire is that we know that we are potentially that, too. When we become more mindful—more aware of the fuller range of the sensations, sounds, and sights of our world—we begin to shed our stiffness like a snake whose old skin no longer serves a purpose. Our movements naturally become more fluid and graceful. Mindfulness reveals the condition of grace, an inner knowing and certainty that the world is of one piece, held together by whatever name we wish to call it. Through the ongoing application of the practice of mindfulness, we fill our lives with the grace of a studied dancer at the apex of her art.

It is wonderful to learn to align our bodies and relax, but it is the introduction of resilient motion into the actions and movements of our daily gestures that truly allows the grace of mindfulness to blossom fully in our lives. Because resilient motion is always spontaneous and organic, the result of surrendering and yielding to the deepest impulses of the great ground of being, it is not possible to prescribe specific movements or steps. The dance of resilience is not a studied movement like a fox-trot or a rumba. We can’t attend a class, learn the specific rhythms and steps, and then repeat them over and over again. In truth, you never know whether the conditions of your life in this very moment are going to elicit a formal waltz or a sensual lambada or any combination thereof. However, even though it is not possible to teach basic steps (right foot, left foot, back step), we can explore, experiment with, and learn the most basic principles of resilience and then apply them to any and every movement that our bodies are capable of making as we make our way through the passage of our days. This is as it should be, for remember that resilient movement is one of the foundations of embodied mindfulness and that mindfulness is much more interested in how we are doing something than it is in the actual specifics of what we are doing.

The most fundamental principle for bringing resilience into our lives is that the entire body can participate in every gesture or movement, no matter how great or small, that we are capable of making. Ordinarily, we associate different tasks with different parts of the body, and we tend to isolate those parts when participating in those tasks, essentially freezing or leaving out the rest of the body in the process. When we sit down to write a note, for example, we will move our hand and arm, but we will essentially freeze the rest of the body, holding it very still. We may do much the same thing when we reach for a cup or wash our dinner dishes at the sink. Our hands and arms may move, but the rest of the body will stay stiff and frozen as though it had no role in the job. The problem with this highly selective employment of body parts when we are performing a task is that whenever we freeze or hold a part of the body still, for whatever purpose, we numb out the awareness of sensations that exist in the frozen areas and effectively forfeit the condition of mindful awareness that is our birthright. Stillness of body generates activity of mind.

To experience the difference between partially held movement and fully resilient movement, it would be helpful if you could place a large handful of freshly toasted sesame seeds into a mortar, sit yourself down in a comfortable kitchen chair, let the mortar rest in your lap, and then take a wooden pestle and begin to grind the seeds into a powder with a slow, counterclockwise motion.

Begin in a conventional way by using only your hand and arm to grind the seeds. Let the rest of your body remain as motionless as possible. Plant both feet on the floor, and make sure that your legs and pelvis move as little as possible. Freeze the abdomen, the chest, and your shoulders as well. Isolate the movement in the arm and hand that holds the pestle and grinds the seeds as much as possible by making sure that your head and neck are motionless, your eyes staring straight down at the bowl in your lap. In this way, grind the seeds into a grainy powder for several minutes, concentrating as much as you can on moving only your arm and hand while keeping the rest of the body perfectly motionless and still.

How does this motion feel to you? More than likely, it will feel relatively natural and normal, for ordinarily, when we engage in any kind of motion or movement, we will in fact freeze the body in this way, moving only the specific body part necessary to perform the action.

Now let your holding go. Continue the counterclockwise motion of the pestle, but let the entire body relax its tension as you continue to grind the seeds. Let the entire body from head to foot begin to respond resiliency to the motion that is being initiated through the primary movement in the arm and hand. Recall the image of the cracking whip from the previous exercise. Remember that when any one part of the body moves, the force of that movement creates an impulse and a momentum that can be transferred throughout the rest of the entire body like water moving through a sluice. The shoulders will begin to make a repetitive circular pattern, as will the head. The torso will rock from side to side, as will the pelvis. The legs, too, will join in the motion, and you will even be able to feel the soles of your feet gently rocking back and forth over their contact point with the floor.

As you continue to allow this full-bodied resilient movement to occur, open yourself as widely as possible to the feeling of relaxation in your body. Feel the whole body as a unified tactile presence. Open your senses to a full appreciation of the sounds that are present as you continue this movement. Soften your gaze and broaden your vision to include an awareness of the whole of the visual field. What happens to your breath as you do this? What happens to your mind? What happens to the sesame seeds in the bowl? Remember once again that in the practice of mindfulness, what you’re doing is of only secondary importance. How you’re doing what you’re doing is of paramount importance.

Contrast your experience of resilient, full-bodied movement by once again freezing the body. The legs, the pelvis, the torso, the shoulders, the arm that is not involved with the grinding, the neck and head: hold all of these parts very still as you once again grind the seeds by moving only your arm and hand. How does this now feel in comparison? What happens to your awareness of sounds as you hold your body in this way? What happens to your awareness of the visual field? What happens to your awareness of sensations? How have the sensations changed? And what has happened to your mind? Do you experience your mind and mental processes differently depending on whether you are holding the body still? When the entire body is able to participate in an action, the mind remains clear and unobscured. When the body freezes and holds itself still, a thin blanket of thought begins to creep in and accumulate like the proverbial layer of dust covering the surface of a mirror that has not been wiped clean for too long a time.

Now, once again let the body go. Feel how everything begins once again to move. The chair on which you sit suddenly becomes a seat in a sensuous amusement park. The simple act of grinding seeds in a bowl becomes an amusement ride that you never want to end. The mirror of the mind remains clear and unsullied as the sesame seeds grind themselves into a fine powder. With little forced effort on your part, just the simple allowance of resilient movement, the seeds have transformed themselves into a powdery condiment. Raise yourself from your chair with an awareness of the entire body participating in the simple action of standing up. Take the ground seeds from the bowl and pour them over a plate of freshly cooked rice. Can you let your whole body, not just your arm and hand, pour the seeds onto the mound of rice? Sit down at your table and enjoy your meal. Eat your rice with a fork or perhaps with chopsticks. As you lift the rice to your mouth, can you feel the movement resiliently extending itself all the way down to your feet? Can you chew and swallow your morsel of rice with the subtle participation of your entire body? Can you appreciate how much more mindful you are of the action of eating, how much more aware you are of how your stomach feels as it accepts the masticated food when you eat in this way, how less likely you are to lose yourself in thought and eat too much or too little?

