On Sitting and Relaxation: My Somatic Meditation Practice

Sitting. I’ve been sitting.

Here’s some real talk about my mediation practice:

I’ve been a long time in only beginning to feel relaxation while sitting up. I’ve been many moons flat back on the floor, resting –searching for rest. To now be able to sit more and more is strange and wonderful.

I feel like I’m constantly opening more capacity to embrace how much I hold, how tense I am. And actually feel directly how that gripping, though painful in places, is one way I protect myself and cope with my experience. To tense limits the amount of sensation or focuses sensations in a limited way –it’s a way to withdraw from life and I have been a long time withdrawing. We have inherited so much holding, and we have so much in this life that would feel safer to push away from.

But often to not feel isn’t safer, it is death. So let me be alive while I am, and feel. Let me feel myself here on this damn cushion for 5 or 45 minutes, and finally, maybe relax.

Relaxation, as it comes, opens. Relaxation makes it more possible for me to be aware of all I try to (and do) block, how I hide, and at the same time how truly vast and grounded my being is –this connection runs deep and is so wild to feel.

To be real honest though, it is terrifying to let go. You’d think like, not having a burning pain in my back would be the better alternative but nah that familiar pain is… familiar. I have a way of being controlling, needing to control (myself mostly), so sitting here and letting that go even when I am alone can feel too overwhelming.

But there is such a sweetness and such a flowing warmth and such a connection with the Earth to be experienced. Now I have tasted that sweetness –it’s not just some idea about what meditation does. And now this gets to metabolize and come through directly into how I be and how much choice I can access in daily life. Like, maybe my ego identity can continue to shed layers and maybe I can not be as reactionary, running the same trauma loops over and over.

Maybe, maybe we can be free.

Maybe we are free.