Clearing Meditation

Description

Very often we find ourselves in a situation where our reaction seems disproportionate to what is currently happening to us.  In these situations we aren’t reacting to this one situation alone, we are reacting to the many times in our lives that similar situations have made us feel inadequate or badly about ourselves. Imagine that we are covered in Velcro, and every time someone says something, or does something to us that is hurtful or upsetting their words and actions stick to us and we are left carrying them around day after day year after year.

In a competitive environment, a dancer receives all sorts of messages from teachers, judges and fellow students, some of which can seem harsh, critical or unhelpful. And every time that dancer is in class, or competition and receives comments; they are responding not to those comments alone, but to all the comments that they have velcroed to themselves.

This meditation helps to clean the slate, to pull off all of the velcroed bits, so a dancer can approach dance and competition from fresh starting point.  It is also an important first step in developing a meditative practice.  It is hard to hear the positive messages in the meditations if you are listening to them while still carrying around all your old Velcro.