Two conditions are always present in resilient movement. First, the whole body always participates in the action being performed. Second, the wave of movement that passes through the whole body is never a predetermined or directed movement but is organic, spontaneous, and surrendered. When a cue ball is struck on a billiards table, all the other balls with which it comes into contact are set in motion. It is inconceivable to imagine that a stationary ball on a billiards table could resist responding to the strike of the cue ball. Let our bodies begin to behave with the surrendered wisdom of the stationary balls. Whenever a part of the body moves, it sets up a chain reaction of movement that can make its way through the length of the entire body like the most astonishing trick shot on a billiards table.

Can you let your body move this way when you reach to pick up a teacup on a kitchen shelf? Can the whole body participate in the act of reaching? Can you feel how the movement generated by the extension of your arm and hand sets up a chain reaction of motion that can pass down and through your entire body, enlisting every single part of your body to respond and join into the joyous act of reaching for the cup (“the shoulder bone connected to the chest bone, the chest bone connected to the belly bone, the belly bone connected to the hip bone . . .”)?

As you stand in your kitchen, can you prepare your meals in this way? If you can, then you transform the simple act of cooking into a dance worthy of both Nijinsky and the Buddha. Can you wash your dishes with full-bodied resilience? Can you open your front door to greet visitors (your guests may be astonished to see the host who awaits them), floss and brush your teeth, pay for your groceries at the supermarket, throw a Frisbee, land on Boardwalk when you play Monopoly with your children, shovel snow from your sidewalk in the winter, apply sunscreen to your friend’s back in the summer, turn the lights off at night and on again in the morning, ride a bicycle, pose for a picture, stand in line at the movie theater with full-bodied resilience? Can you bring these principles into the private nest of your bedchamber? Can you let yourself make love in this way? Your partner will love you for it. You will love yourself.

At other times, we can surrender our bodies to the current of the life force, and it moves us through space like a dancer on the stage of life, moving spontaneously and freely. Never hold back on this current that so wants to move us. Resilient bodies shed their pain. The mind remains clear, like a polished mirror.

By bringing full-bodied resilient motion into all the actions and gestures of your life, your entire life becomes rich and sensual. The old slogan “Life is hard, then you die” is replaced with “Life is soft, now you come alive.” The dry and literally brittle quality of your life softens through the perpetual, resilient motion that you create in your body. It might even begin to look like paradise on earth, if even for just a little minute, and this in spite of the undeniable horrors that occur every day around you. When the God of the Old Testament became angry at the Israelites, he uttered the worst imprecation possible: he accused them of being a “stiff-necked” people, utterly lacking in the grace and coordination of resilient movement. Through resilience, we honor that which is divine in us.

Stiffness of the head and neck directly creates and causes the diseases of the mind. For the mind to lose itself thoroughly in involuntary thought, the head and neck must be held still. See whether you can bring attention to your head and neck the very next time you become aware that you have become lost in thought. Can you detect a tightening and holding quality in the tissues of the neck and head? Can you feel an uncomfortable pressure in your head and neck when the mind takes off on a flight of involuntary thoughts?

If you can just begin to let your head and neck move again, resiliently responding to and participating in whatever you are doing in the moment, the thoughts begin to evaporate on their own. Most of us hold our head and neck very still during the entire course of our waking hours. We hold our head still when we’re walking. We hold it still when we’re riding in a car. We hold it still when we pour water into a glass in the kitchen. We hold it still when we read a book.

Did you ever go fishing as a child with a simple bamboo pole, string, bobber, and hook? Do you remember how you would attach a worm to the hook, cast the line into the water, and then lie back in the shade and attentively watch the bobber as it floated on the surface of the water? The bobber would rise and fall with the waves and dance wildly when a fish took the bait. Even on a calm day with little wind or waves, the bobber would rotate and meander over the surface of the lake. Hardly ever would it remain completely motionless.

Think of your head as a fishing bobber floating on the watery surface of your body. Every movement that your body can make is like an interested fish nibbling at the bait on your hook. If your head and neck are truly relaxed, every movement you make will cause your head to bob up and down, forward and back, from side to side. The movements do not have to be extreme. The simple act of breathing is enough to cause ripples on the surface of your body, like a wind across the water, on top of which your head can bob and weave. If you can let your head and neck bob and weave in response to whatever action your body is performing, the involuntary process of thought will have very little opportunity to establish itself. Indeed, stillness in the head and neck is every bit as certain an indication of the presence of involuntary thought as movement in a fishing bobber is an indication of the presence of a hungry fish.

Pay close, but completely relaxed, attention to your head and neck the next time you go for a ride in a car. Even on the smoothest and straightest of roads and with the most sophisticated suspension system, the car bobs up and down. It shimmies and gyrates. Ordinarily, we hold ourselves very still when we ride in a car. We brace ourselves against the turns and against the bobbing and swaying motions of the car. We also lose ourselves easily among the crowd of involuntary thoughts that seem to accompany us on our journeys. Automobiles would appear almost to be breeding grounds for the advent of involuntary thought.

Treat your next trip to the supermarket, however, as an amusement park ride designed to shake and vibrate the body, much like the motel beds of old into which you inserted a quarter and the bed vibrated and shook your resting body. As you make your way to the market, your entire body can bob and shake like the fishing bobber on the surface of the lake. Pay special attention to your head as you drive down the road or as you ride passively as a passenger. Feel how you can relax and let go of the tension in your head and neck. Feel how the head immediately begins to move spontaneously and resiliently in response to your intention to relax. Feel how it bobs up and down. Feel how that natural and resilient movement can only be brought to a halt by the involuntary introduction of a thought. When you realize that you have once again gone off into a thought of the past or future, check the condition of your head. Notice how still and unmoving it has become before you once again allow it to relax and dance atop your body like a fishing bobber on the waves of a lake.

Can you bring this same quality of resilient movement into every step that you take as you get out of your car and walk into the supermarket? Walking is the major physical activity that our bodies engage in, hour after hour, day after day. It is one thing to praise the practice of mindfulness, to speak glowingly of its benefits, to describe its theory and techniques. It is another to, quite literally, walk your talk, to embody the action of mindful awareness as you move your body across the earth. To walk mindfully—fully aware of sounds, sights, and sensations, embodying the principles of alignment, relaxation, and resilience in your gait—can be one of the most potent gestures you can ever enact.

