Written by: Ralph Wilms, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Know your spiritual roots for meditation. I came into contact with the Western way of meditation through Prof. Peter Kingsley. Peter Kingsley is the author of numerous books, a visiting professor at various universities, and extensively researched the presocratic philosophers Parmenides and Empedocles and the world they lived in. Besides being philosophers, mystics, and healers, they also performed practical tasks such as building city walls, draining swamps, or strategically defending their cities against raids by pirates. After reading his book “The mystical origin of the Western civilization,” I contacted him in 2007 to express my appreciation for his findings. One of his central statements is that we can only truly encounter other cultures when we know our roots.
Easy and effective access to expanded states of consciousness
Over the last decades, the West has been strongly influenced by various, mainly Eastern traditions: Indian yogis, shamans, Zen teachers, and Tibetan Buddhists have long had a foothold in our country, but most of us have no clue where Western culture started. I was particularly interested in the original, mystical techniques of the West, from which our logic-based culture had emerged. I realized that meditation in Eastern traditions was called "incubation" in the ancient Greek civilization. Through my study of various Asian meditation techniques, I realized that the incubation techniques taught by Kingsley were similar to methods from Zen Buddhism. The most important realization for me, however, was that they represent ‒ for us in the West ‒ the most straightforward and accessible path to meditation and the source of our being. Over the last few years, I have had the experience in many seminars where participants find easy and effective access to expanded states of consciousness, characterized by inner silence, clarity, and serenity, through these authentic meditation techniques, which are peculiar to us.
Rediscover this Western, easy-to-learn meditation technique
Even though I greatly appreciate Zen Buddhism or Advaita Vedanta techniques, I prefer the immersion into the sensory awareness of this ancient technique because it's almost effortless. The body and the simultaneous perception of the senses play a central role. From my point of view, rediscovering this Western, easy-to-learn technique right now is the way to expand your consciousness quickly. Both Parmenides and Empedocles are credited with using meditation via your senses; they called it incubation to journey into the most profound dimension of their being and generate deep insights, healing, and practical solutions. In today's world, this simple technique is proving to be enormously helpful in meeting growing stress levels and complexity with a clear intuition, serenity, and clarity.
The practice:
Meditation works most efficiently when it literally makes sense. One of the most effective techniques to create a state of deep relaxation is to let the attention flow into the inner sensation of your hands and feet. The reason for this is the intense density of sensitive nerve cells that create a strong sensation in the hands and feet. In the areas of the brain responsible for body perception, hands and feet occupy significant space. While in the shoulder area, we experience touches with small distance as a single point; in the fingertips, we feel every grain of sand. Mindfully exploring this sensitivity through your hands and feet can harness it from the inside.
1. Step: Become aware of the sensation in your hands.
First, bring your attention to the inner feeling of the hands without moving them. You feel the palm of your hand and initially stay with the localization of this area. Then move to the fingers, feeling each finger and both thumbs. Now bring your mindfulness to your fingertips. As you dwell in the fingertips, you begin to feel the pulse in the fingertips. As you continue, expand your awareness to the backs of both hands and then to the whole hand. The more attentively you experience your hands from the inside, the more clearly you feel tingling in your fingers and hands. This is a sign that you have made contact with the subtle energy field around the hands.
2. Step: Become aware of the sensation in your feet.
Now do the same with your feet. Contact your feet by mindfully feeling into them without moving them. Now go into the soles of your feet and feel the area from your heels to your toes. Next, bring your mindfulness into the toes. Be aware that the feet are further away from the head and not quite as sensitive as the hands. Therefore, you need more patience for the feet than the hands. Now try to notice the tips of the toes and the two big toes. Then the back of the foot and finally the feet as a whole.
3. Step: Connect the sensations in your hands and feet.
Now connect the sensations in your feet and the sensations in your hands. Connect hands and feet by perceiving them simultaneously. The neural networks in the brain's right hemisphere, which are responsible for body awareness and self-awareness, are now firing means activated. Once you have united hands and feet in your awareness, imagine the subtle quality of tingling spreading more and more throughout your body. From the hands upward into the arms and shoulders, and from the feet upward into the legs and pelvis, the relaxed vibration of your natural frequency gradually spreads more and more throughout the body. In this straightforward way, you will anchor yourself more and more in a pleasant body sensation. This relaxed feeling in your hands and feet can now accompany you throughout the day and will help you to anchor yourself in a sense of well-being. You can find this as a guided meditation in the Silencefinder app.
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Ralph Wilms, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
University degree in Social Sciences (Sociology / Political Science / Psychology) Clinical Psychologist, Founder of a Sustainable and Ethical Investment Company. Studies in Chinese Daoist philosophy. Training in techniques of contemplation and meditation in various spiritual traditions: Sufism, Chan Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Greek Mysticism. Member of Eurotas – The European Transpersonal Association. Founder of Silence Finder GmbH – Intercultural Meditation App. Meditation teacher and transpersonal coach. 35 years of experience in various meditation techniques and their practical application. Not bound to any spiritual tradition.
