Instructional &
Informational Posts
Those people in the yoga advertisements looking perfectly zen sitting in lotus position next to a lotus flower? Good for them, but that’s not your life, is it? You have a cell phone, you have kids, you have noise in your life. But you also (we swear) have time to meditate. Join us for a weekly meditation you can incorporate into your life, anytime, anywhere.
“Missing someone, they say, is self-centered.
I self-center you more than ever.”
- Sasa Stanisic, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone
When you really miss someone, Skype just isn’t going to cut it. Longing for them can become a physical experience. You can feel the missing in the same way that you might feel a wound.
If you’re experiencing a melancholic longing, meditation doesn’t ask you to let go of this. In fact, meditation invites you to sit with it, which will help to prevent you from internalizing it.
Offer this meditation to the person that you miss. Locate the emotion of missing in your body. Witness where it resides and start to invite your breath to travel in and out of that area. You can even place your hand on the part of your body that feels the loss the most profoundly.
After some time, become aware of softening and opening the chest wall. It is as if the breath is traveling directly into the heart space, caressing it. Feel every inhalation increase your sense of being in the heart and each exhalation expand and open the heart.
Move your awareness to the back of your heart and the back of the body.
Feel the open space at the back of the heart.
Let the heart space surround and embrace your physical body.
Admitting how you feel can free you of stored emotion rather than ignoring your feelings and having them wash over you again and again.
Finish your meditation by thanking your person. They have granted you the capacity to love and to feel more deeply.
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Courtney Sunday is a writer, yoga teacher, Pilates instructor, spinning instructor and Thai massage practitioner. She teaches corporations in Toronto the fine art of breathing deeply, and travels too much for her own good. She likes to cook meals from scratch using ingredients from her garden, and would mill her own flour and make her own butter if she had more hours in the day. Find out more about her at www.courtneysunday.com.
