Relaxing the Mind through our Body: Thoughts from the Big Tree Standing Meditation

Feb. 04
The mind is such an interesting character!

It wants to get in the middle of everything, here and now, past and future, and everywhere else.

I find it easier to relax the mind during standing meditation rather than sitting for novice meditators. When I practice standing meditation, my body adjusts. Different parts of the body shows discomfort, letting me know that there is something wrong there and need some healing attention. I learned along the way to hear my body, notice the subtle communication. This is when I surround the areas with relaxed awareness. Some of them let go, release. My body realigns, bit by bit.

Some areas are stubborn and continue to build to ache. This is when my mind starts to chatter. The volume gradually cranks up to a low roar, then sharp screams, all in the best tradition of “dramatizing” the pain.

This is when I relax the muscles around the brain, especially the frontal lobe, the forehead. Then the mind has to give up control. Thoughts get dropped—like puff of smoke disappearing into flowing air.

Right away, pain lessens by more than half. Tightness melts. Locked places open. Areas that were just screaming a moment ago relax, release, let go—fast.

I smile at my self-assumed busy mind. The smile naturally relaxes the muscles around the brain, takes power away from the mind. Relaxed awareness, like air leaking out of a blown-up puff fish, releases into the rest of the body—long, soft, smooth breaths, circulating and opening all the tense, not-yet-relaxed areas in the body.

The body calms. Energy flows freely and calmly. My spirit eases and comes into a stillness. The brightest clarity ensues.

When the body, energy and spirit stay calm for a while, time as we know it doesn’t exist anymore. It becomes expansive like the universe. Our physical matter becomes lighter. We feel the distant space between and within atoms in our body. We feel qi—the quantum connective tissue to all in the universe. When we feel this essence of self and everything else, a sense of elated joy permeates all of our awareness.

We are expanded into time and space, ageless and connected.

Isn’t it lucky that we have a body, that it does not let us ignore it too easily. So perhaps we will eventually learn our lessons, learn about ourselves through our tool.