Fernando Kaskais posted: " Photo by Nick Harris | https://flic.kr/p/pi56hn Try a "skeletal scan" meditation to help cultivate a new awareness of your body. By Wes Nisker The neck bone's connected to the head bone, the head bone's connected to the angel bone, the angel bon"
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New post on WebInvestigator.KK.org - by F. Kaskais
The neck bone's connected to the head bone, the head bone's connected to the angel bone, the angel bone's connected to the god bone. . .
— Jack Kerouac
Lately, I've been reflecting on my bones; even focusing mindfulness and meditating on them. This is one part of a general study I have undertaken to try to understand what we inherit from biological evolution and how that knowledge can inform our practice of dharma. The best way to explain this work is to offer you a sample of it, a guided meditation exercise. Give it a try. See if you can feel it in your bones.
This exercise explores the architectural wonder of our body, our vertebrate identity. (If you have a spinal column and limbs branching off it, you are a vertebrate.) To explore the skeletal structure, we will use the body scanning technique, moving conscious awareness through our bones, reflecting on the history and mystery of these highly articulated and animated pieces of clay.
Even if you have some difficulty actually "feeling" the bones, you can still get a sense of their existence and function in this exercise. Let yourself visualize as you scan, if that helps. Follow the image of the human skeleton you have seen countless times in pictures or models. It is a close replica of your own.
The exercise can be done in any posture—seated, standing, or lying down. With your eyes either open or closed, bring your attention to the top of your head. Feel the rounded dome of the skull, sensing its shape.
Next, become aware of the empty spaces in the skull bone—the eye sockets, the jaw, and the cavity of the mouth, the space beneath the ears, and the big opening in the back of the skull where the spine enters.
You can feel all of these openings in the skull as the primary places where messages about the world come through. Isn't it convenient that the nose, eyes, ears, and mouth are so close to the brain? The rest of the body is still using a cable system—the spine—sending signals up and down the length of us.
Feel or sense the spacious opening at the back of the head where the spine enters. You can experience this space better by moving your head around or from side to side, feeling the muscles that move up from the shoulders and neck to hold all the pieces together.
To really get an inward sense of the bones of the skull, just clench your jaw. Grind your teeth together a little. Another way to feel the skull is to hum out loud, making a nasal sound that vibrates through the acoustic space in the dome of your head.
Open your mouth, feeling the expanse created, and follow this open area back to the cavity of the throat. In the womb, we all develop gill-like structures just beneath our face, and after satisfying the DNA of primitive fish, these develop into jaws, earbones, and larynx.
Come back to your teeth for a minute. Don't set them on edge, just move them against each other. Feel the power in that finely wrought tool, your mouth. The jaws are perfectly crafted hinges. This tool can bite off vegetables or meat and chew them into a liquid if so directed. Your mouth, in spite of what may come out of it at times, is certainly one of the marvels of nature.
The invention of jaws. . . five hundred million years ago, may have given polychaete worms the advantage over priapulid worms. Hinged jaws were a turning point for armored fish, cartilaginous fish, and bony fish in the seas of the Paleozoic, and for the whole vertebrate evolution that followed, from amphibian to reptiles, birds, and mammals.
— Jonathan Weiner, The Beak of the Finch
The skull inside your head is a refinement of the skull bones of countless other beings, reshaped by their suffering and struggles. Your skull has been growing into this shape for half a billion years, expanding to accommodate a growing brain, slowly forming its narrow, brooding forehead.
Visualize your skull. Recall some of the skulls and pictures of skulls you have seen—from museums, medical texts, Halloween, the Day of the Dead, the Grateful Dead. They are all reasonable facsimiles of the skull you are feeling inside of your own face.
Before moving your attention away from your head, try to feel the entire skull as a single bone. This is your living room, the place where your brain lives. The skull is also holding your face in place. Without it, your head would cave in...
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