Morning Meditation - 'Not Doing,' 'Being,' 'Knowing'

We begin each day with morning meditation at 7.30am on an outside deck and it is here I being to experience the 'Monkey Mind...' My mind appears more active, less in the present, full of thoughts... which may be of surprise for first thing in the morning but it's as if my thoughts have been put in a box over night, they've been asleep in my subconscious, and now they're awake knocking on the box wanting to join in this meditation malarky.. My body fidgets, I image bugs crawling on me, itchy nose, pins and needles... then there are the noises, the environment; dogs barking, birds singing, sound of water flowing, slight winds... Yes all lovely nosies and joyous aspects of nature, I try to take Danielle's guidance and let the sounds and sensation into the meditation as they are all part of this present moment.. but I'm thinking of my niece, the work I have to return to, September, 90s pop music "you can ring my bell," what to wear next Saturday... and I search, search for the lovely restful, still, beautiful place I experienced only the day before..

After meditation and the mornings dynamic flow session we engage in pranayama (breath, the breath of life). We explore a wonderful pranayama (can't remember the name please let me know Danielle) while resting in a ying posture and to my great satisfaction I find that beautiful stillness again... I find myself in the present, as I am now, not a thought in my mind to distract me or a sensation in my body to fidget with... just the breath and this moment... This is meditation but then I'm doing, I'm doing pranayama and my understanding is that meditation isn't doing, it is being... Jane acknowledged the 'want' or tendency to want to 'do' change the breath in meditation, not simply watch the breath - I'm with you on that Jane. In afternoon ying sessions I find stillness, I find plenty of moments of being, of being able to focus on the sound of water that encases us, of being with the posture but again maybe because I am doing something, I'm in a ying posture...

Meditation does not get any easier as the week goes on, actually it becomes more of a challenge... at times in the afternoon practice I get glimpses of stillness in sitting but the mornings are dark, uncomfortable places.. I resign to finding greater meditation in 10 extra minutes in bed and a cup of tea...  I debate a theory - it is in the knowing... My first meditation practice I knew nothing, I had nothing to compare, no expectation, the unknown... but now I know something of meditation (a little something). The more we know the more we what to know, the more we question our knowing, the more we look for reason, the more we analyse.. I recall my first contemporary dance classes, for me they were the greatest dances I've danced, I couldn't point my feet, or turn out, or balance, I knew nothing of technique. 12 years on and who knows how many hours of training and technique classes where I questioned, I did, I tried to understand, I pushed myself and was hard on myself if I didn't achieve correct technique, great balance, perfect extension (if there are such a things), and I remember it ceased to feel like I was dancing, not like those first classes when I knew nothing... now I turn towards somatic movement practice in my dancing and have found dancing again, I experience being danced, I explore not doing, I experience being, in the being I am moved by my body... I'm sure, in time, the being will appear to me in meditation just like it did in my dance practice (which only happened when I stopped searching, stopped beating myself up about technique, often in authoritarian training/class environments).

"If dance is experienced through classes or performances in a authoritarian and demeaning manner, it can be not only physically injurious but diminishing of the soul. Since the 1970s more and more dance professionals are discovering the usefulness of somatic education in softening these deleterious challenges.
The marriage of dance education and somatic education has seen numerous benefits... The world of somatic education has secrets to living life more fully - keys to finding and knowing when we are 'in the flow.' Somatic awareness could be used for a step-by-step manual to document that entry into 'the flow.'"

(Martha Eddy: 2009)

"One has to be able to let things happen. I have learned from the Orient the lesson expressed in the words wu wei: 'not doing'; not 'doing nothing,' but 'allowing.' Others have known of this, too, as for instance, Meister Ekhart when he speaks of 'yielding oneself.' The dark spot upon which one stumbles actually is not empty but is the Bestowing Mother, the Images and the Seed." 

(Horton Fraleigh citing Curl Jung: 1987)