The Mountain meditation
Picture the most beautiful mountain you know – or can imagine. Notice it’s overall shape, the lofty peak, the base rooted in the rock of the Earth’s crust, the sloping sides. Note how massive it is, how unmoving, how beautiful.
See if you can bring the mountain into your own body – your head becomes the lofty peak; your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain; your buttocks and legs the solid base rooted to your cushion on the floor or to your chair.
Notice any emotions you are feeling and your mood, as though they are the weather around the mountain. Is your weather right now, calm and sunny, or stormy with lashing rain, is it icy or warm? Allow your own personal weather to be just as it is, noticing if it intensifies, changes or stays the same through the meditation.
Fully become the breathing mountain, unwavering in your stillness, completely what you are – beyond words and thought, a centered, rooted unmoving presence.
As the light changes, as night follows day and day night, the mountain just sits, simply being itself. It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment.
Storms may come, but still the mountain sits.
Calmness abiding all change.
(Adapted from Jon Kabat-zinn mindfulness meditation in everyday life)
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