Home & Lifestyle, Wellness
Guided Meditation: The Mountain
Lesson time 21:29 min
Discover how to face stress with the strength of a mountain in this guided meditation.
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Topics include: Guided Meditation: The Mountain
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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- Let's settle ourselves in a seated posture like this on the floor if you care to wear on a chair. And just experience the body sitting here however it is, and just do something comfortable with the arms and the hands, whatever your body tells you is best for right now. And let's bring awareness to the fact that we're breathing as we sit here, once again dropping in and riding moment by moment by moment on the waves of the breath, this breath coming in and this breath leaving the body. I'd like to now invite you to picture in your mind's eye-- and it may be very helpful to have your eyes closed for this-- to picture in your mind's eye a mountain, maybe a mountain that you know and love and have seen or have climbed or live near or one that you've only seen in pictures. And there might be a favorite, or it might just come to mind at this moment. Or imagining a mountain if you care to, but in your mind's eye seeing if you can allow it to become vivid and stable and noticing its features, how it rises up out of the Earth, how it has gently or steeply sloping sides, its lofty peak or mesa-like top if it's a flat expanse. Perhaps, the peak is covered with snow. Perhaps, it's forested on the lower elevations. But seeing it from far enough distance in your mind's eye so that you can see the entirety of the mountain against the sky, and maybe it has multiple peaks. It was part of a mountain range, whatever you're experiencing inwardly as you invite this image in. And now as best you can without forcing anything seeing if you can actually bring the image of this mountain to coincide with the felt sense of your body sitting here so that you actually become the mountain and your stable base is the stable base of the mountain rooted in the crust of the Earth. And your arms and sides and shoulders and neck are all the various angles of the sides of the mountain, and your neck and head are the lofty peak. And just sitting here as the mountain, no separation. In your mind's eye feeling the rootedness to the earth, the grounding. The rock-like solidity of the base of the mountain. And feeling that solidity and stability in all the areas of your body that are supporting your sitting. And then feeling the gently sloping or steeply sloping sides of the mountain and the shoulders until you are at the lofty peak and the head. And one of the virtues of the peak, of course, is that on a clear day, the perspective is panoramic in all directions and seeing if you can actually feel that as we sit here, that you are the mountain, and on a clear day in this moment you have that vast, inclusive, spacious, open perspective in all directions, and that you're a completely at home, you completely belong right here rooted to your cushion, stable in your body. And even with your eyes closed, the vast panorama of awareness itself, boundless, skylight extending out forever. Now as the mountain sits being itself, of course, in every moment the sun is ...
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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