Inner Work

For the week of: November 4, 2002

Deep Relaxation

Deep and thorough relaxation offers many benefits. It counteracts the accumulating tensions and stresses of life. It supports physical, emotional, and mental health. It refreshes and rejuvenates. It prepares us to engage fully in life, but with more enjoyment and less attachment and identification. It conserves the inner energies we need for our spiritual practice. It allows the energies we develop through inner work to find their appropriate place and settle into our being.

The first level of relaxation consists of a simple settling in, sitting here noticing the stream of inner events: thoughts, muscular tensions, labored breathing, etc. As you sit, just being with yourself, transitions come in their own time. If the breathing starts out labored, at some point it may abate into quiescence.

Next, the muscles release their excess tensions. At this stage, fatigue or other physical problems may intensify as your body/mind drops its defenses against experiencing its true state. Just sitting, watching quietly and letting go, with no agenda, offers healing and renewal. Eventually the fatigue dissipates. You feel refreshed and ready to enter meditation proper or to return to your daily activities with a new sense of calm presence.

Continuing, your thoughts and emotions relax, without you being attached or identified with their content. You enter, or rather become, the stillness between thoughts. You let go further, not trying to do or change anything. Spontaneous upwellings of energies may occur of their own accord. Still you relax into being, and not doing. You relax into complete peace.

For this week, find some time each day to practice deep relaxation.

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