Do you feel you disconnected to yourself and the world around you? Are you walking outside but not actually feeling the support of the ground underneath your feet? When was the last time you felt connected to your needs?
In the fast paced world we live in, where we are constantly bombarded with news, updates, texts, etc. It is challenging to find the time to do a daily check in. Or if we do, it’s short, or interrupted and we go on with our day without actually getting a pulse on our inner landscape. How many times in the past month have you told someone (or yourself) how ‘busy’ you are? Frankly I am a culprit of this as much as anyone. And lately I’ve noticed the tendency to say just how busy I’ve been, doing this that or the other.
But what are we really saying when we say we are ‘busy’? Is it that we are not taking the time for ourselves? Are we avoiding a tough decision therefore, overloading our schedule so we don’t have to face it? Or are we just going through the motions of life without taking the time to enjoy the here and now?
So we’ve established life is moving at a rate faster than we’d like, how do we change that? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a cord to connect into an energy source to recharge? Well, I think we can all agree that, for the time being, we don’t have physical cords to plug in to an energy source. But, what if we were a conduit, and we could actually connect into an infinite source of energy? Wild concept right?
One simple way is to go outside, take off your shoes, socks if you’re wearing them, and stand barefoot on the earth. Not pavement or a rock, but the soft supportive surface of the earth. Feel the grass or dirt on the bottoms on your feet. Stand still and sense, from the soles of your feet, invisible lines begin to descend into the earth. Each line travels deep within the core of the earth. Once you notice the lines stop descending sense how grounded you feel. Tap into the supportive nature of this grounded energy.
Feel, through each line deep within the earth a pulse different than your own. With every pulse sense this grounded energy begin to rise up the roots you’ve established, until it enters the soles of your feet. Now draw this energy through the soles of the feet and up into the body, filling you with nourishing grounded energy. Be still and experience this energy pulsing within the body. Notice how the time seems to fade away, and how present you are with the sensations within the body. Stay here for as long as you wish.
Now this practice takes minutes, yet is profoundly impactful on our psyche, energy levels and overall quality of being. And guess what? For all of you who didn’t think you could quiet your mind enough to meditate, you just did! Though this is not a formal meditation practice it is a play off of what yogis call a kriya, or an action given to the mind to focus on in order to bring a sense of calm presence within.
Kriyas are incredibly powerful in their nature to keep the vrttis, fluctuations of the mind, or mental chatter to a minimum, which allows for the intention of the action to land on a deep internal level. Ancient yogis were aware of the fast pace of everyday life taking over the thoughts in our minds. Aware of how challenging it is to sit quietly without becoming distracted or agitated, they came up with practices that capture the mind so deeply we release thoughts.
Thus, kriyas aid in bringing us into a meditative state, a state of presence. The next step is to allow for the action to dissolve and sense, feel or see into the energy of the meditation practice. Again, this practice does not have to last for hours, it may be merely minutes of our day, but infinite in its ability to bring us into a calm, grounded, yet rejuvenated state of mind.
Happy Meditating!