Can you let every step you ever take, as much as you possibly can, now and forevermore, be filled and saturated with the mindful attention of a tightrope walker as he deftly makes his way across a vast chasm over which the slenderest of wires has been strung? For the tightrope walker, there is no room for even the smallest misstep, the most minuscule lapse of attention. Standing in alignment, the body completely relaxed, fully aware of the sounds, sights, and sensations that are present, can you move along the earth as though your life depended on every step you take? Can you feel your entire body as a unified field of tactile presence, the whole of which participates in every step forward? Can you feel how the initiation of each step sets up a chain reaction of subtle, resilient movement that makes its way through the entire body so that not even the smallest part of the body holds itself back in stillness, shying away from participating in the dance? Can you let go of your conventional orientation, which would have you view your destination (the cereal aisle, perhaps the baked goods section) as the goal you are attempting to reach, replacing it instead with the notion that the mindful awareness of this very step, and then this one that follows next, is the thing that matters most to you? Through the simple act of mindful walking, can you come to understand that there is no goal outside of your present experience toward which you are moving, that the simple act of being fully present in this moment as you tread the path on which you walk is itself the goal?

As you walk, can you let your head bob forward and back with every step? Experiment with this by first holding your head and neck quite still. What does this feel like? Is it all too familiar? Then observe what happens when you let the stiffness in your neck and head go and let the head bob. Standing in alignment, the body relaxed, walking with resilience, the head bobbing on top of it all, how do you feel? What is your breath like? Is it possible not to open mindfully to an inclusive awareness of the fields of sound, vision, and sensation? Watch what happens when you forget to bring resilience into your walk and you fool yourself into believing that your life doesn’t actually depend on the next step you take. The process of involuntary thought is dependent on stillness and stiffness in the head and neck. The next time you realize that you have gone off in thought, observe the condition of your head and neck. They’ve become still again, haven’t they? Once you become aware of this connection, let the head and neck go again. Let the head bob forward and back as you walk, the topmost portion of your body resiliently responding to the motion that has been generated through the alternating movement of your legs. Can everything move and sway as you walk? Can you feel your spine rotating back and forth on its axis as you move ahead? Can you feel the arms swing easily?

There are really only two choices available to us in any given moment. Either we become sleepy, withdraw our awareness from the sounds, sights, and sensations in which we swim, forfeit our alignment, relaxation, and resilience, and retreat into the dark cave of our involuntary thoughts, or we embody the posture of meditation, awaken our senses, and open up to whatever we can experience right now. Either we move through life like sleepwalkers, or we work to bring awareness to every step we take as we move forward along our path. Which choice will the tightrope walker make as she inches her way across Niagara Falls?

Swimming in the River of Sensations

Sensations possess three fundamental characteristics. First, they are primarily tactile in nature. Even though we can vaguely see them as a soft blur or shimmer emanating off of the surface of the body and can even sometimes hear their vibratory oscillation as a high-pitched frequency coming from deep within the body, it is primarily through our ability to feel them that they reveal their presence. Second, they are constantly changing their appearance from one moment to the next. Like a dancer who never comes to rest or like a star that constantly flickers on and off, they exist in a condition of eternal flux, gently vibrating, moving, flowing, shifting their shape and form. Sensations never stand still, not even for a single moment, and their form is never permanent. And third, when massed together with their neighboring brethren, they can be felt to possess a motive force not unlike a powerful current that animates the water in a swiftly moving river. They ebb and flow. They surge and subside. They move in one direction and then the next.

By bringing alignment into the structure of the body, we begin the process of kindling an awareness of sensations. When the body is not balanced, there is little chance of feeling the body’s full range of sensations, as they are kept hidden underneath a concealing blanket of tension and numbness. The act of relaxation then dramatically accelerates the process by which sensations make their presence known. As we learn to let go of unnecessary tension and holding, the barriers that keep our awareness of sensations contained begin to melt and evaporate. As these barriers drop away, the full range of the body’s sensations is suddenly liberated. They become vibrantly present, and it is difficult to comprehend how we could have contained them this long.

In the context of spiritual practice, liberation has traditionally referred to the emancipation of a natural condition of mind that has always existed, albeit in a dormant state in which it was unable to make its presence known. This very pure and spacious quality of mind is ordinarily buried beneath the grosser aspects of mind with which we are more customarily familiar and with which we customarily identify. In its most typical form, this grosser level of mind manifests as the involuntary internal monologue, with its incessant stories about the past and the future and its convincing attempts to have us believe that the speaker of these stories is truly, and ultimately, who we are.

The liberation of sensations that occurs through relaxing the body by surrendering its weight to the pull of gravity directly parallels this more familiar liberation at the level of the mind. Let’s reword the last paragraph slightly and see what we get:

Liberation conventionally refers to the emancipation of a natural condition of bodily presence that has always existed, albeit in a dormant state in which it was unable to make its literally sensational presence known. This very vibrant and shimmery quality of bodily presence is ordinarily buried beneath grosser layers of sensation with which we are more customarily familiar and with which we customarily identify. In its most typical form, this grosser level of bodily sensation manifests as pain and numbness, which are often themselves a function of reactions to our past emotional history and future fears. All too commonly, we gain our primary awareness and sense of self through identifying ourselves with these reactions.

Letting yourself completely relax through surrendering the weight of your body to the pull of gravity is like dropping a large and substantial stone into a calm and clear pond. The ensuing splash, like a powerful jolt to the system (your belief system as well as your physiological system), initiates a profound energetic explosion deep within the core of the body. Sensations are suddenly and unexpectedly liberated, sprung from the jail in which they have been serving a life sentence for a crime they never committed. Wave after wave of sensations, much like the concentric waves that form after a stone has been dropped into a pond, continue to be released and liberated over time through the reverberations caused by this simple act of relaxation.

Once sensations are liberated, it becomes critical to add the facet of resilience to the actions of alignment and relaxation. The individual sensations of the body are like the individual droplets of water of the river of the life force itself. This river is as powerful as any river on the planet. Its current is strong and potent. Fighting to contain it, we exhaust ourselves or, worse, erect barriers and dikes that only succeed in creating pain, illness, and impoverishment of spirit. The current must go somewhere, and if it cannot freely pass through the body, it will turn inward on itself. Like the autoimmune system gone awry, this source of inner healing begins attacking its own container.

