Bliss Routine

The following meditation routine was originally taught by Craig at a Dharma Punx session. You willneed to block out 30-40 minutes in a relatively quiet area. A particularly good session will produce a mindstate of feeling complete awareness, concentration, and elation in the present moment. Even if you don't get an amazing experience out of it, this meditation will still be helpful in relaxing you and helping you to be more present. The routine is as follows:

1. Sit in a comfortable posture with your eyes closed and ground yourself fully, keeping energy in your spine to stay in an upright posture while allowing the rest of you to relax.
2. Scan your body from top to bottom and systematically relax areas of tension, starting with your eyes, jaw, shoulders, chest, stomach, arms, hands, legs, and feet.
3. After a few scans, note what cannot be relaxed at this time. From this point on, accept that remaining tension and don't even regard it as tension. You are in the most natural state you can be in at this time, so accept it as your current state and move to the next phase.
4. Begin bringing your attention to the breath. Pick a particular spot to focus on, like the spot where the air exits the nostrils or the expanding area where the air flows into the lungs. Watch that area.
5. When thoughts come up note them and gently move your attention back to that spot of the breath. If a line of thought completely derails you, you can briefly re-ground yourself, do a quick scan, and then return to the breath.
6. Continue focusing on following the breath and returning to the breath for the next 20 minutes or so. During this time continue to relax your body and bring your awareness more and more into your body, regarding the chatter of your mind as harmless noise as you exist wordlessly within your body, following the breath.
7. When you feel your concentration is good, scan your body again and pick a spot that feels particularly grounded and stable. This is often a chakra point, like the spot between the eyes or the belly button. Move your focus from the breath to that empty, grounded and stable point on your body, and start to really focus and concentrate on that spot. Let that spot ground you inside your body even more fully. You can do this for the next 5-10 minutes.
8. Towards the last 2 minutes of the session, move to the last phase. Open your concentration to all sensations in and around your body at once. Feel your breath, the aches in your back, the numbness of your legs, the air around your head and arms, the tension in your chest, the sounds around you and behind you. Accept it all and enter a state of complete awareness in this moment.
9. Open your eyes and let the visual sensations in as well. Compared to the narrow focus of the breath or the spot you picked, all the sensations of the body and senses are vivid and enveloping in the present moment.
10. To close, take a few deep breaths and then take a bow to thank yourself for the practice you are doing.