Inner-Body Meditation

The spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle introduced this meditation practice in his ground-breaking book titled “New Earth – Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose”. And we practiced this meditation with him live while attending his class at the Eckhart Tolle “School of Awakening”. In short, we find this practice quite effective in terms of connecting with the Presence and getting a sense of what Mr. Tolle calls the “Deep I”.

Hope you can it helpful on your path to awakening too.

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Inner-Body Meditation practice, when regularly done, helps quiet our minds and cultivate a sense of inner stillness. We get a sense of inner body awareness and through that to a higher level of consciousness. Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment, it also strengthens the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself.

The below is combination of an excerpt from his book “New Earth” together with his inner body meditation session at The Eckhart Tolle School of Awakening.

For this meditation, ten to fifteen minutes of clock time should be sufficient. Make sure first that there are no external distractions such as telephones or people who are likely to interrupt you. Sit on a chair, but don’t lean back. Keep the spine erect. Doing so will help you to stay alert. Alternatively, choose your own favorite position for meditation.

Make sure the body is relaxed. Close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Feel yourself breathing into the lower abdomen, as it were. Observe how it expands and contracts slightly with each in and out breath. Then become aware of the entire inner energy field of the body. Don’t think about it — feel it. By doing this, you reclaim consciousness from the mind.

Try to get in touch with the sense of aliveness that pervades your inner energy field. When you can feel the inner body clearly as a single field of energy, let go, if possible, of any visual image and focus exclusively on the feeling. If you can, also drop any mental image you may still have of the physical body. All that is left then is an all-encompassing sense of presence or “being-ness,” and the inner body is felt to be without a boundary.

If you can’t get there immediately, feel the aliveness in your hands, that is the sense of animating presence, so you suddenly realize that your hands are there without looking at them, or touching them…There’s a feeling of hand but there’s no visual image attached to it. Before going into the rest of the body, showing you the example of hands, how to let of the visual image, because as we go into this meditation, we try to let go of the image of inner body.

Almost not hands any more, it’s just somewhere in your inner space, there is just that sense of aliveness. Then, you can go to other parts of the body, can you feel your feet? Perhaps not as strongly as hands, but they are alive too. Legs, your belly,…etc.

Now, take 2 or 3 conscious breaths…breathe in to the abdomen, so as you breath in, the abdomen expands slightly, at the end of the in-breath, there is a very brief pause where you can sense the energy field in the abdominal area of the body, then you breathe out and at the end of the out-breath, there is a brief pause before you start breathe in again.

Feel the abdomen, as the abdomen is filled with air and then hold it for 3-4 seconds, and you can feel the energy expanding to other parts of the body from there. Do it again, and take 3-4 times as taking conscious breaths into the abdomen. Feel the energy expanding from there and spreading into the rest of the body. And now you can sense the entire body as a single field of energy, a single field of aliveness and your attention is there and you’re holding your attention on it.

Then take your attention even more deeply into that feeling. Become one with it. Merge with the energy field, so that there is no longer a perceived duality of the observer and the observed, of you and your body. The distinction between inner and outer also dissolves now, so there is no inner body anymore. By going deeply into the body, you have transcended the body.

Realize that there is no longer “two” of you, there is no longer the one that is observing that aliveness, but the observing presence and the aliveness that it seems to observe is a single phenomenon, a single energy field…It’s no longer that you’re observing internally that sense of aliveness, but “you are” that sense of aliveness.

So, the observer and the observed merge and become one. And that’s a beautiful realization once you get there, that there’s no longer two of you. There’s just one presence. It’s not that you know that presence, that presence knows itself.

It’s actually a very pleasant feeling, the feeling that you are alive and there is an animating presence in every cell of the body, an energy field that is the organizing principle behind the physical form. So, you’re becoming aware of this invisible you, or the invisible I.

There’s ultimately only one “I”. And now, let’s see if you can let of the mental image of body, and not even think of in terms of legs and so on…just give your attention to the sense of aliveness…

That presence is essentially you. That presence is the “being” beyond the human. That presence is the ocean, the human is the wave. That presence is your true-self, your true identity. It’s not a form identity, it’s an essence identity. It’s one with everything. It’s not a separate self.

Having access to that formless realm is truly liberating. It frees you from bondage to form and identification with form. It is life in its undifferentiated state prior to its fragmentation into multiplicity. We may call it the Unmanifested, the invisible Source of all things, the Being within all beings. It is a realm of deep stillness and peace, but also of joy and intense aliveness. Whenever you are present, you become “transparent” to some extent to the light, the pure consciousness that emanates from this Source. You also realize that the light is not separate from who you are but constitutes your very essence.

Stay in this realm of pure Being for as long as feels comfortable; then become aware again of the physical body, your breathing and physical senses, and open your eyes. Look at your surroundings for a few minutes in a meditative way — that is, without labeling them mentally — and continue to feel the inner body as you do so.

Once you open your eyes, suddenly sense-perceived, visually perceived world is there. And yet, you haven’t lost touch completely with this unmanifested dimension. So, you’re present and able to perceive without losing the sense of being or being-ness, the sense of the I, the I am, that’s there and yet you’re able to perceive your present within and present without.

You can do this meditation, at least once or twice a day which might be better, so that the awareness and power of presence grows in you. So that when you’re facing life situations and challenges, it doesn’t leave you. You won’t feel it as strongly perhaps as you do now but it’ll always be there in the background. And that is the awakening.