Home & Lifestyle, Wellness
Guided Meditation: Dropping In
Lesson time 22:55 min
Jon leads you through the first guided meditation of his class and explains what it means to “drop in” to awareness.
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Topics include: Guided Meditation: Dropping In
Teaches Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches you how to incorporate meditation into your everyday life to improve your health and happiness.
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[BELL RINGING] So this is kind of meant to be a kind of introduction to formal meditation practice, which we're going to be diving into from a lot of different angles in various ways. But for now, let's just establish ourself in a posture that embodies wakefulness and dignity, as you're gazing at the image on your screen. And the invitation is to kind of just drop in, feeling your body. If you care to, you can bring awareness to a sense of the carriage of the body, how the body is sitting in space on the chair. How the spine comes out of the pelvis, how the shoulders are on the rib cage, how the head and neck are positioned. There's no one right way to do it, and it's not about sort of ramrod stiff or anything like that. But to simply drop into the body as a whole sitting and, guess what, breathing. By the way you can do this with your eyes closed. I give you permission to not look at me on the screen, or you can do it with your eyes open. The important thing to remember, although I've used the verb doing, is that it's not a doing. You're just dropping into being, and what's coming at you through the eyes, through the ears, through proprioception, through all the other senses are just part of the domain of present moment experience. And we're focusing at the moment on the carriage of the body sitting, in my case on the chair, in your case whatever you're sitting on. And let's just drop into one element of the experiencing of the body sitting here, and that is that it's breathing. So one thing that you can do is actually focus in on the breath sensations in the body, because it's a very, very effective way of stabilizing the mind and grounding it in the present moment. So seeing if you can just feel someplace in the body, the sensations associated with this breath coming in. And then this breath leaving the body, and then this breath coming in, and then this breath leaving. Now, we're not trying to push or pull the breath. We're simply being breathed, so to speak, letting it simply flow in and out of its own accord, but we're feeling it in the body. And be aware of where you've chosen to attend to it, where the mind has alighted in the body to feel the breath, especially if you're brand new to it. This is part of the adventure. Where do you feel the breath? So very often, people will feel it at the nostrils, because like that's a no-brainer. And yes, you can notice that you can bring your attention right to the tip of the nose and the openings of the nostrils, and you can feel the air moving in and out. And so that's a perfectly valid location for our attention, but if you're playful about it, and you want to explore a little bit more, where else can you feel the breath in this moment in the body? As I do it, I'm noticing that my belly is actually expanding every time the breath comes in. And the belly is deflating somewhat every time the breath goes out, almost as if there were a balloon in the belly. So can we feel it for...
About the Instructor
A pioneer of the Western mindfulness movement, Jon Kabat-Zinn has spent more than 40 years studying, teaching, and advocating the benefits of mindfulness. In his MasterClass, he teaches you how to cultivate a mindfulness practice, reduce your stress, and soothe your thoughts with meditation and movement. Jon shares expert tips and guidance that meets you where you are. Let this class help you make the most of being alive.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn teaches you how to incorporate meditation into your everyday life to improve your health and happiness.
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