One of the skills we are trying to refine in the practice of embodied mindfulness is to learn how to let the current of the life force flow freely through the conduit of the body without any obstructions or impediments to its flow. We do this through bringing resilience into our posture and practice. The energetic surges that can be felt in a body that becomes aligned and relaxed can be enormous, especially when they have been contained for a long period of time. Like unexpected rapids or a flash flood, they can explode through the body with great force. If we can surrender to their motive force, resiliently allowing them to swirl and turn in whatever way they organically want to with whatever accompanying expressions or gestures may naturally want to occur, they continue on their way, cleansing the body and mind of whatever residues of restriction and limitation may have been established and created.

In the first exercise in this chapter, you were asked to enact the dance of the sea kelp, allowing your body to respond to its compulsion to move like a long strand of kelp in an ocean pool. The billowing and surging motion that occurs at the level of sensations is also like a dance, but it is more the dance of the watery medium itself than it is of the individual strand of kelp. The movements of the kelp occur through letting the outer musculature respond and move. The movement of the ocean occurs through yielding to the deepest sensations that can be felt to exist at the very core of the body. Ultimately, your dance will become a pas de deux between these two aspects of yourself, your outer and inner selves, your kelp and your ocean, the one so involved with doing things in the world, the other so involved with the experience of being.

Through the practice of resilience, you can allow all these surges to expand and subside through you. Feeling a sensation build, you can simply allow it to move in whatever direction it wants at whatever speed it chooses. Think of the emerging sensations like waves on the ocean. They grow and build. They break. They crash on the beach and return back into the water. You can feel them building and moving through your body. Just keep relaxing and let them pass through you. Whom or what do you have to become to allow them to flow through you in this way? What happens to you when you resiliently allow these flows of sensation to express themselves? What aspects of yourself come into expression? As much as you possibly can, trust that whatever occurs through the process of resiliently yielding to these strong surges of sensation is OK.

It is relatively easy to yield to these inner currents and waves when our sensations are soft, shimmering, and flowing but much more difficult once they have become hardened, dull, numb, or painful. When we first begin to pay attention to sensations, we are often pleased to find a wealth of subtle, shimmering sensations present. It’s like swimming in a gentle stream on a hot summer day. However, as we continue to probe more deeply, we almost inevitably uncover pockets of compacted pain whose sensations may range from moderately irritating to acutely painful. Some of these sensations may appear primarily physical in their ache, whereas others may trigger spontaneous emotional responses and associations. When we first come out of our numbness and begin to pay attention to the deep sensations of our body, we may quickly realize why we hadn’t wanted to feel the body in the first place.

Sometimes the physical pains that we can encounter can be so highly charged that it is difficult simply to observe the sensation mindfully and yield to its motive force without wanting to react to the sensation, shutting down both its organic expression and our awareness of it. It is important to understand, however, that the pain is actually very valuable. The pain cannot be cut out like a cyst that can be removed from the body, and shutting down your awareness of it only serves to fuel its existence. The pains that you will uncover are actually expressions of the purest life energy, albeit in a form in which it has not been allowed to flow freely.

In the same way that ice is simply the frozen form of water, pain is simply the congested form of free-flowing life force. Logs may gather at a bend in a river and cause the flow of water to come almost to a standstill. The stagnation, however, in no way alters the basic nature of the water. Our pain is a doorway drawing our awareness back to parts of our self that we have rejected or from which we have disassociated ourselves. Our path back to wholeness necessitates that we patiently and gently reembrace these discarded sensations, no matter what their nature, until they become again part of who and what we are. The practice of mindfulness is one of the most potent tools available for resurrecting lost sensations and transforming chronic pains back into freely flowing life energy. The practice is like a heat lamp that shines its light onto areas of compacted and icy pain, melting it over time into the openness and warmth of pure presence.

Be very gentle with yourself as you begin to delve into the world of sensations, especially when you uncover areas of deeply unpleasant feelings. The resolution to the logjams in our body and mind occurs not by forcing the sensations to be different or by attempting to break through or shatter them. It occurs instead through mindfully feeling into them, embracing them exactly as they are, and then yielding to the process that inevitably is initiated through this act of mindful acceptance. The simple willingness to experience them as they are is the most potent gesture and tool that you possess to transform the pain back into a condition of free-flowing presence. Mindfulness is always about accepting our experience as it is. We never undo a knot by pulling more tightly on either end of the string.

As you feel into areas of compacted, painful sensation with mindful and patient attention, you will notice that the sensation begins to change on its own simply through your observation of it. Even the strongest and most persistent pain is not a static experience. If you can bring yourself to observe it with a calm and patient mind, you will detect intrinsic movement within the pain as it changes its form from moment to moment at very subtle levels.

A very curious and paradoxical law governs how pain resolves itself through the practice of mindfulness. If you can accept a sensation exactly as it is, not forcing it to be different from what it is and not holding it to its present form when it begins to mutate, the sensation will eventually resolve itself and transform its icy and hardened substance into a much more free-flowing and watery condition. The corollary to this law is that if we try to force a situation to be different, we ultimately end up fueling the persistence of the condition we are trying to change. At best, we may succeed in concealing it under a more acceptable layer of contrived sensation and feeling. The source and existence of the pain, however, continue as before, waiting for their opportunity to resurface once again. Transformation always occurs through accepting and feeling deeply into the existing situation and is always radical in its influence. Change involves shifting the position of objects, much like moving furniture around a living room, and never truly affects or alters the true source of the problem.

As you feel into areas of pain, you will eventually notice that they are animated by a force that wants to move. This may appear in the form of a throb or pulsing or as a kind of current that is identical to the force that moves through a river. As much as possible, yield to the current of sensations once it has become activated. Surrender to it. Let it take you wherever it wants. The sensations may expand and get much hotter. The current may lead you into areas of emotion and feeling that you never knew existed. It may directly lead you to a place of resolution, or it may lead you in circles for long periods of time. Always yield to this current that permeates sensations and trust its wisdom. Yielding to the current of sensations that wants to move and pass through your body is the practice of resilience. This current always moves you in the direction of wholeness of body and mind and resolution to the pains and sufferings that you endure. Its path may not always be direct and easy. It may take you through rough rapids and over steep waterfalls before it settles itself out. It is always, however, to be trusted. The current is you, your life force. If you cannot trust your deepest self, what can you trust?

