Vidyamala introduces and leads through a body scan meditation practice.

If you're new to meditation then definitely listen to this .. Vidyamala will have you lying down, relaxing, breathing softly, feeling your way into your own body's experience. This isn't a bird's eye view of your body. It's about feeling all the physical sensations that are going on all the time in inside you. And Vidyamala doesn't mind if you happen to drop off to sleep. She just encourages you with the thought that when you know you've been asleep then that is a moment of awareness!

You need to be lying down on your back. On not too hard a surface. A low pillow under your head. You can have your legs stretched out on the floor. Or you can have your knees bent up.

From the "One Moment at a Time" retreat at Taraloka.

This is talk 6 of 13 talks and led meditations given on the Path to Insight Retreat at Taraloka, July 2019. This retreat was offered to women who are training for Ordination and Order Members. The talks are available to all. In this body scan, Vidyamala explores the three spheres of the abdomen, chest and head, with the diaphragm being like swinging doors linking the spheres. Whole body breathing forms the essence of this body scan.

This is talk 10 of 13 talks and led meditations given on the Path to Insight Retreat at Taraloka, July 2019. This retreat was offered to women who are training for Ordination and Order Members. The talks are available to all. In this body scan, Vidyamala continues exploration of the three spheres of the abdomen, chest and head, with the diaphragms being like swinging doors linking the spheres. This builds on the body scan introduced yesterday and is lightly led.

This talk provides a really good working context to help your meditation practice. Best to lie down comfortably as you listen to Padmadharshini's description of the anatomical and physiological processes involved in breathing. She's a yoga teacher as well as a meditation teacher and she draws on both those sets of skills to give this talk. And as you lie there, she'll help you tune into your own own body with some very simple exercises and suggestions. Expect to come away with some very practical tips on how to become more aware of your breathing body.

The talk was given on "One Moment at a Time" retreat at Taraloka and is a companion talk to the body scan meditation led by Vidyamala. (The sound quality is a little bit 'fuzzy' in parts but the content more than makes up for that.)

Padmadarshini and Vidyamala offer beginning (and experienced) meditators a primer on the anatomical and physiological processes involved in experiencing the breath in the body. Padmadarshini discusses practical tips for being more aware of the breathing body, and Vidyamala leads a body scan meditation to get in touch with physical sensation. These talks were given on "One Moment at a Time" retreat at Taraloka in 2007.