More Short Meditations from Mexico

by Baxter

If you are up for it, I'd like share some new meditations with you that I’ve been teaching this week at my retreat in Yelapa, Mexico. Now, if Tuesday’s theme is a good one for you right now, then by all means continue to use "strength and stability" for a while. But if you’d like to experiment, here are two more possibilities.

Flexibility Meditation

For the second day of my retreat, I was thinking of how to incorporate the concept of flexibility into my meditation and that of my retreat group. And as I was gazing down on the surging and receding surf on the Yelapa beach, I realized I’d like my own flexibility to reflect nature's undulations. The rhythm of the waves on the shore mirrors the waves on my own breath in meditation. The mantra or meditative phrase "fluid as the sea" seems fitting, so try repeating it mentally on your exhale for your ten-minute sit today. Hope all follows well from there!

Digestion Meditation

On day four of my retreat, we turned our focus to an area of the body that has special connotations in the yoga tradition, the upper abdomen. This is where the digestive fire, known in Sanskrit as the jathara agni, is said to reside. Convenient, as the anatomical stomach sack and the first part of the small intestine are also located there! Instead of narrowly focusing on digestion as related to healthy eating, I broadened our vision a bit. As my friend and colleague Scott Blossom, a yoga teacher, Ayurvedic practitioner and acupuncturist (a triple threat!) has said to me, we not only are digesting the food we eat, assimilating what is beneficial and eliminating what is not, we are also digesting the interactions we've taken in throughout the day on an emotional/mental level as well.

So I asked the students to consider some situation they were still chewing on and come up with a word or two that would distill down its essence, not unlike a memorable meal where one ingredient stands out and can come to represent the bigger meal eaten—like those porcini mushrooms that one mealtime in Italy, but I digress! So once you have quietly sat for a minute or two and have come up with an appropriate word for your unfinished meal, use that word as your mantra for your ten-minute minute sit today. Remember that a primary purpose of a mantra is to create a consistent focus for the mind to distract it from its usual habit of generating all kinds of thoughts, many of which can be stressful. Secondarily, this particular mantra may allow for new insights to arise following your mediation regarding the "meal" at hand. Several hours after practicing with this focus myself, I find my mind returning to the mantra again and again and spending some valuable moments in reflection on the original event I had taken in earlier! Tasty!

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