Body-Centered Inquiry

I just completed a 6 hour collection of healing meditation practices from Jonathan Foust and Sounds True. This one: Body-Centered Inquiry: Meditation Training to Awaken Your Inner Guidance, Vitality, and Loving Heart

I’m blown away these days about how I find what I need when I need it. That sounds cliche but it’s happening and it’s fantastic.

This program brought me through what would otherwise have been an excruciatingly difficult healing process in the last 24 hours. It was difficult anyway but this program clearly eased it for me.

My healing trajectory continues and I am still facing very difficult periods of time as my brain heals from the iatrogenic injury. The healing process continues to be non-linear and erratic. What is different now is that I ride the waves with a grace that would have been unconceivable to me even 6 months ago. There is joy now even in the difficulties. This doesn’t mean I don’t cry and despair a bit even now…but now I do it with a sense of joy in knowing that I am healing and I am healing by letting my body/mind/spirit do what they all need to do. There is a freedom in giving oneself deep permission to feel it all.

This program deepens this capacity of allowance. Allowing oneself to feel more. He uses a process called RAIN — a practice for meeting all experience with acceptance, kindness and compassion. There are also forgiveness practices and body scans and much more. It’s an incredibly rich collection.

This program was not conceived of for those of us with these particular iatrogenic injuries (psychiatric drug withdrawal syndromes). I cannot speak to how it might help others who are struggling with this particular form of human difficulty. But for me, at this juncture it was an incredible gift.

To be clear for several years (yes, several) I could not listen to meditation tapes at all. So I offer this to all of you with that caveat. Timing is everything.

Here is a taste of Jonathan Foust’s style in a recorded meditation available from his website.

One of the many meditation practices in the above program is similar to this one. You can listen to it streaming right here:

Focus, flow and let go

Some additional links for meditation and contemplation from Beyond Meds:

●  The foundation of healing mental distress and of becoming a mature human adult 

●  Meditation, not all bliss and roses

● Life as a meditation: my contemplative adventure  

● How long should I stay with uncomfortable feelings?

● There is nothing unique about our suffering. (Tonglen, a compassion practice)

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