4 part tuning-in meditation

…can be used as a meditation, during yoga, and in the moment…

1. Awareness inside your body – grounding yourself in your body.  Anyway that works.  Potentially – awareness radiating from the center of your body, just below your navel, all the way to the periphery of the skin – head, feet, hands, everywhere.  Simultaneously drawing awareness back from the periphery to hold the center.  Soften back into yourself.  It can go back and forth – outward, inward – and eventually, both at the same time.  Aliveness in the whole body.  Expansion and centeredness.  Balanced.
2. Awareness of the room around you – the temperature, the atmosphere, anyone there with you.  Without having to engage or ignore, staying in your body and aware of what’s around you.
3. Hear the sounds – without grasping to listen, let the sound come to you, in through your ears and translated on your eardrums.  Feel the sound in your body.
4. Feel the breath breathing – as the breath comes in and fills you, you expand from the center of the chest, as the breath leaves, your body condenses back into the center of the chest.  As if you are breathed in and out of the heart, your whole body breathed like one giant lung.

All the while staying grounded in the body, eventually all four parts at the same time.  Whenever you find yourself distracted, just start over…

adapted from a practice by Parvathi Nanda Nath Sarasvati

we are all part of the whole and whole in ourselves…

om purnamadah purnamidam purnat purnamudacyate
purnasya purnamadaya purnameva vashisyate

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पुर्णमुदच्यते
पूर्णश्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥

That, macrocosm, is whole. This, microcosm, is whole. If you take away a part of the whole, this from that, microcosm from macrocosm, the whole, macrocosm, is still whole and complete, and the part, microcosm, is still whole and complete. Never separate. We are all a part of the whole and whole in ourselves.

8 limbs of yoga, simplified

1. stabilizing how we relate with others:
non-violence, honesty, non-stealing, sharing, respect
2. stabilizing how we relate to ourselves:
purity, acceptance, perseverance, knowing ourselves, recognizing it’s not all just about us alone – its all of us as one
3. fine tuning our body and our relationship to the physical plane
4. regulating our breath and energy
5. our senses and impulse control
6. focusing our mind – concentration
7. becoming present, awareness awakens
8. sustaining awareness, being awake