When describing the attitudes we bring during meditation, teachers often use the word curious. When I asked participants in meditation classes what curious meant in this context, many associated curiosity with cognitive activity, that is thinking about the breath and thinking about the body. However, what teachers mean by a curious attitude is an almost non-conceptual awareness, often referred to as embodied mindfulness. I want to explore what embodied mindfulness of the breath and body involves.
Awareness of breath
If you are being mindful of the breath and focusing on your nostrils, where the air enters the body, this can include:
being aware of the actual sensations, for example, a feathery sensation inside one or both nostrils,
an awareness of the air flowing over the upper lip,
realizing that the air entering the nostrils is cooler than the air flowing out.
If you are focusing on the breath at the abdomen, this can include:
being aware of the rising and falling of the abdomen,
being aware of the expanding and contracting of the ribs,
the feeling of the cloth of your shirt or blouse rubbing across your body.
In both cases, this can include:
being aware when the breath is long and when it is short,
when it is deep and when it is shallow.
realizing when the breath is rhythmic and when it is not.
It is not looking for these sensations and qualities but rather noticing them when they come to your awareness, for example, "right now my breath is so rhythmic and soft. This is pleasant."
This meditation also includes being aware of when you are labeling your experience, pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant or unpleasant, which often indicates a lack of curiosity.
Awareness of body
When you are bringing mindfulness to the body, this can include the actual sensations, like tingling, pulsing, warmth or coldness, moist or dryness, pressure, hardness or softness…
It can also include awareness of the body as a whole, the felt sense of the whole body, here, now.
It can also include sensations that are generally perceived as unpleasant, like tension, aching, numbness, fatigue. You can explore pain too, realizing that pain is not a sensation but a word to describe a host of sensations that are perceived as unpleasant. When I first explored pain in my lower back while meditating, I realized that the actual sensations were pressure, heat, a kind of electric energy, a pulsing energy, and an aching. Individually the sensations were tolerable but when labeled as pain, they became overwhelming. When I brought a curious awareness to the sensations, they generally softened, moving from painful to unpleasant and sometimes neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
Last year I began having pain in the middle of my back which was caused by years of poor posture. While I have been sitting cross-legged for over 40 years, I have been somewhat slouched over because I had bought the story that I can't sit more erectly because I have a bad back--I have x-rays to prove it. Six months ago, when I started sitting more erectly, I began feeling stiffness and achiness within just a few minutes. That had been my experience for 40 years. This time however, I stayed with those unpleasant feelings instead of trying to get rid of them.
I used the breath to help me, by focusing on the relaxing nature of the exhale.
I also used the Buddhist concept of impermanence to remind myself that this "pain" was not permanent.
I also brought a curious awareness to the actual sensations that my mind was calling unpleasant. Sometimes the unpleasantness would totally subside and sometimes it would move from distractingly unpleasant to mildly unpleasant.
Over time, the stiffness and achiness began to subside and in the last month or so, I can sit in the classic meditation posture for the whole meditation period without any pain.
Bringing a curious attitude toward unpleasant physical sensations and toward thoughts during meditation can be very liberating. We are no longer fighting with what is happening but rather learning to be with whatever is happening in a different way. Additionally, there is a letting go of the stories we can so quickly jump into, like my story that I can't sit properly because I have a bad back.
I have found that a quiet sense of joy and peace enters not only the meditation but also my daily life when I am more curious and more accepting, in the moment, that this is what is happening now.
In the next post, I will talk about bringing a curious attitude during the day and toward what is psychologically unpleasant. That brings in the whole world!