Releasing Pain, Tension and Stress In Your Back
Do you have pain in your lower back? Most of us have some degree of pain in this area, as it is a focal point for support and stabilization in our lives. If your back is in pain, the following practice can help alleviate some or possibly all of your pain.
Make sure you begin this practice in a calm and quiet place where you know you will not be disturbed. Turn off all phones and any distractive noises.
Use the Intentional Relaxation Method to prepare your body and mind.
Once you are fully prepared, bring your attention to your lower back. Notice what your lower back feels like. Is there tension? Is there pain? What does the pain feel like in terms of texture, degree of intensity, shape and size? The more you define your pain, the more you can practically deal with it.
Once you have established the dimensions of your pain, begin to inhale through the pain and as you exhale focus on relaxing the muscles that surround this pain.
Continue to release the tension around your pain until you feel like you have created a space twice the size of your pain.
Now, go into the feeling of the pain and simply observe what you find there. Remain calm, open and breathing as you allow your pain to be there without trying to figure it out or change it or push it away. Remain neutral. Remain focused. Give your pain space to do what it has to do. The less resistance you have towards you pain the more it will flow, change and eventually dissolve.
As you continue to focus on this area, re-define the dimensions of your pain. Have they changed? Have they gotten smaller? If so, great! If not, continue to focus on letting go. My observation about self-healing is the only way to heal is to be open to healing. Your choice to heal begins the healing process. Your choice to let go signals your muscles to let go. After all, it is your body.
This meditation is used to help clear your day and your mind. Begin the process of Intentional Relaxation. Observe where in your body your inhale begins. As you exhale release all tension in your face, your shoulders, your chest, your back and so on.
Continue until you have relaxed your body as completely as you feel you need.
Now begin to let your mind do whatever it wants to do. Let it think about anything it wants to focus on. Give it complete freedom. Observe it all, but remain calm and neutral to where it mentally travels. Try not to get lost in your mind’s thinking by maintaining the major amount of focus on your breathing and observing your mind as it thinks.
Whatever problem or situation your mind examines let it continue as long as progress is being made in that area. If you find your thinking becoming circular or going over the same points over and over, then you are worrying and this solves nothing. At this point, focus on your breathing and calming your mind.
You will find problems of the day will dissolve the more space you give your mind to create solutions and then, like a checklist you will move through all of your points until you will be finished. Then you have the space to simply breath and relax.
Once you have cleared all the thoughts of your day, revel in your mind being clear. Recognize what a clear mind feels like. Cultivation of this clarity will improve your thinking performance.
This meditation is to be used to listen to your body and allow feelings and sensation the time and space to grow, change and evolve. This provides a great deal of internal understanding and connection along with promoting health, increasing your energy flow and will ultimately enhance your comfort with your feelings.
Make sure your mind and body are ready to begin this. I suggest starting with Intentional Relaxation and then perform the Reflections Meditation (page 98) to clear your mind.
Once your mind and body are relaxed and cleared from your day, begin to notice what you are feeling in this moment. Where in your body is this feeling? Use your calm and clarity to maintain your focus upon any feeling that is most prominent.
Once you find a feeling allow it to be as it is. Your mind will want to figure it out. Put this desire aside and continue to neutrally observe your feeling without trying to change it. Once again, describe for yourself the dimensions of this feeling: What is its size, shape, texture and intensity? Keep your body relaxed and calm and stay with this feeling wherever it goes in your body. Eventually, it will change and become another feeling. Follow this feeling and keep observing.
Give each feeling space to fully express itself. Do not try to do anything with it. Leave it be. The more space it has to flow the less power it will have over you. Continued focus on your feelings will deepen your sense of self and ultimately the core of certain behaviors and patterns you have been doing for years will emerge. Here is where you will begin to heal.
This mediation is provided to help you experience an expanded state and to establish your connection with everything and everyone around you.
Breathe and relax your body and mind as previously stated. Make sure you have done the Intentional and Reflection mediations (page 57 and 98) to relax your body/mind and clear your day.
Envision yourself standing on a grassy meadow. The wind is blowing the grass and you can hear the soothing and calming sound it makes. You feel very much at peace. As you are enjoying this moment you begin to feel a gentle pressure beneath your feet. Slowly to your surprise and delight, you start to rise off the meadow into the air. You slowly and tranquilly raise straight overhead into the sky. You can see the meadow upon which you stood. Now you can see beyond the meadow. You see a road and some trees beyond the road. Higher and higher you go. Breathing is not a problem and you start to see more and more of the world around you as your vantage point expands. Now you can make out the details of the country you are in. You see rivers, mountains, roads, highways and even cities in the distance. As you continue to rise, you begin to see the state where you were. Soon the surrounding states become visible. More and more you can see as higher and higher you go. The continent starts coming into view and you see the oceans and other continents. Higher and higher you go. You start to notice the curve of the earth and then you are out in space staring at the awesome sight of your planet slowly and majestically revolving beneath you. You watch the blue and green planet of your birth spinning before you and you start to feel something. A sense of belonging. This is your home. You share this home with a multitude of other beings and life forms. As you feel this belonging something begins to happen to you. You start getting bigger but with less substance. You watch the moon, circling the earth pass harmlessly through your body.
Slowly the earth and moon get smaller and smaller as you continue to get bigger and bigger. The other planets pass through you as you continue to journey outwards. Eventually you can see the whole solar system before you. Immensely huge it spins around the sun. Clouds of gas, planets, asteroids, quietly circling their vast provider of light as you watch the dance of your home and its neighbors.
Still you travel on. Larger and larger you become. Passing new planets and solar systems. You glimpse the arm of the galaxy the earth is home to. You encounter suns beyond count. As you continue, more and more suns come into view. And at last, you see the vast Milky Way Galaxy spinning before you. You are stunned. No words to describe this incredibly-complex-huge-star-filled-magnificent creation, which moves over space like a living crawling thing. You examine it from all angles and you continue on your way. Slowly leaving it behind as your size begins to dwarf even this huge celestial creation. You start to notice another galaxy, Andromeda, our closest neighboring galaxy, coming into view. It, too, is filled with stars and spins before you, no less amazing than your own galaxy. You watch the two galaxies in their relation to each other. At first you could see no relationship, but as you continue to expand, you see a pattern start to unfold before you. There is a relationship between them. But there is something wrong to the pattern. Something missing. Oh, there it is. You knew another galaxy was needed there to balance out the pattern. And another. And another. Until you see thousands of galaxies that make up our clusters and super clusters of galaxies from which we live.
You watch super clusters of super cluster unfold. More and more you see and experience the place in which we live. This is the place we share with multitudes of planets, stars, galaxies and all of creation.
Does this make you feel small? It is OK to feel small. However, each of us makes up this vast beautiful creation and we are just as important as each of the suns or planets that make up this universe. Even the size of the earth is miniscule when compared to the spaces existing between galaxies. Size is not the point here, but that you belong here just as much as everyone else in existence.