Never hold back on the many varieties of sensations and emotions that the practice of mindfulness is bound to unearth. Always risk sensations and feelings. Surrender resiliently to both their gentle flow and their floodwaters. It may at times require great courage to do this, but you will always be rewarded for your efforts. The fully liberated river of sensations will cleanse both the body of its pain and holding and the mind of its limiting belief systems about who you are. Ultimately, the fully liberated river of sensations will be revealed as the ground of being itself as it makes its way through your individual body. What sensations can you feel right now as you read this? Are you holding them back, or are you allowing them to billow and surge through you? If you are holding anything back, can you relax that holding and allow the river of sensations to move through you in whatever way it wants?

We don’t have to fear the potency of the life force or the strength of its tides. If we do, we will erect protective dikes in our bodies, walls and barriers of tension, as an attempt to keep the floodwaters of our sensations at bay. But the currents of our life force continually hammer at these protective dikes, springing rifts and holes, and we haven’t enough fingers to plug them all. At the moment of our death, all the protective dikes will very likely crumble. Let us not miss our life before that happens. Let us learn to surrender to the potent current of sensations while we are alive. Let us get swept away in their waters. Let us familiarize ourselves with the movements of this oceanic flow. Let us learn to surrender to its current right now while we are alive so that when death comes, as it inevitably will, we will be less afraid of what lies around its corner.

Never view your pain, or any sensation, as something negative or bad, as something that needs to be gotten rid of or removed. Your mind is very powerful, and if you view something as negative or bad, it will very likely become so. Your pain is neither negative nor bad. On the contrary, how wonderful that you feel it. Your pain continually guides you, like the smells that a bloodhound tenaciously follows, along the road of your journey. Your pain is the life force itself, knocking on your door, pleading with you to no longer refuse it admission. Trying to block or get rid of painful sensation is a bit like discarding a cocoon because it is not a butterfly. Never do yourself the disservice of thinking that your pain, or any part of you, is wrong or needs to be overcome. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. All you need to do with your painful sensation is to accept it fully through relaxing and surrendering into it. Then let the acceptance of the pain itself become the path to its own resolution.

Coordinating the Energies at the Eye Center

The posture of meditation allows us to align our awareness and sense of self with the ever-changing current of sensations that animates our bodies, to relax into that current, and then to allow that current to pass resiliently through our bodies without getting dammed up or blocked. If the current continues to move through in an unimpeded flow, the mirrorlike nature of the mind manifests naturally. As soon as that current becomes blocked, however, our bodies become once again tense, and we lose awareness of sensations. The force of that current needs to go somewhere, however, and it inevitably gets redirected into the mind, where it spawns and fuels the internal monologue. As the internal monologue gains momentum, we lose our mindfulness and become once again lost in thought.

Even though tension and holding in any part of the body will redirect the force of the current into involuntary thought, nowhere in the body is this process so clear and obvious as it is in the eye center. The entire focus of the teachings of the great seventeenth-century Indian mystic and poet Kabir was on activating the eye center and fashioning it into a clear channel into which the energies of realization could enter the body. It was Kabir’s contention that once this center was fully activated, the individual body would become a channel or medium through which the energy of God could appear on earth.

Certainly, a great many activities central to the practice of mindfulness converge in this one small area of the body. If we were to construct a horizontal plane through the eye center, we would directly touch upon several of the most important sensory mechanisms responsible for our direct perception of the world in which we live. First and foremost are the eyes themselves, the primary sensory organs through which we gain understanding of the world outside of our bodies and also the acknowledged doorway to our soul. Extending backward and then to the sides, we touch upon the middle and inner ears. While the middle ear with its stirrup, anvil, hammer, and tympanum is designed to transform auditory vibrations into perceived sound, the labyrinth of the inner ear with its semicircular canals and cochlea is directly responsible for our sense of balance and our physical orientation in space. In this way, it is intimately related with the nature of sensations that the body is capable of feeling. Finally, in the space directly behind the eyes, in the middle of the head itself, lies the seat of thoughts and the primary residence of our sense of self, our sense that “I exist.” With so much transpiring in this one small area of the body, it is easy to understand why it is so important to make sure that the energies and sensations at this center are balanced and flowing smoothly.

In truth, however, we often have very little felt awareness of the inherent activity in this part of the body. Ordinarily, people do not feel sensations in the inside of their heads. They are too busy thinking, and because thought and sensation are incompatible with each other, when one of these activities (thought) is present, the other (sensation) is absent. It’s like two people who cannot manage to get along and live together in the same house. When thought takes up residence in one of the rooms of your body’s mansion, it forces the presence of sensations to vacate the premises.

When we become lost in thought, the space in the middle of our heads, much like a logjam that blocks the freely moving waters of a river, becomes clogged and congested. Lost in thought, we have little awareness of the sensations that also could be felt to exist in this part of the body. Lost in thought, we create a spasm or contraction in the middle of the head so painful to experience that we immediately blanket it in numbness. This contraction then spreads its influence throughout the entire horizontal plane of the eye center and impinges on our ability to see, hear, and feel our balance. Little wonder, then, that it is difficult for us simply to see things as they are, hear what is present to be heard, and feel our way into relatively effortless states of balance.

When you first begin focusing your attention onto this center, you will gradually become aware of the existence of this spasm and contraction. It feels dull and stiff, and there may even be significant pressure and ache. Most important, you will be able to feel that nothing is moving. The pejorative term blockhead is an all too apt description of this most common of conditions. Sensations, like freely circulating waters, want to move and flow with no restrictions to their current. Whenever they are blocked, they either rebel or give up their life and resign themselves to a diminished fate. The current of the life force then seeks out the alternative channel of thoughts. This channel does not pass freely through this part of the body but begins to circle on itself, ultimately creating a familiar rut or groove in which it is all too easy to stay stuck. The involuntary monologue of the mind keeps spinning the same stories over and over again in endless cycles of repetition. Like a machine that etches the grooves in a CD, the die is cast, and the story line of our lives keeps getting infinitely repeated.

Let yourself feel deeply into the sensations in the very center of your head. As soon as you are able to feel the sensations that are present here, the internal monologue of the mind begins to subside. At first, the sensations will be thick and solid, which is appropriate for an area in which the free flow of the life force has been jammed. Gradually, however, as you continue to yield to the feelings of thickness and solidity, the logjam begins to come undone, and the waters of the life force begin once again to make their way through. As you continue to yield to the force that animates these waters, the current gains strength until a time is reached when the logjam is no more and the waters are flowing smoothly and unobstructedly through.

