I began meditating 5 years ago to ‘treat’ panic attacks and calm anxiety, which later transformed to include techniques offered by a meditation centre in the form of active meditations (Osho dynamic, bioenergetics…). Most of these focused on feeling pain or physical discomfort in order to ‘remove’ emotional blocks. This was an attitude I carried with me in my personal practice when I left the center: searching for and focusing on the discomfort in my body so that it no longer ‘got in the way’.
Recently I discovered a different approach which is more gentle and left me feeling more positive. The key principle is to be open to all that exists in the body, using complete body awareness, and celebrating and including the positive feelings rather than searching for the negative. This enabled me to see the bigger picture and to acknowledge that, although the ‘bad’ feeling may still be present, there is always some good somewhere.
Relaxing into whole body awareness in this way allowed me to see more than the pain and led to an important realization: I can feel positive regardless of the presence or absence of pain. Everything can be included.
aquacultureandi 