Meditation Skill 01

Intentional relaxation and tuning into how nice it feels will train your mind to let go of the world around you and cultivate a sense of restful awareness within your body. Gentle diaphragmatic (belly) breathing is a natural doorway to developing deep physical relaxation that will lower your experience of stress and increase your body awareness during meditation and throughout the day.

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• Set a countdown timer on your phone (set to Do Not Disturb) and place it behind you. 
• Meditation Length: Meditate for 20 min initially, gradually increasing to 30 min.
• Benefits: This Meditation Skill will teach you how to lower your experience of physical restlessness and access the first stage of meditation, feeling comfortable in your body.

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Meditation Instructions:

When joined, the following five steps create the complete meditation for Skill 01: Body Relaxation. Learn each step individually and then, when comfortable, combine them all together. For insight, be curious about how to calm restlessness and appreciate the feeling of relaxation that comes with it.

• YouTube: Video Instructions.
• SoundCloud: Guided Meditation.
• PDF: Detailed Meditation Instructions Skill 01.

Step 1:  Preparation for meditation.

In this meditation, you move from lying down in Skill 00 to sitting upright with your legs crossed on a cushion on the floor, on a kneeling stool, or resting on a comfortable, supportive chair. 

• Prepare your body: Sit in meditation with one palm resting in the other in your lap, with your thumbs lightly touching, and relax back into the awareness of your whole body. This quality of being aware of your body sits in the background as you meditate.
• Prepare your mind: To begin your meditation, gently close your eyelids by relaxing them, and then reflect on simple things in your life you are grateful for to uplift your mind. Notice the pleasant feeling of being thankful in your body and mind.

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Step 2: Develop mindfulness. 

Mindfulness is the meditative skill of gently remembering (keeping in mind) what you are experiencing now in your body, mind and senses. Mindfulness counters mind wandering and is exercised by putting gentle effort toward remembering an experience that is present to you.

• Be mindful of sound: To cultivate mindfulness, gradually include simple, present experiences into your awareness. First, actively listen to the sounds around you, their flow and change, and allow the presence of the sound to develop mindfulness by grounding you in the present. 
• Be mindful of touch: As you relax, you will become aware of the borders of your body. Gradually include within your awareness the sensation of your clothing touching your body, the coolness/warmth of air touching your skin, and the pressure of your hands resting in your lap. 
• Tip: Learning to tune into how nice it feels to set aside complexity and be present in these simple experiences is the key to deepening meditation.

Step 3: Relax your body with slow breaths.

In MIDL, these slow, relaxing breaths are known as softening breaths because your body and mind become softer as you relax. Finding enjoyment in taking slow, softening breaths is the key to deepening calm and insight as your meditation path deepens.

• Relax with belly breaths: To relax awareness further into your body, take five softening breaths by slowly moving your belly outward and then slowly lowering it back, as you did in Skill 00. Tip: Finding the pleasant feeling in each slow belly breath will deepen relaxation.
• Relax with full breaths: Take five more slow breaths, starting in your belly, bringing the breath up to fill your chest, and then, with each out-breath, allow your whole body to relax while being aware of how nice that relaxation feels.

Step 4: Enjoy the relaxation.

• After taking these softening breaths, allow your breathing to return to its natural rhythm and enjoy the growing relaxation and comfort in your body for the rest of the meditation. 

Tip: At this stage of meditation, thinking about the past and future and mind wandering are not a problem; your main aim is to settle feelings of restlessness in your body that come from stress or anxiety developed throughout the day. To develop insight, take an interest in any feelings of restlessness or the desire to move your body around. Playfully, learn how to settle these feelings of restlessness by using slow belly breaths, as learnt above, to develop comfort and ease in your body. When repeated in this way, physical restlessness will come up less in your meditation, and this relaxation will begin to appear in small gaps in your daily life.

Tip: Each of us comes to meditation with different patterns of behaviour that have been developed in our lives to protect ourselves from discomfort and unpleasant situations. If your mind is becoming possessive in the steps of meditation, leading to overthinking and frustration, follow the steps in the Insight into Physical Restlessness Section below on how to meditate to waken OCD.

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Progression in mindfulness of breathing can be accurately tracked by observing your ability to access the Meditation Markers. This can be done by developing insight into their associated Meditative Hindrances and changing the conditions that support them. 

