“Breathe into the fullness of your attention and intention. Breathe out relax into the freedom of awareness. At the bottom of the breath rest in stillness”
Dear Toby,
This week’s article focuses on centering as a theme, & outlines a practice that you can do to help you center effectively in a number of key ways…
If you enjoy the article, you can explore aspects of it at this weeks Tuesday or Wednesday class, live or online.
And heads up for anyone who may be interested in the Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop on the 28th September.
In the spirit of centered-ness,
Toby
Anchoring & moving from center
In this article I want to bring together a few techniques into a ‘Form’. A form basically means a practice that is quite simple, and can be done at the level of the person doing it, beginner or more advanced. The characteristic of a form is that it grows with the abilty of the practitioner, thus remaining relevant to us as we grow. The three domains we bring together in this form are:
- Physical and energetic centering
- The ‘holy trinity’ of integral mindfulness; intention, attention and awareness
- Our foundational freedom, fullness, and stillness
Centering
Imagine a line of light coming down from the sky. Imagine it descending through the crown of your head, and down through the dead-center of your body, brain, neck, chest, abdomen hips. It then leaves through your perineum and descends into the earth moving through the center of the Earth’s core. Feel this line of light to be in the middle of the front and back, left and right halves of your body. As you breathe in, breathe your energy into this ‘vertical core’ of your body, as you breathe out, feel yourself relaxing from center, from the core to the periphery of your body.**
After few breaths, locate the mid-point of your vertical core between your crown and your perineum. This is the mid-point of your torso, the absolute physical centre. Imagine this as a point of light, somewhere between your heart-centre and solar-plexus. Breathe into this mid-point, gathering your energy & power there. Breathe out, relax from your mid-point. Feel the inner balance that this practice starts to give rise to.
Aligning your mindfulness with your center
Now imagine that the three foundations of mindfulness, your intention, attention and awareness (IAA) are all focused within your vertical core, and particularly your mid-point/center. If you like, imagine your mid-point becomes like a little sun, shining your intention, attention and awareness out from your centre in a balanced, powerful and harmonious manner. Initially you can keep this a general feeling around your IAA, but then if you like you can make it into a practice around a specific domain of your life, reflecting upon particular intentions, and ways of directing your attention and awareness in this situation. Just centring your IAA and then holding a situation in mind, seeing if from this balanced point of center can be a surprisingly powerful and useful practice.
Relaxing into freedom, fullness and stillness
As you breathe in, imagine the sun-like fullness of your balanced intention glowing brightly. As you breathe out, imagine it shining out into the freedom of your sky-like awareness. Enjoy this feeling of freedom and fullness. If you like. As you reach the end of your exhalation, pause briefly, and relax into the physical and mental stillness in that pause. So, then we have:
- Breathing into the fullness of attention and intention
- Breathing out relaxing into the freedom of awareness
- At the bottom of the breath resting in stillness
There is a lot in this form, but I hope you can see that the basic elements are really quite simple. The felt benefits are fairly immediate, and as your practice deepens, so will your experience of the form!
**When people start to meditate, quite often they notice that they feel ‘lop-sided’ with one side of the body feeling full of energy and the opposite side feeling empty or without feeling. Centering practice can really help with the re-balancing of this.
Related reading: Locating your deep centre
The holy trinity of mindfulness
Sky & sun, freedom & fullness
Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
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