Meditations
Guided meditations with Andy Spragg to support your practice at home. These recordings can be used alongside the suggested contemplations in Andy’s book, The Magic of Noticing.
The Body Scan
I always start my personal meditation with the body scan. It helps us to settle in to the posture and arrive in the moment. However, the body scan, itself can be a very effective meditation and personally I have made some of my most effective progress using it. It can teach us a great deal.
The Body Scan is a very powerful tool for insight meditation. For seeing deeply into the nature of things. As we drop into the body, looking deeply we see things. Things that were in front of us all the time, but we hadn’t noticed.
Mindfulness of Breathing
In Buddhist practice this is known as anapanasati. It is the meditation the Buddha was using when he gained enlightenment. Simple to describe, far from easy to do. What makes it difficult is the minds tendency to wander. When we use this meditation, we are simply watching the breath. The sensations of the breath. Seeking to keep our awareness gently fixed onto the sensation. However, the mind intrudes and pulls us away. This is why the meditation is instrumental in our change. It requires the development of concentration and it requires us to develop an ability to notice when the mind has wandered. Just by noticing, we start to see what the mind is doing. We start to learn to draw back from thoughts. To become mindful of our own mind and our own stream of consciousness. This ‘watching’ in itself becomes habitual. We are developing a habit of mind watching.
Open Mindfulness of Breathing audio
Just Sitting
At some point, we must learn to accept the nature of mind. It’s chaotic nature, the way it is. Just sitting is a very effective meditation for this. Here, rather than having a focus we simple sit with awareness of anything that arises in our experience.
Metta Bhavana – Cultivation of Loving Kindness
The Metta Bhavana meditation is exceptionally important. It’s translation is literally the Cultivation Of (Bhavana) Metta (Loving Kindness). Here, we are looking at heart emotion. Like all Buddhist meditations, this one is also experiential. We are looking for a genuine feeling in the heart space. It feels like a soft warm smile. It may ‘feel’ as if it has colour associated with it. A warm yellow perhaps. But don’t get too hung up with trying to see colours. I’ve always found that it is more beneficial to look for actual physical sensation. As we practice, we learn to feel a great deal in our heart space.