Insight: Insight is developed in this stage of mindfulness of breathing, by being curious about creating the conditions that support Marker 01: Body Relaxation, to weaken the conditions that support Hindrance 01: Physical Restlessness. 

Progression Map for Mindfulness of Breathing

Meditative Hindrances.                     Meditation Markers.

(Hindrances to calm).                         (Signs of deepening calm).

                                                              00: Diaphragm Breathing.

01: Physical Restlessness.      →    01: Body Relaxation.

02: Mental Restlessness.                  02: Mind Relaxation.

03: Sleepiness & Dullness.                03: Mindful Presence.

04: Habitual Forgetting.                     04: Content & Happy.

05: Habitual Control.                          05: Natural Breathing.

06: Mind Wandering.                          06: Length of Each Breath.

07: Gross Dullness.                            07: Breath Sensations.

08: Subtle Dullness.                           08: One Point of Sensation.

09: Subtle Wandering.                       09: Sustained Attention.

10: Sensory Stimulation.                  10: Whole-Body Breathing.

11: Anticipation of Pleasure.           11: Sustained Awareness.

12: Fear of Letting Go.                      12: Access Concentration.

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Meditative Hindrance. 

Physical Restlessness (01).

Unable to experience physical comfort.

Physical Restlessness refers to the feeling of being unsettled in your body, which prompts you to move around and fidget to find comfort during meditation. It occurs during meditation due to the build-up of energy from stress, aversion, or overstimulation in our daily lives. Simplifying your life and relaxing with slow, softening breaths will lower your experience of stress and anxiety and weaken your desire to distract yourself with sensory stimulation.

Antidote. 

Developing your skill in relaxing your body creates the conditions for Marker 01, and is the antidote for the Hindrance of Physical Restlessness. To settle physical restlessness, cultivate curiosity about finding enjoyment in relaxing your body through slow, gentle belly breaths. The key is that as you let a breath out, allow a part of your body, such as your shoulders, to relax slowly and deliberately so that you can feel the relaxation. You can move through different parts of your body in this way. Once you have a feel for it you will be able to relax your whole body at one time. It is also helpful to bring gratitude to your mind by reflecting on the small things you are grateful for. Take your time at this beginning stage and include in this how fortunate you are to have this time to meditate and spend time with yourself. This will help you feel more present and aid you in finding enjoyment in relaxing your body.

Tip: Although your focus is on settling the Hindrance of Physical Restlessness at this stage of mindfulness of breathing, all the other hindrances listed above may also be present during your meditation. While other hindrances are present, it is important to settle each Hindrance in the order presented in the above Map for Mindfulness of Breathing, as each Marker of calm is the antidote for its associated Hindrance.

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These MIDL techniques you are learning naturally integrate into daily life. Now that you understand how to relax your body through breathing, your next step is to establish a foundation and reference point in your daily life from which you can develop insight (understanding) about yourself. The Buddha recommended kaya-gata sati: mindfulness immersed within the body.

To develop mindfulness of your body, check in during the day to see if you are holding too much effort in your body. This feeling of 'holding effort' within your body will reflect when your mind and body are becoming stressed. Your task during the day is to be curious about relaxing your body when you notice this internal 'holding' and to observe how you become more mindful and aware of your body, as you relax.

Whenever you notice you are tensing up in your body, take a few slow belly breaths to allow your body to relax. As your body relaxes, observe how awareness of your body increases. This relationship between conscious relaxation and increased awareness of our body is essential. As awareness of your body increases through relaxation, so will your sense of your body's presence and your enjoyment of it. This mindfulness of your body can then be used as a reference point for developing insight into anything throughout your day that disturbs it.

Meditative Hindrance.                        Meditation Marker.

01: Physical Restlessness.      →    01: Body Relaxation.

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In Meditation Skill 01, you will learn four things that you can bring into your daily life:

1. To recognise physical restlessness.
2. To relax physical restlessness.
3. To appreciate how nice it feels to relax your body.
4. Notice that whenever you relax your body, with a clear comprehension of it, awareness of your body increases.

Once you are familiar with Meditation Skill 01, you can integrate it into your daily life. The key is to check in on how you feel throughout the day, starting with when you wake up in the morning.