What happens, then, to the story lines and the conventional sense of self that are the product of the spasm or contraction that keeps the free flow of sensations in this part of the body held back and contained? They gradually get erased. It is as though you have written your name with a stick on the wet sand of a beach at low tide, thinking that your mark on the sand is permanent and forever and that it represents who you truly are. After several hours, however, the tides come up, and the force of liberated, free-flowing sensation, coming in wave after wave, gradually washes it away. Your name, with all its conceptual associations, represents only a limited part of who you are. Once its deeply etched imprint begins to dissolve, you realize that you are not just your name drawn on the sand but much more inclusively are the entire play of the sand and surf, the gulls that cry and soar, the fresh saltwater air that invigorates, the whole of the drama of the beach as it manifests from moment to moment. This, once again, is the mirror that reflects and becomes whatever is set before it.

The deep spasm and contraction in the middle of the head is responsible for our belief that we are some specific one or some specific thing. When we become aware of the pain inherent in this center and of its relationship to this belief, we are often motivated to begin spiritual practices, hoping that the fruits of practice will set things right. All too often, however, we project our solidified sense of self onto the path of practice and assume that the goal of the practice is to uncover a true or ultimate sense of self, like trading up from a Volkswagen to a Rolls Royce. Once the current of sensations begins moving freely through our body, however, we may begin to view the path of practice and the goal toward which it is moving quite differently. The river just moves and flows. It is never the same from one second to the next. It never stands still. It is always changing its form and appearance from moment to moment.

Once we are able to kindle an awareness of the freely flowing nature of sensations, we may have to re-vision our entire quest. No longer does the path of spiritual practice strike us as an attempt to become some ultimate one or thing. We now see that all we are attempting to do is to become the process of becoming itself. The physical body becomes our point in space through which the current of the life force passes. The current always moves. It passes right through us and interacts with whatever we put our attention on. Let us align ourselves with and relax into this most resilient of phenomena. Then the condition of mindful awareness manifests as our natural state. Becoming becomes itself, every moment new, every moment turning resiliently into something else, all of it OK.

Rejoicing into the Breath

As you breathe in, o monks, breathe in with the whole body.

As you breathe out, o monks, breathe out with the whole body.

—BUDDHA, Satipattbana Sutta

Breath is with us all our life. From our first inhalation to our last exhalation, it never leaves us, not even for a moment. The action of breath is the play of the life force itself, vivifying us from moment to moment with the life-giving grace of its presence. When breath departs, as it inevitably does when we bid the world good-bye with our final exhalation, the life force departs as well. Without breath, there can be no life. Any hindrances to its fullest natural expression put a limit on how full and rich our experience of this moment might be.

Ordinarily, we think of breath as something we do to make sure that the cells of the body are provided with the oxygen they require to carry out their metabolic functions. In truth, however, breath is not something we do. It is something that is done to us. We do not breathe. Breath breathes us. Although we can thwart its fullness, we can never totally block its action. Like the gravitational field of the earth, the rhythmic action of the breath is a force immeasurably more powerful than we are. It is much better, then, that we willingly offer up our bodies as channels for the breaths rhythmic play than attempt to resist or restrict this mighty force. By sacrificing the willful holding that keeps the fullest expression of our breath contained, we directly align ourselves with the deepest and most powerful energies available to us.

Breath and body are two sides of the very same coin, and the condition of one directly affects the condition of the other. If the breath is shallow or constricted, sensations are dull and indistinct. If the breath becomes full and fluid, sensations become once again vibrant and present. Breath activates sensations, massaging them into life. Breath is the food sensations live on. As they are fed, they come out of their dull sleep and begin to vibrate. Breath is the switch that turns the lights of sensations on. When they come to life, they flicker and shine, just like the stars at night.

In traditional mindfulness practices, breath is presented as the preeminent object on which to focus our attention. Not only is it with us all the time, but its incessant action forms a powerful bridge that links our body and mind and our conscious and unconscious states. By focusing our attention on the recurrent alternation of inhalation and exhalation, we keep our minds present and limit their tendency to become lost in an errant maze of involuntary thoughts. Furthermore, a constant focus on the passage of the breath will ultimately influence the way that we breathe. Our breath will become calmer, fuller, more regular in its rhythm.

The three-legged stool of the posture of meditation has a profound effect on how we breathe. In general, we have evolved into a culture of subventilators. Our breathing is habitually shallow and largely constricted. The holding and tension that dull our awareness of sensations and activate the internal monologue of the mind directly inhibit the natural fullness of our breath as well. The curtailed amount of oxygen that we take into our bodies may be sufficient for fueling the internal monologue (which itself can be considered a grosser and less refined function of the mind) but is in no way adequate for sparking sensations and bringing them vibrantly to life. By bringing alignment, relaxation, and resilience back into our bodies and our lives, our breath has no option but to open and expand its capacity. It’s as though a deep-sea diver’s hose has had a knot or kink in it that has been restricting the flow of air, and suddenly the passageway is freed. The posture of meditation can unknot the kinks in our bodies and our minds, and oxygen begins to flow freely and abundantly through, saturating our cells and stimulating our sensations.

Let the Buddha’s words be our guide as we add the awareness of breath to our practice. Let our breath and body become one. Let the entire body become the organ of respiration, not just the lungs and diaphragm. Let us feel the inspiration of breath entering through every cell of our body, not just through our nose and our mouth. Let us not just observe the passage of breath in and out of the body. Let us become the process of breath itself, surrendering fully to its joyous power.

When you breathe in, breathe in with your whole body. When you breathe out, breathe out with your whole body. There are two primary ways in which you can do this, two related, yet slightly different, strategies that will enable you to merge the activity of breath with the unified presence of your body. The first strategy recognizes that when you breathe in and out, every part of your body can move in resilient response to the force of your breath. If the body is truly relaxed, then the initiation of breath can function much like the force that creates waves in a body of water. The water simply yields to the generative force of the wave, shifting its shape and letting the force pass right through it until the wave reaches its final destination on the beach of an ocean or the shoreline of a lake. Although not so pliable as water itself, our bodies are still highly malleable. Much like the ocean water that yields to the action of waves, our entire body can yield to the force of the breath, allowing it to transfer that force along each and every one of its joints.

Every breath we take is initiated by the contraction of the diaphragm, which draws itself down and pulls air into the lungs. During its subsequent relaxation, the gaseous waste of the body gets expelled from the lungs. The alternating contraction and relaxation of this muscle, like the pump of a Texas oil well that never shuts off, creates a source of perpetual motion in the body. If the body is truly relaxed, then this force of motion will be transferred up and down the body through each and every joint like a cue ball that strikes another ball, which in turn strikes another, until every ball on the billiards table is set in motion. With every inhalation, the contraction of the diaphragm can send forth an initiatory wave of motion that will be transferred up the torso and down the legs. As it simultaneously moves up and down the body, every single bone can move in response to the breath’s force and then transfer the movement to the next bone and then the next one. With every exhalation, the wave of motion will once again contract back down on itself, back to the center of the body from where it began.

