28-Day Meditation Challenge: Day 14
February 14, 2012 § Leave a comment
It’s Day 14 of the 28-Day Meditation Challenge and it also happens to be Valentine’s day OR Singles’ Awareness Day, depending on which one you prefer to celebrate. I’m going to celebrate love today. Corny, silly, nasty, naughty, bodacious, bold, bad, tender, sad, all the flavors of love.
My physical practice for the past couple of weeks has been working to incorporate a lift of the thoracic spine. I got a particularly wonderful adjustment from my chiropractor and wanted to find a way to keep that upright lifted alignment using the least amount of force (something I learned from studying the Alexander technique). For me this means allowing the shoulder blades to relax down the back, then the bottom inner edges of the shoulder blades can slide toward each other and provide support for the opening and lift of the heart center.
This idea of a podium, or throne, for my heart engages me physically, energetically, and spiritually. It’s a way for me to elevate the heart to a place of importance in my overall sense of myself. Instead of thinking about the world and my place in it, I get to feel the details of my experience in the world and ground my actions in heart-felt truth.
In my meditation practice on the cushion I notice the breath as it fills the space beneath the heart and then softly dissolves out into the world. My felt sense of the breath is strongest around the ribs and the belly, nothing the expansion and contraction as the diaphragm opens like an umbrella to inflate the lungs and then closes effortlessly to release the pressure. Breath is the magical anchor.
Simple, sweet, unambiguous, present, unbiased, honest, direct, impermanent, ever-changing, spontaneous, curious, lovely, divine… the breath is my constant companion. What better way to express and embody love than to sit and attend to this breath? This inhale, this exhale, this body, this moment…. one love.
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Check out all The Interdependence Project Blog team posts for the 28-Day Meditation Challenge.
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