Meditation Series Activity 4
- Angela Vecchione
- May 1, 2020
- 3 min read
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About the Series
This meditation series is inspired by the book, The Dance: Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life, by Oriah. Combining storytelling and meditation prompts, this work guides the reader on an investigation of personal and spiritual development.
About the Activity
I offer the following meditation that you may approach in stillness or with movement. Please be mindful of your surroundings and only practice what is safe and reasonable for your body at this time.
Here I have included a quote from Oriah's poem, "The Dance" as it pertains specifically to this activity:
Tell me a story of who you are,
and see who I am in the stories I live.
And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.
The full poem can be found at this link.
Activity 4
Throughout this activity I will denote direct quotes from Oriah's "Meditation for Being with Yourself" from chapter 4 of The Dance: Moving to the Deep Rhythms of Your Life with quotation marks. All quotes are directly from this text published by HarperSanFrancisco, A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers.
Oriah takes inspiration from the Buddhist practice of "tonglen" taught by Pema Chodron. According to an article written by Chodron in the Lion's Roar, this meditation requires a practitioner to, "breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us. Use what seems like poison as medicine." You can find details on the four stages of tonglen at this article on the Lion's Roar website.
Oriah says, "I focus on receiving and sitting intimately with those feelings I usually try to get rid of and giving away those feelings I generally try to hang onto." Tonglen asks you to be aware of sending and receiving.
Breathe in through the nose and exhale through the mouth. Oriah suggests, "on each exhale, inwardly tell yourself to 'let go.'" Allow the feeling of letting go to translate into your tense muscles. Let your bones become heavy and fall down towards the earth. Let go of any tension in any part of the body, mind or heart. Increase the amount of what you let go with the length of your exhale, each breath becoming longer and more intentional.
Bring awareness to you and what is around you. How are your sensations responding to this moment? What is your location and where do you fit into the space you are inhabiting? Oriah asks us to, "neither resist nor focus on these sensations, but simply notice them." Keep your attention on the breath. Pema Chodron offers that with each inhale you breathe in darkness, closeness, constrict and feel full. With each exhale you breathe out light, expand and feel empty. Continue this visualization until the images align with the unique rhythm of your breath cycles.
Reflect on your day. What did you do? Where did you go? How did the way your spent your time make you feel? Oriah asks us to, "let yourself stay with these feelings, breathing them in, getting a little closer to the depth and breadth and color of each feeling. Notice which feelings you want to stay with and which feelings you want to push away."
Land on one memory of feeling of discomfort. Oriah now asks us to, "breathe into any places in your body or heart that resist this feeling, and let them soften a little in their resistance...As you breathe in a feeling you would normally want to get away from, breathe out a feeling you would usually want to hang onto, sharing it with others in the world."
Challenge your inclination to take possession of and hold onto what might feel "good" to you and what you have claimed belongs to you. Share that good feeling with the world.
Challenge your inclination to avoid what might feel "bad" to you and what you would normally quickly run away from. Take time to sit with this discomfort and allow yourself to get to know it.
Follow Up
I want to thank Oriah for permitting me to quote parts of her "Meditation for Being with Yourself" for this activity. If you would like, please comment on this blog post with any feedback for me or use this space to safely share and discuss anything that came up for you during this meditation. You can continue participating in this series every Friday when I go live on my Instagram, here. Thank you for participating!!
***This is a donation-based offering for my community through my blog and Instagram account. If you are interested in supporting this series and want to help make more opportunities like this available, please consider supporting me on Venmo at @Angela-Vecchione
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