In a truly relaxed state, this resilient motion can be felt everywhere in the body. No joint is too small or insignificant to participate in this resilient motion. Even the plates in the skull and the tiny bones in the feet can ever so subtly be felt to move in resilient response to the tidal flows of the breath. From breath to breath, the entire body, not just the diaphragm, can expand and contract in the manner of an amoeba. With every breath, the entire body can participate in this most vital of actions. (For a more detailed examination of how breath can move through the body, see the exercise Full-Bodied Breath in my book The Posture of Meditation [Shambhala Publications, 1996].)

Although this subtle motion can be felt to exist everywhere in the body, its effects are especially apparent in the spine. The individual vertebrae are like dominoes that have been set on their side and lined up in a row, awaiting an initiatory tap that will, one by one, knock them all down. The contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm provide just such a tap, which can dispatch an uninterrupted wave of motion that passes up and down along the vertebrae. To gain a full appreciation for this resilient movement in the spine, you might once again want to walk out to your field or ocean beach or back into your living room, remove your shoes, and bring yourself to balance.

Begin by bringing alignment into your structure so that you can start to feel the buoyant effect of gravity supporting your upright body. By conforming your shape to the vertical, you align your body with the directional flow through which gravity exerts its influence on you. Once you have established your alignment and can begin to feel this sense of support, let your body relax as much as possible. The weight of the body drops downward in response to gravity’s tug, and the sensations deep in the body begin to expand upward and outward as a response to your surrender to gravity, fully in accordance with the law that suggests that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Begin next to focus on the entire length of the spine as you stand and breathe. Let every inhalation you make be accompanied by a renewed surrendering of the weight of the body to the omnipresent pull of gravity. With every inhalation, imagine that you are leaping off a bridge on a hot summer’s day into a cool and inviting pool of water below. Relax completely and let gravity pull you into the refreshing waters. With every inhalation, take a leap of faith and relax the body as fully as possible through dropping your weight in the direction of the diaphragm’s descent downward. From your diaphragm down through your pelvis and legs, it may feel as though you were inhaling deep into the earth, but from your diaphragm up through your torso and head, it will feel as if your body were rising upward, extending itself in the direction of the sky. Feel how the spine lengthens up and down with every inhalation. You can actually feel this lengthening action as though space were being created between the vertebrae. As a child, did you ever remove the paper wrapping from a straw by compressing the length of the wrapper into a multiple series of folds as you pulled it down off the straw? Then, do you remember dropping the smallest bit of water onto the folded wrapper as it sat on the table and watching as the “snake” uncoiled its length? Let the effect on your spine of a relaxed and resilient inhalation be like the drop of water that causes the straw wrapper to lengthen fold by fold.

With every exhalation, this movement is reversed. The overall length of the spine shortens back again down onto itself. As you stand and breathe, experience and appreciate as fully as you possibly can this alternation between the extension and contraction of the spine that can occur through the simple action of a relaxed and resilient pattern of breath. Watch also how this movement gets transferred through the rest of the body as well so that the head bobs up and down on top of the spine and the legs can be felt ever so subtly to rock forward and back. As your awareness of this intrinsic motion becomes more refined, stay as open as you can to all the possible lengthening and shortening motions that want to occur. Rarely will these motions happen only in a straight line up and down. It is much more likely that they will expand and contract in subtle, spiraling motions as though the entire body revolved around the central axis of the spine. Gradually, you will begin to experience that everything moves as you breathe. The whole body participates in the breath.

How does the body feel when you stand and breathe in this way? Can you feel how your sensations soften and become much more gently present? What happens to your mind and its parade of involuntary thoughts when you allow breath to move through the entire body? Doesn’t the parade come gradually to a stop? It is not possible to be lost in thought and experience a fully resilient breath moving along the length of the spine. You may also begin to observe that involuntary thought is always accompanied by a restriction to the free flow of the breath and by a diminution to its volume. When you are lost in thought, the traffic of the breath will have come to a standstill at some point along the spine. Perhaps you will notice a place in your spine that rarely moves. Can you recognize the direct correlation that exists between this restriction and the creation of involuntary thought? Can you gently allow the possibility of movement to begin to occur in this traffic jam?

Keep examining your pattern of breath as you stand and breathe in this way. See how mirrorlike the mind naturally becomes when the spine expands and contracts with each and every breath. When you realize that dust has once again begun to accumulate on the surface of the mirror and the mind has gone off into thought, don’t be too hasty to force a full and resilient breath to move once again through your body. Examine your body instead. Pass your awareness through your spine. Where are you holding still? What part of the spine isn’t moving? Can you feel the pressure and tension that have begun to accumulate in that part of the spine? Only after you have become fully aware of where and how the spine is holding itself still should you begin again to allow a more fully resilient breath to pass through the spine’s length. As you surrender the weight of the body once again to your next inhalation, feel how that part of the spine begins again to move and how the pressure and tension immediately dissipate.

Continue to breathe in this way, allowing the breath to release the tensions and restrictions in your spine as well as the evolutionary energies contained therein. When you can stand in balance, relax the body fully, and allow a fully resilient breath to move through your body, the spine becomes free and loose as though it no longer functioned as a column that labors to bear and support the crushing weight of the body. Suddenly, it feels as though it had begun to float within the fleshy medium of the body, much like the upright strand of sea kelp in an ocean pool or as one of Buckminster Fuller’s tensegrity structures that hovers above the surface of the earth in apparent defiance of the laws of gravity.

Can you continue allowing this fully resilient pattern of breath as you end the exercise and walk back to your home? Can you appreciate that each phase of your breath affects your gait in a slightly different manner in much the same way as the inhalations and exhalations of a racehorse in full gallop affect how it runs? As you walk home, can you continue feeling the expansion and contraction of the spine that occur through the act of resilient breathing? Can you appreciate how clear your mind is, how sharp the visual field appears to you, how bell-like and pure the sounds are, and how unified the sensations of the body feel when you breathe in this way?