• How am I feeling now? 
• Am I holding more effort in my body than I need to?

If so, take a few softening breaths to relax your body, notice how nice it feels to relax, and then immerse yourself back into life. This simple act of taking a few softening breaths will withdraw your awareness from your intellectual mind and bring awareness into your body, therefore developing mindfulness of your body (grounding).

How to do it.

The key to being mindful of your body in daily life is not to try to be mindful of your body in daily life. 'Trying' will take you in the opposite direction, as your mind will see mindfulness as something else that has to do with another problem to solve. It is essential to make being mindful during the day something enjoyable for your mind to do rather than just another task to complete. 

This is done by:

1. Enjoy noticing when you've forgotten to be mindful.
2. Taking a few breaths to relax your body when you notice.
3. Finding enjoyment in the relaxing breaths.
4. Clearly comprehending awareness returning to your body as you do.
5. Being satisfied with creating small gaps in mind wandering.

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It's all about the gaps.

Being mindful in daily life is not about striving and straining to be mindful; it is about making being mindful a fun activity for your mind to engage in. By checking in periodically throughout the day and softening or relaxing your body, you will create small gaps in the habitual patterns of your mind and body. With repetition, these gaps of habitual 'mindlessness' will gradually decrease, and your enjoyment of increased mindfulness will increase. Through the enjoyment of how nice it feels to return to mindfulness, mindful awareness will begin to naturally rest in your body, creating a safe space for your mind to escape the stresses of daily life.

Stress throughout the day.

You can use the skills you have learnt in Meditation Skill 01 to gradually weaken your experience of stress throughout your day by re-engaging your diaphragm muscle in respiration whenever you notice you are feeling stressed. More information can be found in this section of the MIDL Insight Meditation website: Meditation Skill 00.

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You are ready to progress to Meditation Skill 02: Mind Relaxation when:

• You experience periods of feeling relaxed and comfortable during your meditation, and you understand how to settle physical restlessness and the desire to move around with softening breaths when they arise.

Tip: Your mind will wander, and you may feel sleepy during this stage of meditation. This is perfectly ok and a sign of successful relaxation. These are both signs of imbalances in your mind's energy and will be addressed as your meditation practice deepens. For now, take an interest in how your mind wandering and sleepiness happen by themself (anatta). Observing in this way will increase your mindfulness and help your mind learn to let these imbalances go. The most important part of this stage of meditation is that when you notice that your mind has wandered, you come back to being curious about how deeply you can relax your body.

How do I know when to progress?

The progression of relaxation and calmness during mindfulness of breathing unfolds naturally on its own (anatta). As you enjoy relaxing and letting go, you will begin to notice that your mind will naturally move between each Marker in meditation when it is ready to do so. Skill in meditation is learning to recognise when it does. Each meditation session will be different. The depth of relaxation and calm you can access will change from day to day, depending on what is happening in your life.

Think of the Markers of calm in each Skill as being stages of relaxation.

• Marker 00: Diaphragm Breathing.
• Marker 01: Body Relaxation.
• Marker 02: Mind Relaxation.
• Marker 03: Mindful Presence.
• Marker 04: Content & Happy.
• Marker 05: Natural Breathing.

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We experience the transitions between the Markers of calm during meditation as:

• Marker 00: Feeling relaxed, breathing in our belly.
• Marker 01: Feeling comfortable sitting in meditation.
• Marker 02: Losing interest in past and future, mind begins to drift.
• Marker 03: Feeling aware and present in our body.
• Marker 04: Enjoying feeling aware and present in our body.
• Marker 05: Feeling the movement of breathing in our body.

From this, we can see that these are natural stages of relaxation and letting go that happen naturally. Our task is to avoid losing balance and ending up in a hindrance. There is no need to perfect each Meditation Skill; as your experience of relaxation and calm (samatha) deepens, go with it. Just be careful of the imbalances to relaxation and calm (hindrances) along the way by becoming too restless from too much effort, or too dull from too little effort. Think of it as learning to balance on a skateboard. 

When developing Marker 01: Body Relaxation, notice if your mind also feels more relaxed and has calmed down as your body relaxes. If so, then your mind has already moved onto Marker 02: Mind Relaxation. If you are very aware of sitting in meditation, without sleepiness and happy not to get up, then your mind has already moved onto Marker 03: Mindful Presence. Each of these Markers of calm will develop naturally when we relax and let go of our interest in the world. Our task is to recognise the hindrances to relaxation and calm when they arise and learn how to weaken them so we can enter into deeper states of letting go.

