Tag: locating your centre

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you are in the centre of the energy of your life, then you are general going to be and feel in control. If you are on the edge of the energy in your life, being pushed around and buffeted by its currents, then things can really feel like a struggle. This weeks article explores a practical exercise in how to find your centre and stay there!

Yours in the spirit of deep centring,
Toby

Locating Your Deep Centre

The following is an exercise that you can do at the beginning of a meditation, or anytime you want to balance and centre your body-mind. It can also be done over a slightly longer period of time as a meditation in and of itself.
It can be done when you feel upset or out of balance, or as a method for finding deep stillness.
In general the energy that occupies your bodies centre or core is the energy that will be running your life. This exercise helps you to bring conscious awareness and balanced energy into the core of your being, thus giving you greater autonomy, choice and control over your body, mind and life.

Step 1: Aligning your body – Sit comfortably with your hips, abdomen, chest/shoulders, neck and head stacked one on top of the other like a pile of bricks. This allows the weight of your upper body to travel comfortably down your torso into the hips with minimal effort needed to sustain a vertical sitting posture.

Step 2: Finding your vertical core – Visualize a line of light and energy coming down from the sky through the dead centre of your crown, brain, neck, chest, abdomen and hips, exiting through the perineum (mid-point between the legs) and continuing down into the centre of the earth. This line of energy is your body’s vertical core.

Step 3: Balancing the front and back of your body – Now with small movements of only a centimetre or two, rock your body backwards and forwards. As you do so feel the front and back halves of your body coming into alignment with each other around the vertical line of light in the centre of your body.

Step 4: Balancing the left and right halves of the body- Now rock your body sideways with small movements. As you do so, feel the left and right halves of your torso and body coming into alignment with each other. With the completion of steps 3&4 you now feel that the front and back halves and the left and right halves of your body in a state of balance and harmony with each other around your bodies vertical core.

Step 5: Finding the deep centre of your body – Now look for the deep centre of your torso and body. This will be along the vertical core of your body, somewhere between the chest and solar plexus level. Note you are not trying to find a chakra or anything like that, you are trying to find the literal ‘dead-centre’ or bulls-eye of your body – its middle point.
Once you have found it, visualize it as a ball of light about the size of a golf ball. As you breathe in breathe your awareness into the deep centre of your body, as you breathe out feel light and energy from your deep centre expanding out into your body-mind, bringing stability, poise, balance and harmony to it.

Optional Step 6: Going cosmic – If you want to prod the enlightenment experience a little with this exercise (and why not?) as you breathe into your deep centre feel yourself connecting to the centre of your spiritual self, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. As you breathe out feel your awareness expanding out from your deep centre into a space of eternity and infinity.

Rest in the awareness of your deep centre for a while, when you feel ready you can return to your daily life aligned and re-centred!