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Welcome back to the Daily meditation with me, meditation teacher Paul Harrison. Today I’m going to be doing a guided of Vipassana meditation.
Vipassana is one of the oldest forms of meditation and one of the main Buddhist meditation techniques. When you do this meditation, you’re going to gain insight into your mind, as well as calming your mind and understanding yourself a bit better.
So I’m going to get right into it.
Guided Vipassana Meditation Script
Let us sit with good posture. We want to make sure that the feet are squarely planted on the floor directly in front of the knees. The back is nice and straight and relaxed. Lowering the chin a little bit. Optionally, you may choose to use a mudra. I would recommend either Anjali Mudra ,which is prayer hands, Gyan mudra, which is the most kind of archetypal mudra use in meditation. Or you could use cosmic mudra or simply place your hands how they feel comfortable.
Lower the changes a little bit to elongate the neck and we shall go ahead and close our eyes.
Now to begin with, just focus on the sensation of the breath moving through the space just beneath the middle of the nose. And we are simply observing how the breath feels on that spot.
And at this time you might like to tell yourself that you’re going to be meditating for 10 to 15 minutes. And that all that matters during this time is that you just sit and relax to focus and allow yourself to simply be to simply exist in this present moment.
As we continue to breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Simply observing the passage of the breath through the nose and out of the mouth. For now, all we are doing is just preparing and we’re simply relaxing and just allowing ourselves to just exist. To just spend a little while simply observing how things are. Just allowing the present moment to occur around us as we simply exist in it.
And now we should go ahead and expand our awareness. Now we should be aware of the breath moving in through the nose to the back of the throat and down into the abdomen. And then out through the mouth. And so for the time being, all we are doing is simply allowing the mind to just observe the breath as it moves in through the nose, down to the optimum, and then back out and through the mouth.
Remember how much good you are doing simply by sitting and just existing for a short while with me. Simply allowing yourself to exist and to just observe the present moment.
Now I want you to bring your mind to your abdomen. Simply observe the rising and the falling of the abdomen as the abdomen expands to let air in and then contracts as we breathe out. If you find it helpful you may describe the movements of your abdomen to yourself. For instance, you can say “I am breathing in and my abdomen is expanding” And then “I am breathing out and my abdomen is contracting.”
Should thoughts or feelings come to mind, simply allow them to float on by as you continue to breathe.
Now the aim is to observe the abdomen moving and to focus on the breath there. Inevitably, the mind does move, thoughts happen, feelings happen. This is all perfectly normal. It’s simply what the mind does, and so we must just simply accept and be aware of the actions of the mind. So as you are observing your abdomen all I want you to do is just notice when your mind comes and goes. In other words, notice when you are focusing on your breath in your abdomen. And then notice when your mind also stops focusing when it goes elsewhere.
Begin to label the movements of your mind. When you are focused, simply say “I am focusing”. And then when your mind loses focus, simply say “mind lost” And then gently return your awareness to your abdomen.
So again, all we are doing is observing the breath in the abdomen. Noticing the rising and the falling of the abdomen. When we lose our focus, we shall simply note to ourselves, “focus lost”. And then when we regain our focus, we shall just say, “focusing”. And so let us sit for a few minutes now to practise that. Remember that it is not about controlling the mind, it is simply about observing the mind.
Now, while the aim is to observe the breath, we must not force this aim. We must not be hard on ourselves or overly force our focus. We must just allow ourselves to just gently gaze inwards at the breath and be completely accepting at those times when we do lose focus, because that is completely natural. Just remembering to bring the mind back to the breath when we need to. And just gently, gently guiding the mind back.
Now let us progress.
Now what we are doing is sitting observing the abdomen expanding on the inhale and contracting on the out breath and you can label those movements to yourself, “Expanding breathing in” and “Contracting breathing out”. When the mind loses focus, we just gently note to ourselves, “losing focus” and then gently return the mind to the breath.
Now let us move on to the next stage of this meditation.
For the next stage, what we do is notice where the mind goes. So, for instance, let us say that there is a sound outside and the mind loses focus because the mind is drawn to the sound. All we shall do is say, “This is just a sound, nothing more”. So, we label the thing to which the mind has gone. And then we gently return the mind to the to the breath. Similarly, if the mind is drawn to a sensation in the body, we simply say, “This is just a sensation in my body nothing more” and then we return the mind to the breath. And the same with thoughts. If the mind gets lost in a thought we simply say, “This is just a thought, nothing more. And then again, we return the mind to the breath. As you do this, as you label any distraction, as you label sounds around you, as you label thoughts or feelings, you train your mind to understand the present moment for what it is and to be less reactive to stimuli. And this is going to greatly help you to be relaxed and to continue to be relaxed instead of being disturbed or knocked off centre.
And that is what Vipassana meditation is.
So, I should just once again go over the complete process. We are simply sitting observing the movement of the breath through the abdomen. And optionally, describing to ourselves the movement of the abdomen, saying, “expanding as we breathe in and then contracting as we breathe out. As we are observing. The movement of the breath. We label when we lose focus and when we regain focus. We simply say focus lost and then focus returned. Finally, we label the source of distraction. Labeling it by its sensory form. For instance, this is just a sound. This is just a feeling in my body. This is just a thought. And then always just very gently guiding the mind back to the breath. And so it is quite as simple process and yet a very powerful one.
And now to a count of five we shall open our eyes. But as we come back, we shall bring with us this increased insight and this feeling of peacefulness inside. One. Our eyes drift open a tiny little bit with the delicacy of a butterfly’s wings. Two, we bring with us this insight and this calmness. Three. Four, nearly back now, but still calm. And five.
And so that is our guided Vipassana meditation .As you practice, you will increasingly gain more insight into your own mind, and that insight will enable you to be less reactive, which means that you things will stress you less things and provoke you less and you will be able to continue to feel Zen throughout your day.
Another amazing thing about Vipassana is that it gives you insight into your mind. There are so many things occurring in the mind. The mind is an incredibly complex and yet magical thing. And the more we sit and simply allow ourselves to turn our awareness inside and to just observe what’s occurring in the mind, the more we come to understand ourselves.
Thank you for joining me today. My name is Paul Harrison. If you would like to book a private meditation lesson with me, you may do so on TheDailyMeditation.com. Remember to like and subscribe and until next time have a wonderful blessed day.
Paul Harrison is a passionate meditation teacher who believes in genuine, authentic meditation. He has more than 15 years experience in meditation and mindfulness. He studied meditation in beautiful Oxford, UK, and Hamilton Ontario Canada, and earned his degree at Staffordshire University.
“My goal is to provide the most authentic meditation sessions so you can harness the power of your own mind for personal transformation” – Paul Harrison
