Meditation For All

This is a continuing instruction series focusing on the fundamentals of meditation. Your instructor for this series is renowned meditation teacher, Mary Ellen Flora.

Class Five: Quieting Your Body

To meditate you need to quiet your body’s emotions and intellect in order to tune into your spiritual vibration. You do not turn your emotions or intellect off, you simply quiet them. Like a radio needs to be set on a specific wave length to receive the music and on a comfortable sound level to enjoy it, you need to quiet the body’s vibrations to receive your spiritual energy and also be physically conscious of you, the spirit. Your body is your communication and creative system for you the spirit. Your body has unique characteristics that are opposite of you the spirit. Your body uses emotions and its intellect to communicate and you need to remember how to use and relate to the body’s messages to respond beneficially.

Know that you are spirit and not your body. The body has emotions and intellect and you, the spirit, do not so you need to learn how to relate to your body’s messages to understand your body. For example, the body could be expressing sadness and you are ignoring its message. By acknowledging your body’s sadness you validate your body and its experience. This allows you, the spirit, to respond by allowing the body to cry or be angry and take time to release the sadness and move on in your creativity.

It is tempting to ignore the body’s emotions but if you do, the emotions can make the body sick. Spirit needs to listen and respond to its body in order to use the body effectively. Allow your body to communicate to you with its emotions and you, the spirit, will know what is happening in your physical world and can respond.

The body’s intellect is another way it communicates with you to create your physical life. In meditation you need to quiet the chatter of both the emotions and the intellect to hear these messages clearly so you can respond. Quieting the body allows your spiritual vibration to sing through. Begin with a hello to your body, acknowledge its messages and it will cooperate with you in meditation.

SIT IN YOUR MEDITATION POSTURE. Use your awareness that you are spirit to help you tune into your spiritual vibration.

SIT QUIETLY and use your breathing to help you relax.

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY and discover its main emotion at this moment.

ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR EMOTION. Say hello to your body and allow it to be as it is.

USE YOUR BREATHING to communicate with your body. Breathe into your emotion, allow it without being overworked by it.

RISE ABOVE the emotion as spirit and also allow your body to express itself.

TUNE IN TO your body’s main intellectual chatter. Use your breathing to help you calm your body and quiet the chatter enough for a comfortable interaction.

RESPOND TO YOUR BODY’S intellectual message without being overwhelmed by it.

FOCUS ON YOUR BREATHING to help you quiet your body’s emotions and intellect.

BE STILL AND ALLOW your spiritual awareness to come into your physical consciousness as you recognize and release your body’s messages.

PRACTICE: Meditate on recognizing and releasing your body’s main emotion.