Focusing attention on parts of the body cultivates concentration/relaxation/breath regulation. All precursors to meditation. The Buddhist type of body part meditation, I believe, is suppose to also help with culling sexual desire and body identification. I am familiar with a couple sequences from several sources:
- Yoga Nidra
- My teacher’s relaxation sequence
- My own sequences
- 32 parts of the body Buddhist meditaiton
Yoga Nidra: I enjoy and have memorized Swami-j’s ”61 Points Relaxation” for the purpose of “parts mediation” . It is a good sequence of joints/fingers/toes & also some chakra points.
Yoga Nidra: Rod Stryker’s sequence on “Relax into Greatness” is also great, and a little more random. Since its so random I haven’t memorized it…but I think the randomness is intended in his case. Whereas if you look at 32 body parts mediations, these are intended to be memorized.
Yoga Nidra: The other sequence I have tried is from Jonn Mumford. He has a script in his kundalini book and also it is recorded on his yoga nidra CD. This sequence is very similar to Swami-j’s …except with more detail. For example Swami-j’s sequence would focus on a finger as a whole, whereas Mr. Mumford’s Sequence divides the fingers into 3 sections.
My teacher, Erhard Vogel’s, sequence is one I am familiar with because we start a lot of our guided meditation with a body parts relaxation sequence. This sequence was the first time I noticed my hand chakras starting to activate. I sometimes expand his sequence with more body organs (lungs,spleen,liver,gall bladder,pancreas, kidneys), glands (thymus, thyroid, adrenal,pineal,pituitary).
In my own sequences, I am devising ones that include veins, arteries, lymph system, nervous system. I have one that deals only with brain parts (pons,cerebellum,circle of willis, pineal gland, pituitary gland, left hemisphere, right hemispere, optic nerve). I am still devising it and intend to add other parts like the lobes, cortexes etc.
Finally, the 32 parts body meditation from Buddhism…I am not too familiar with it. I intend to study it because I see the power of this type of meditation and also enjoy learning body anatomy and enjoy how effective this type of mediation is. Also I see the value of it in helping to purify body views.
Pingback: 32 parts of the body practice | Dan Simon's Blog