In this episode - I've been taking meditation lessons to learn how to meditate with a Bonsai tree - and I share some of the most helpful things I've learned.
Enjoy!
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I met Laura at a place up the street called Zen bonsai. I've talked about this in a couple of episodes.
This guy, he’s originally from Taiwan. He actually moved to Medellín about seven years ago.
Laura and I have been doing these Zen Bonsai meditation classes, where we are actually learning how to meditate with a bonsai.
What's really cool and what I've really enjoyed about this is, I've been meditating for many, many, many years. But I've never actually looked into the history of meditation.
I've never wanted to or even had a desire to understand a lot of the foundations of meditation.
And so, what's interesting with these courses, we are meditating with a bonsai plant, but the courses are so much more than that.
This is not only a full introduction to meditation, it's a full explanation of meditation, and we're also learning how and why a lot of the different techniques and practices developed over time.
From time to time, over the course of my meditation practice, which I think now it's got to be about 6 years, I've wondered or questioned if I'm doing it right, which is a silly question.
That was another thing that we learned today, that there's this style of meditation which is called Mahayana. You know, sitting a certain way and breathing a certain way, these are all recommendations but it stipulates that there's no specific way that we have to do meditation.
And it was just nice to hear that.
The classes are going really well. I'm going with Laura. She's loving them.
She's at a more beginner level of meditation.
It's good to see her, it's good to talk to her and listen to her as she is practicing, and running into those initial obstacles that most people face when they start meditating. The running mind, feeling like you're not doing it right, trying to have some sort of specific objective.
it's interesting to learn some of the initial foundations of meditation, which I'll share some of the stuff that we've learned with you guys. And this is also interesting for me too because some of the stuff is good for me to hear, and learn, and actually start to begin to implement in my own meditation practice so that I can improve and refine what I think is already a very good practice.
Our teacher shared with us that there are five steps prior to meditation.
The first one is stretching.
You want to stretch your body, especially if you're meditating first thing in the morning, you want to be nice and loose.
Second is relaxation.
And you want to, not only relax your body, there are different ways to relax just very quickly. You want to connect your breath to movement.
The third one is breathing.
This is something that I already have, that I already do naturally, but it took a lot practice and a lot of time.
You should be breathing into your abdomen.
The fourth one is Reflection.
You want to reflect before you meditate, and what that means is, you want to be conscious of all of the things you're thinking.
It is really helpful to just think the things that you want to think but also be conscious of the you that is thinking that.
And, the last thing, this is something that you do during the meditation, and this is something that I've never done and I'm just starting to learn now, is imagination.
Imagination is basically where you're practicing your third eye. When you are meditating with something in front of you you keep your eyes about 80% close-20% open, and you see a connection between your third eye and that thing that you're observing.
You want to basically imagine like a bridge of light going from you to that thing.
I think the purpose of this is for you to be able to see yourself inside of that thing, and for you to also see that thing inside of yourself and to understand that, in doing that, that you are the same thing.
Anyway, I think this is all interesting stuff. I wanted to just share that with you guys.
Most of the classes that we're doing over there, we're focusing on just basics and understanding what Zen meditation is.
Then we're spending some of the class actually meditating with a bonsai plant.
We're learning new techniques every time. Today we focused on the totality of the plant.
Anyway, it's really interesting.
I really love it.
I would love to actually make a full episode if you guys are interested, just let me know in the comments below and I can do that.
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