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Being able to separate the focus of your attention in the foreground from the background awareness of your body as you sit in meditation is beneficial for calm, insight and morality. 

In Meditation Skill 01, you will be given these instructions: "Place your hands in your lap, with one thumb resting on the other, and allow your attention to rest on that point of touch. Then relax into the background awareness of your whole body, sitting in meditation, separating the awareness of your body in the background from the focus of your attention in the foreground." Let's understand what this means:

To begin, it is helpful to think of your awareness as having two parts: 

1. The background awareness of all your senses is passive. You do not need to do this. 
2. And the focus of your attention, which takes in different objects within that awareness. Attention can be observed moving around by itself.

In MIDL, we don't develop samadhi by training our attention to rest on one object; instead, we develop samadhi by becoming so intimate with the background awareness of our body as we sit in meditation that it withdraws awareness from the stimulation of the six-sense field. Attention can do what it wants as long as we don't get lost within it (lost within our mind). 

Instead, we learn to sense the world through the awareness of our body rather than by focusing our attention on things. When I check in with my body now, I notice that it is already aware of the world and itself. I need to be mindful of that awareness, nothing more.

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To do this we set up a simple formula:

1. We allow our attention to rest in the foreground on the touch of our thumbs. This is done so that we can notice when our attention habitually wanders.
2. While sitting in meditation, we maintain awareness of our whole body in the background, noticing how nice it feels to relax and let go. This background awareness of our body, mindfulness of the body, is our meditation object, not the focus of our attention. Even when we progress to mindfulness of breathing, we allow our body to sense the breathing rather than focusing our attention on it.

You don't need to focus your attention on anything; you only need to know where your attention is resting. Is it on your thumbs, a sound, an itch, a thought? When you notice that your attention has wandered (habitually) from the touch, you soften and relax your body and mind to bring awareness back into your body. This will also reset your attention to the touch of your thumbs again. Attention rests on the touch of your thumbs, not as a meditation object, but rather as a reference point to observe your attention habitually wandering. 

Your meditation object in MIDL is not the touch of your thumbs; it is the background awareness of your body sitting in meditation that develops through relaxing and letting go with clear comprehension.

Looking at this page now, we can see that two things are happening: the focus of your attention on the page and the background awareness of your body. Allow your eyes to go out of focus to weaken your attention and notice what happens to awareness. When you relax the focus of your eyes, awareness returns to your body by itself, and you become more aware of your body. 

Learn to recognise the anatta (autonomous) nature of your attention and how it moves around independently. It is not yours to own or control. It is helpful to view your attention as a playful dog. It rests on the touch of your thumbs, and sometimes it will get up and rub on your body; other times, it will wander off to bark or chew on something. 

Regardless of what your attention does, relax the urge to chase after it or to criticise it. Instead, soften and relax awareness back into your body; this will call your attention back. Enjoying this mindful awareness of your body will reward your mind for returning to your body again. Once awareness is back in your body and you are enjoying it, you can gently rest your attention on the touch of your thumbs again and relax back into the background awareness of your body to start again.

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Question: "…Your meditation object in MIDL is not the touch of your thumbs; it is the background awareness of your body…". The question arises: How can the object be in the background? Isn't a meditation object, by definition, in the foreground?

This is a matter of how we use language to describe meditative experiences.

1. If we place primary importance on the focus of our attention and its object of meditation, as in "I am training my attention to stay on a meditation object". In that case, the meditation object is, by definition, in the foreground, and we monitor the background for imbalances and distractions.
2. If we place primary importance on developing insight into the anatta (autonomous) nature of attention, as in "I am creating the conditions to observe the impersonal nature of attention". In that case, we need to clearly distinguish where the focus of our attention is resting from a clearly defined reference point that attention can wander from habitually, one that is always available and present now.

In MIDL, it is this second way that aims to develop insight. In this structure, we establish a reference point for insight by relaxing awareness back into our body and lightly resting our attention in the foreground on the touch of our thumbs. This creates a sense of attention in the foreground and a feeling of our body resting in the background. Our meditation object for the whole of mindfulness of breathing is always the background awareness of our body and the passive experiences within it.