Another way in which to experience the union of breath and body is to take the directions to breathe in and out with the whole body quite literally. Ordinarily, we think of breath as an action involving the lungs and diaphragm in much the same way as we think of walking as an action that primarily involves only the legs. The Buddha’s recommendations to us, however, are not just to breathe with the lungs and the diaphragm but to breathe with the entire body. We have already seen how the whole body can be involved in the resilient motions of the breath. Might there also be a way in which we could experience every cell of the body as an organ of respiration?

Return again to your now familiar field, beach, or living room. Remove your shoes and socks (does not the touch of the grass or sand—or carpet or wood—underneath your feet feel delicious?) and once again invite alignment and relaxation into your body. Begin this exercise by moving your attention part by part through the entire body. Kindle a felt awareness of every cell and sensation that exists. Don’t leave out any little part of your body. Feel the entire head, neck, and shoulders, your hands and arms, your torso and pelvis, your legs and feet. Become fully what you are in this moment. Probe the areas of your body whose sensations are dull or indistinct. Include an awareness of these cloudy sensations as well. Don’t overlook them or leave them out because they are not so vibratory as some of their neighbors. Feel the whole body exactly as it is. Feel the whole body all at once as a unified field of shimmering, tactile sensations.

Then begin to blend your awareness of the sensational presence of the body with the action of breath. Simply merge your awareness of inhalation and exhalation with the felt awareness of your entire body. As you breathe in, imagine that the oxygen is directly entering into every cell and sensation of your body. Feel the entire body and open to the fullness of breath. Ordinarily, we breathe very shallowly and are aware of just a fraction of the sensations that exist in the body. See whether you can reverse this customary pattern of breath by holding a relaxed awareness of the entire body from head to foot as you consciously inhale and exhale. If you can feel the whole body all at once while you breathe, you will begin to feel as though the breath were directly activating the sensations of the body, stimulating them with every inhalation and exhalation, spurring them into life and vibrancy. Let every cell and sensation of your body participate in the action of breathing. Let every cell and sensation of your body breathe in and out.

Like a wind moving across the still surface of a lake, causing ripples to form and awaken, the breath can be experienced as moving through the entire body, moving over all the sensations that exist, massaging them, stirring them, waking them from their slumber, bringing them back to life. Visualize your body as an empty container and let a long, slow inhalation fill up every cubic centimeter of this container. Imagine that your entire body is a balloon and that breath can completely fill and penetrate it. Every inhalation draws oxygen down through your legs into every toe as well as up through your torso into your head and through your arms and down into your fingertips. Check your head, heart, belly, and arms. Check your lower centers of sex and support. Is the breath reaching into every one of these areas of the body, stimulating sensations through its penetration and contact? Make sure that you’re opening as fully as possible to the entire range of sensations that you feel and simultaneously fill the container of your body with your breath. As you combine more and more awareness of the whole feeling presence of the body with the conscious action of breath, you will naturally find that your inhalations and exhalations are becoming longer, slower, and smoother. Keep surrendering as fully as possible to the dynamic force of the breath. Let the breath breathe you. Don’t hold back in any way on the full force of the breath or the container of sensations that the breath breathes into and fills. Can you do these two things at once? Can you feel the whole of the body and coordinate that feeling with the conscious awareness of your cycle of breath as it fills, empties, and stimulates the body?

Once you are able to merge the action of breath with the felt presence of the body, expand your awareness so that the breath begins to stimulate and interact with the fields of sound and vision as well. Remember that your perceptions of the sounds and sights around you can be considered to be limbs of a larger body of experience, so see that you can include an awareness of them, too, as you continue to breathe with your whole body. Over time, your experience of this very moment will open and expand dramatically. The life force breathes your body. Your body is everything that you can experience right now, a unified vessel through which the life-giving wind of breath blows and rushes. Your body is all of your sensations that are here to be felt, all of the sounds that are present to be heard, all of the sights that are here to be seen, all of the mind that can coordinate the simultaneous awareness of these three primary sensory fields and the ongoing action of your breath. Can you feel your breath moving through this larger body of experience? Can your breath and this larger body of experience become one as well?

What has happened to your mind and your thoughts when you breathe in this way? When breath fills the whole body, there is no room for thought to reside. What has happened to your notions about who you are when this pattern and awareness of breath become natural? Breath can be felt to exist. Your body, with its perceptual fields and physical limbs aligned and relaxed, can be felt to exist. Pervading this merged experience is a palpable feeling of union. Everything is related. Everything is held together through the potent tides of the breath. Breath, body, and senses all come together in a single experience. Although a profound feeling of grace may accompany this merged awareness, nothing could feel more natural.

Holding back on breath is like holding back on sensations. Both are oceanic forces, hammering away at the flimsy breakwaters of our resistance, entreating us to let them come through. The posture of meditation turns the body into a channel or conduit through which these forces can run freely, like a child racing through a meadow of tall summer grass, joyous, uninhibited, abandoned to the delight of the play. Breathing is a joyous and precious event. It’s here for the taking, free to all of us who hunger for its nourishment. Every breath you take could be a joyous act, a deep surrender to the mystery of life in all its potency and force. Let breath become an act of surrender to the urgency of the life force, just as dropping the weight of your body and mind is an act of surrender to the potent pull of gravity.

You don’t have to force deep and full breaths to come in to activate an awareness of the whole body. All you need to do is surrender to this most powerful bellows. Like a blind musician who plays an accordion on the street corner for hours without end, letting music come through him from sources unseen, abandon yourself to the force of the breath, inhaling and exhaling with joy and intention. Breath wants you. Breath wants to breathe you. The life force wants to burst forth through you in all its bright intensity and magnificence. Can you feel its force like a crowd of people clamoring to enter an arena where the event of their lives awaits them? As you align and relax the body, can you surrender totally to this extraordinary force that wants to tear through you, filling you with its benediction, emptying you of your sorrow, draining off the residual pains of your body and the negative thought forms of the mind? Like your earlier steps and your movements, can you take each breath as though your life depended on it?

Imagine that your body is a flute and that God is blowing life into you through each and every breath you take. What are your notes like? Are they pure and full and rich, or can you barely hear them? What kind of music will you play? What kind of music do you want your life to be about? A master flute player knows that the sound of the notes is all in the breath. Can you become a worthy vessel for the breath of God to move through? Can you become a hollow bamboo free of fearful withholding and restriction, a clear channel for the best that a human being can be? Can you make your flute straight? Can you relax its tensions so that the notes come through like velvet? Can you surrender totally to the breath as it passes through your body, making real the music of your dreams?