Sensing Yourself, the Gurdjieff meditation

Here’s how to enjoy being more awake in your day: be present to your arms and legs.

All day.

Get out of your head and come to your senses.

Get out of those words in your noggin and sense your feet and toes, as far away from your head as you can get and still be in your body.

Sense those feet and toes.

And legs.

Sense those finger and hands.

And arms.

That’s a lot of territory.

Try it now. All the leg, both of ‘em. All the arm, both of ‘em.

Sense the skin and the bones and the flesh and the nerves and anything else you can. From finger tips to shoulder. From the ends of the toes, to the hip joint.

Two arms.

Two legs.

The four limbs that move us around and allow us to move the world around.

Hugs people, hammers nails, hangs up the wash, writes the poem, ice skates, hunts, cooks, plants harvests the garden, dances, plays tennis plays the piano flute oboe viola, takes a walk swim stroll bath shower run.

Moves around.

Moves stuff around.

We evolved as moving beings. With a brain that could do more and more intricate ( and sometimes awful) things.

We move through our lives and right now, as you read, perhaps you’re remembering the breathing and gravity challenge, and perhaps not.

And now your legs are somewhere and your arms likewise can be sensed as right here now where they are right now.

And what if we feasted our attention on these beautiful arms and legs and finger and toes?

Well:, the Gurdjeiff meditation, here goes:

Sit in a chair. Or anywhere, feet on the ground/ floor.

Close your eyes.

RIGHT LEG

Start at the tips of your right toes.

Sense them all, and keeping the attention always where it’s been before, move your attention bit by bit up through your leg to sense all the inside and outer flesh of your toes, until you reach your feet.

The whole foot, all of it, inside and out.

The ankle.

Up, up, keeping all you’ve sensed so far.

The lower leg.

Knee. ( No words, just sense it as…..sensation)

The upper leg, all the way to the hip joint.

Sense this entire chuck of you, toe tips to hip joint. Fill it up with attention.

THE RIGHT ARM

Keep the entire right leg lit up with attention and add on the fingertips of the right hand.

Move up, through the ‘

Fingers

Hand

Wrist

Lower arm

Elbow

Upper arm, to the shoulder socket.

KEEP THE WHOLE RIGHT ARM AND ENTIRE RIGHT LEG IN ATTENTION.

Good.

And now, add on

THE LEFT ARM

Starting from the top, this mediation sometimes being called, “around the world.”

The left upper arm from shoulder down to the

Elbow and then

Lower arm, wrist, hand, fingers, finger tips.

KEEP THE WHOLE LEFT ARM AND TWO RIGHT LIMBS IN ATTENTION.

Now, finishing the “circle”

THE LEFT LEG

Upper leg at the hip joint, down through ALL of it to the

Knee

Lower leg, ankle, foot, toes and toe tips

Now sense all four, fully, for a long while.

Then

Add on listening. Hear whatever you hear WHILE KEEPING BOTH ARMS AND BOTH LEGS IN ATTENTION.

You now have inner and outer attention.

Bask in that for awhile.

Then OPEN THE EYES AND NOTICE REFLECTED LIGHT COMING IN TO THEM.

Four windows out into the world , two ears and two eyes.

Four bastions of inner attention, two legs and two arms.

Hang out in this fullness.

Now get up and go about your day staying in all this attention.

A meditation for a full life, all day, all places

Interlude: Bones and Gravity Meditation

The meditation is one you can start your day with.

This mediation is one you can live your day with.

This meditation is one you can use as the basis of your being present in both the talking and touching exercises you do each day.

This mediation will radically improve yoga, and love making, and walking and any sport or dancing or musical instrument.

Singing.

Making dinner.

Eating.

It’s about being present to the obvious: We have a skeleton in gravity.

The first part goes like this.

The bones. Sensing the skeleton in gravity.

Sit in a chair quietly, not leaning back in the chair and both feet firmly on the floor.

Close your eyes.

Start with the toes of your right foot. Start at the tips of the toes, and sense them as completely as you can, moving awareness back into the foot.

Sensing means “feeling” as sensation. Exactly what you feel. No evaluation, of sore or this or that. Exactly what you feel. As sensation.

The right leg
Move up in sensing from your right toes, into your right foot. All the bones and blood and muscles, and mainly the bones.

Throughout this meditation, keep awareness on the parts you have already sensed, as you add more.

Wake your way up through your right foot, to your right ankle, slowly, slowly up the lower leg.

The right knee.

The right upper leg. All the flesh and all the blood and mainly the big bone, all the way up to the hip joint.

Dwell for a while in the fullness of attention as sensing filling your right leg.

Keep this attention on this leg as you begin to sense…

The right arm

While keeping the right leg in full sensory attention, start with sensing the right fingertips.

Work slowly with attention up the fingers to the palm. Fill in the palm and hand with awareness, working toward the wrist.

Then, keeping that in awareness, move slowly up the lower arm.

Then the elbow, then the upper arm to the shoulder.

Dwell for a while in the fullness of attention as you sense your entire right leg and right arm.

Enjoy this for awhile.