From this reference point, we can monitor where our attention rests and also develop mindfulness of breathing without focusing attention on it. We tune into how our body is already aware of the experience of breathing within it; we don't have to be aware of our body; we need to be mindful of it being aware. From this reference point, we can then allow our attention to wander habitually, if it wants to, for insight into anatta and use the pleasure reward of letting go in the GOSS Formula to train the mind.

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Question: If awareness is the object, isn't awareness in the foreground, and whatever attention is doing is in the background?

The primary meditation object doesn't always need to be in the foreground if we are developing the conditions for calm or insight. They can both be developed either way. Let's use the metaphor of taking a child to the park. When you get to the park, the child runs off to play with the other children, and you sit on the park bench with the other parents, watching your child play.

1. One way to do this is to maintain your attention on the child, regardless of where they are in the playground. You want to keep the child safe, so you keep your attention fixed on the child. You become so fixated on the child with your attention that you lose awareness of your body and the other parents around you. In this way, being aware of the child but not yourself, you develop an understanding of your child, yet you develop no knowledge of yourself.
2. Another way to do this is to hop up and follow the child around. Everywhere the child goes, you go too. In Australia, it is called helicopter parenting. The parent hovers near the child and doesn't allow the child to be a child. In this way, hyper-managing the child and losing awareness of yourself, you develop no understanding of either the child or yourself.
3. Another way to do this is to rest back on the park bench and be very aware that you are sitting on a bench in a park. From this awareness of yourself, you observe your child playing in the park from a distance. Out of the corner of your eye, you watch the child play and interact with other children, making sure that they are safe but without interfering or commenting on what they are doing. In this way, you are aware of yourself and aware of the child. Awareness of yourself is in the background, and awareness of the child playing is in the foreground. In this way, you can observe your relationship with the child as it plays in the background and gain an understanding of the autonomous (anatta) nature of the child, including what it plays with and the personality traits revealed through the way it plays.
4. Another way to do this is to get caught up in conversations with the other parents and lose awareness of the child and yourself. In this way, lost within your mind, with no reference point to now, you develop no understanding of the child and no understanding of yourself.

MIDL employs the third method of observation.

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Question: Regarding thumbs, Stephen often starts the guided meditations by referring to the thumbs, so I assumed that learning to distinguish between awareness and attention and to balance them both was a central part of the method. 

It is.

Question: I've also found that it creates a bit of pushing. But on the other hand, I've found that it teaches an attitude of treating attention with gentleness. 

Yes, the feeling of pushing comes because of the habitual tendency of the mind to focus on or chase after the child in the analogy laid out in numbers 1 & 2 above. The method itself does not create pushing and pulling; it teaches us how to relax and let go of attention, as you beautifully have mentioned, with gentleness. It is understanding this that brings about the middle way in terms of effort. 

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Question: As I understand it, the reasoning behind the thumbs is to split awareness and attention and learn to balance between them right from the beginning. 

Yes, this is right. It is this clear definition that allows insight meditation to be applied to daily life. Particularly when a natural mindfulness of the body is developed, and we then let our attention move freely, noticing when we become habitually lost or caught up in it. 

If you don't use the thumbs to anchor attention, could you use any anchor instead, like the pleasant feeling in your hands or the movement of the belly while breathing? 

Yes, you could, but the pleasant feeling in your hands is not as reliable a grounding object as a tactile body experience. You can also use the movement of your breath in your body as a grounding point, as this is still a form of mindfulness of the body. One thing to consider is that breathing as an object will become subtler over time, and it is easy for our mind to interfere with breathing if attention is focused on it. Both of these reasons make these two objects not suitable for everyone.

The reason the thumbs are used is that they are always available, very sensitive, neutral objects located in the lower part of our body, away from our head, and have a feeling of being in front of our body when sitting in meditation.

Question: If you don't use an anchor and let attention roam freely, doesn't that make it harder to develop that balance? 

If we don't have a present grounding or reference point, it is difficult to tell whether we are lost within the mind or present. This is why, in MIDL, we take an open awareness approach, grounded in our body, by consciously relaxing and letting go. This also naturally transfers into daily life. 

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