How To Create a Spacious & Peaceful Mind - Guided Meditation With Zen Master Henry Shukman #643

0:03Hey guys, how are you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. As you may know, all throughout March, I've been releasing short 10-minute meditations from Henry Shukman every single Sunday to inspire you to join our 30-day meditation challenge with The Way. Now, throughout the month, over 25 ,000 people around the world have taken part in the challenge. And I'm delighted to share with you that there have been over 300 ,000 completed meditations so far and an incredible 7.63 million minutes of meditation completed throughout the month.

0:52Thank you so much to all of you who have taken part. I really hope it has shown you how just a few minutes of practice each day can have a transformative impact on the way you experience life. And I hope that some of you will continue with the practice beyond March. If you didn't manage to join us but are still keen to give it a go, please don't worry, it's never too late to start. All you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more to sign up and access your 30 free meditation sessions. And now, for the last time this month, here's another Shorts Meditation with Henry.

1:36Henry Shukman:Welcome back to another meditation with me, Henry Shookman. So meditation is a wonderful practice for resetting our nervous system, for recalibrating our nervous system, so we're more centered and grounded and really can feel more calm and are less liable to be taken out by our reactivity. It's great for all of that. And that's the primary reason probably why most of us take it up. It certainly was my reason. I'd grown up with a lot of stress and I didn't know it actually. But when I began to meditate, I really felt the difference that I was living with a calmer, better adjusted nervous system.

2:20Henry Shukman:and it made a tremendous difference. However, there is actually also a deeper side to meditation. And this is why I believe it survived for thousands and thousands of years. It can open us up to discoveries about the very nature of who and what we are and what our real relationship to this world is. Of course, our real relationship is just as we imagine it to be and feel it to be that we're moving through this world, trying to arrange things the best we can for ourselves and for those around us and perhaps we have wider circles of concern. And at the same time, there's another side to it, which these deep meditation traditions have known about, where we find there's a boundlessness and there's a way that we're not separate from anything at the deepest level.

3:14so in this meditation we're going to just explore a little bit whether we can get some taste of

3:23Henry Shukman:these deeper sides of the practice but this is not something you have to do in any special way it's just about dropping into ourselves being present to ourselves and seeing what we find so let's get comfortable in a seated position I invite you to just sway a little bit from side to side if that's comfortable for you or perhaps rock backwards and forwards just as a way of settling in and finding your own way to the comfortableness that your body can feel close the eyes or lower the gaze and we start to drop in so start to sense your body as a cloud of softness can you let your whole body become a little bit floppy so you stay upright if you're sitting upright You stay upright, and yet you're like a rag doll.

4:38Henry Shukman:There's no holding in the body, just a gentle tide of releasing, of relaxing.

4:50Lovely.

4:52Henry Shukman:And becoming aware, so we're aware of the sounds around us. let's just have a little spell of listening.

5:07Henry Shukman:Just hearing the sounds perhaps of the building that you're in

5:16Henry Shukman:or of the world outside.

5:22Henry Shukman:Just listen.

5:28You don't have to do anything special, just noticing the soundscape.

5:49Great.

5:51Henry Shukman:Now let's notice the field of body sensations. Notice your feet on the floor.

6:00Henry Shukman:Notice the pressure where your buttocks meet your seat.

6:11Henry Shukman:Notice how your skin feels where clothing is touching it, keeping it warm.

6:24Henry Shukman:notice where your skin is exposed perhaps the face and hands

6:37Henry Shukman:and let's see if we can detect a subtle energy field all through the body perhaps a sense of warmth within the body

6:52Henry Shukman:or perhaps a very light, subtle tingle in parts of the body.

7:02Henry Shukman:Whatever you're feeling is just fine. Just be with the sensations of the body.

7:16Henry Shukman:now and again thoughts will arise it's completely natural when they do when we notice that we've been thinking just acknowledge it by saying to yourself in your mind the word thinking thinking. It's just a little label to acknowledge what's been going on and then come back to being aware of the body, of the field of sound all around you, of just being present. no need to do anything special just being present and aware

8:13Henry Shukman:so can we notice that whatever we experience whether it's sounds, body sensations thoughts, they all arise within a kind of awareness. Without awareness, we wouldn't notice these sense experiences. Awareness is here to meet our experience. So the invitation now is to see whether we can just become a little bit more aware of awareness. so it might sound a little strange or paradoxical but is there a way you can sense your very own presence your aware presence as something like a broad field within which sounds arise within which body sensations appear as if there's something like a background to all our experience and this is what our awareness really is like a backdrop or a screen almost on which, in which within which all our known experience arises.

10:13Henry Shukman:So the invitation is to just, as it were, fall back a little bit, come backwards just a little bit, as it were, into the breadth of awareness that allows and welcomes and recognizes all our experience.

10:48Henry Shukman:Again, this isn't something special or some kind of meditative accomplishment, not the least of it. It's simply recognizing a quality of awareness that's always been with us and that's here right now. A simple presence.

11:20Henry Shukman:A being here.

11:27An awareness. That's here.

11:34Henry Shukman:Right now. And has always been here. For us.

11:44Henry Shukman:it's really part of our own nature it's part of our makeup

11:56Henry Shukman:it's a lovely thing to sense in however small a way we get a sense of it welcoming awareness or presence

12:18Henry Shukman:okay let's gently come out of this meditation i invite you to move your body a little bit however feels good to open your eyes or raise your your gaze come back have a little stretch if that feels good yeah i i know that what we've just been doing might seem a little strange or abstruse or something but it really is about something very commonplace that's just here all the time and just learning to recognize it or getting little invitations back into our native awareness can be a really helpful thing. And over time, we get to drop into it more easily. Thank you so much for joining me on these meditations and for this little journey into the world of meditation.

13:14Henry Shukman:I'm very grateful for the opportunity to share this practice with you. And I wish you a very fine rest of your day. So how was that for you? How do you feel now compared to when you started. You see, just a few minutes of meditation each morning helps me start off each day feeling calmer, grounded, and more present. So if you want to join this free 30-day meditation challenge, all you have to do is go to thewayapp.com forward slash live more to sign up and receive practical tips, exclusive content, and 30 free meditation sessions to get you started.

14:05If you enjoyed today's episode, it is always appreciated if you can take a moment to share the podcast with your friends and family or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. Have a wonderful week. And always remember, you are the architect of your own health making lifestyle change is always worth it because when you feel better you live more