Exploring Mind - Body - Spirit

Topics covered:

• Experiencing comfort with the breath
• Generalizing that comfort throughout the body
• Applying this to dealing with physical discomfort
• Extending comfort to others

Sorry about the delay in getting the posts up. Life has been busy. These will have to be short summaries of the classes, and I'll do my best to catch up this week.

Experiencing comfort with the breath

When we breathe our body enjoys the process. We want to move our awareness to the comfort we get from breathing in and out and place our attention on specific sensations that are comfortable.
It is that simple. We enjoy any sensations of comfort associated with breathing. If our mind drifts, then we bring our attention back to those sensations.

Generalizing that comfort thoughout the body

Once we are able to pay attention to sensations of comfort without getting distracted for more than brief moments, then we can generalize the experience of comfort to other parts of the body.
We do so by focusing our attention more and more on the comfort and letting that fill our awareness. We do not try to push or spread the comfort around. We simply become the comfort and notice that there are places for it to flow. If we get distracted we sink our awareness back into the sensations of comfort.

Applying this to dealing with physical discomfort

If part of our body is in pain or uncomfortable we can use this technique to help. Start by being deeply aware of the comfort. If the uncomfortable part of your body grabs your attention acknowlege that but then shift back to the sensations of comfort. It is sometimes helpful to find sensations of comfort in a part of the body that is physically separate from the part that is uncomfortable. As you become more aware of the comfort, allow other parts of the body to resonate with that. The goal is not to get rid of the discomfort, but rather to increase the comfort so that the discomfort becomes less important by comparison.

Extending comfort to others

If we want to help someone who is in discomfort or pain feel better then we can use this technique in the following way. We feel the comfort of the breath and allow the sense of comfort to fill our body. Then we bring the other person into our awareness as a space into which our comfort can flow. We are not trying to push or force any comfort into them, we let them be in a space which the comfort we are full of can flow into.
I used this technique at times when doing medical procedures on patients and had some remarkable results in that the patient commented on how little pain the procedure caused.