Keep this attention “on,” as you begin to sense…

The left arm.

This is a circle. “Around the world.” Waking up the arms and legs that constitute so much of play, work and love (and getting from place A to place B) in life.

Keeping the right arm and leg in awareness, start with your left shoulder and sense the top of your left arm. Move slowly DOWN the left arm.

Upper arm.

Elbow.

Lower arm.

Wrist.

Hand.

Fingers out to all five left

Fingertips.

Dwell for awhile in awareness of right leg, right arm, and left arm, keep this in attention/ awareness as you move to the…

Left leg.

Since we are moving around the circle, put your attention on where your left leg starts in your left hip socket.

Get into awareness of this.

Sense down your left leg, all the flesh, blood, muscles, nerves, and especially that big bone.

Then keeping the thigh in awareness add on

Left knee

Left lower leg (working slowly done, quarter of an inch as t time)

Left ankle ( lots of bones in there)

Left foot

Left toes , all the way our to all five

Left toe tips

Now dwell in the luxury of two arms and two legs, and feel the difference left and right side, and feel these four limbs and providing and kind of “box” for your physical awareness.

Stay here and enjoy for awhile.

This is the “Gurdjeiff” part of this meditation.

Gurdjieff was a practical Russian mystic, who thought humanity was “asleep,” and to wake up, meditation need to be “in the world,” of action of daily life.

There is more to his meditation.

And now we’ll add on the rest of the skeleton, care of a man named Moshe Feldenkrais, who has been called the greatest movement genius of the 20^th century.

He was clear, as a judo expert, and PhD physicist and inventor of an amazing system of moving and feeling radically better in your body, that the brain paid attention to the body as “five lines.”

Two arms.

Two legs.

The spine and head.

(Think of a child’s drawing of a person, with the stick in the middle, arms and legs sticking out and a round head at top.

Think of the myriad of yoga “poses” as ways of rearranging these “five lines.”)

So, here’s the fifth line.

Keeping the four limbs in sensory awareness, add on…

The spine.

Start with your pelvis  where it’s pressing into the chair or wherever you are sitting. Sensing the meeting of the legs into the pelvis in the hip joints.

Sense the entire pelvis.

Move to the base of the spine.

Move slowly up the spine, as close to vertebra by vertebra as you can. ( Not easy)

Feel the neck, vertebra by vertebra, as close as you can.

Feel the skull balancing on the spine.

Add on the ribs, and shoulder blades and how they connect to the arms.

Dwell, as blissfully as you wish, in awareness of both legs, both arms, and the pelvis/ spine/ head/ ribs and shoulder blades.

Hang out here for awhile. As long as you wish.

Now add on the outside world.

Keeping sensing all the bones, and add on…

Listening to the outside world…

Hearing sounds from the outer world.

Notice how you now have inner and outer awareness.

Keeping sensing and listening add on..

The eyes.

OPEN YOUR EYES, and let in light.

 In the Gurdjieff meditation , they say to pay attention to reflected light coming in the eyes.

Do with that what you wish, but do feel the fullness of sensing your skeleton, both legs, both arms, the center, and noticing sounds in your ears, and light come in your eyes.

Now, and here’s how the Gurdjieff meditation differs than most:

Get up. Keep doing all this and go about your day in deep attention, both inward and outward.

This is a lot.

So is life.

Choosing attention is one of our only real choices.

Try it and see what happens.

The Passion Project

How would you like this in your relationships:


Presence, Purpose, Play, Passion

Awareness, Attention, "Anti-Aging"

Sensitivity, Sensuality

Silly, Serious, Sexy

Intimacy, Integrity, Identity

Oneness, Organic, Orgasmic

Nature-connection, Nurturing, Now-ing



Notice, now, who and how you are right love.

That's the beginning and the middle and the continuation of love.

Now.

Presence starts the list

Now-ing ends it.

Come visit for a free first hour session with your sweetheart to see how delicious the now can make even the most wonderful relationship


Chris

Awareness waits not

Life is here. Now.
We can have ideas about it, words in our head about it, complaints, demands, programs.
And wherever we are, the now is the place in which we are experiencing life.

How do we know we are experiencing life?
We are aware.

Of this, or that.
Or not aware, and the awareness of our toes or what is in front of our face, or what we are hearing is missing.
But we are aware of something.

It's almost silly to write about, except that it's such a relief to come home to a simple dwelling in being aware.

The experience we are having doesn't have to be thought about, doesn't have to be judged, doesn't have to be compared.

That's all the work of the word part, the thinking brain, which is what is putting down these words, but can these words remind you that there is a place, right now, always right now, that is aware.

Just aware.
And of course, attention can shift all around and the awareness flows out with the attention, and awareness is simply here.

Our breathing.
It's in. It's out. It's pausing.

Gravity.
On our feet, our pelvis, our backs or bellies or sides if we lie down.

The earth is around us, air we breathe, gravity that keeps us from floating away.

Light usually.
Sound almost always.

Lots of food for the pure experience of now.

And then, the mind tells us, often, we've got to "get things" done.

That may be true.
Might not.

And how much easier this doing is, if in the flow of awareness.