Boundaryless: A Meditation for Entering a Sound Bath

One of the challenges at the beginning of a sound bath is that you can lie down without really arriving.

Your body may be on the mat, but your mind is still finishing the day. You are thinking about something that happened earlier, something you need to do later, whether you are comfortable, whether you are doing this correctly, or what you hope will happen once the sound begins.

So lately I have been experimenting with different ways of helping people enter the sound bath through the body rather than through the mind.

One of them I have started calling Boundaryless Meditation.

It begins like a fairly traditional progressive relaxation. We start at the feet and slowly work our way toward the top of the head.

But instead of simply relaxing the muscles, we go a little deeper.

Start With the Feet

Bring your attention to your feet.

Feel whatever is actually there.

Pressure. Warmth. Coolness. Tingling. Heaviness. Maybe very little at all.

Then begin to relax the physical structures of the feet.

Relax the skin.

The muscles.

The connective tissue.

Even the bones.

You do not need to know much about anatomy to do this. You do not have to actually know where every tendon or bone is. The invitation is simply to notice the structure you imagine when you think of your feet and allow some of that structure to soften.

Then we move into something a little different.

Notice the image of your feet that you are carrying in your mind.

Even with your eyes closed, you probably have some idea of where your feet are. You have a sense of their size and shape. Somewhere in your perception is an understanding of where each foot begins and where it ends.

For a moment, see if you can relax that too.

You don’t need to erase your feet or imagine them disappearing.

Just stop defining them quite so precisely.

Let their edges become a little less certain.

Maybe you don’t need to know exactly where your feet end and the space around them begins.

Moving Through the Body

From there, slowly move upward.

Relax the lower legs.

The skin.

The muscles.

The connective tissue.

The bones.

Then relax your idea of your lower legs.

Their shape.

Their size.

Their boundaries.

Continue into the knees and thighs, eventually allowing the entire lower half of the body to soften.

At the hips, pause and notice the whole body from the waist down.

Rather than thinking separately about feet, calves, knees, thighs and hips, feel the entire lower body at once.

Then let the image of that entire region become a little less definite.

Move into the abdomen.

Allow the belly to soften.

Let go of the impulse to hold it in or control it.

Feel the movement created by breathing without needing to change it.

Then bring your attention to the spine.

Imagine moving slowly upward, vertebra by vertebra.

You do not need to visualize the spine perfectly. Simply feel or imagine that central structure and allow each section to release as your attention moves upward.

Come into the ribs.

Feel their structure around the lungs and heart.

Take a slow breath and feel the ribs expand.

And as you exhale, allow your sense of that structure to soften.

The ribs do not need to disappear. You simply don’t need to hold such a precise picture of them.

Continue through the shoulders.

The arms.

The elbows.

The hands.

The fingers.

Then the neck, jaw, face, scalp and head.

Each time, move through the same process:

Feel the body.

Relax its physical structures.

Then relax the image you are carrying of it.

Let the Whole Body Become Less Definite

Eventually, stop moving through individual parts.

Feel the body as a whole.

Notice its weight.

Notice the places where it meets the floor.

Notice the sensation of breathing.

And then notice something subtler.

You probably still have a sense of the boundary of your body.

Somewhere in your perception is an idea of where you end and everything else begins.

You don’t have to make that boundary disappear.

Just stop defining it quite so precisely.

Let it become softer.

Less certain.

You don’t need to know exactly where your arms are.

You don’t need to maintain a perfect image of your legs.

You don’t need to hold such a clear picture of the shape your body is making in the room.

Let the body take up whatever space it seems to take up.

For a little while, you don’t have to hold yourself together quite so tightly.

And then listen.

Entering the Sound

This is where I begin the sound bath.

The point of the meditation isn’t to produce a particular sensation. Some people may experience their bodies as unusually large or small. Some may lose track of where a hand or foot is. Some may experience tingling, warmth, heaviness or spaciousness.

Others may simply feel relaxed.

There is no correct experience.

What interests me is the shift in attention.

We spend so much of our lives carrying around a remarkably stable idea of ourselves. We know where our body is. We know what it looks like. We know where it begins and ends.

For a sound bath, we can loosen our grip on some of that certainty.

Then sound arrives.

Instead of immediately deciding where the sound is coming from, what instrument is making it, whether we like it, or what it means, we can simply feel what happens when sound enters this less-defined experience of the body.

The practice becomes listening without having to organize everything quite so quickly.

Coming Back

I think the way we return from a sound bath matters just as much as the way we enter it.

So if I begin a sound bath by softening the boundaries of the body, I don’t want to end by abruptly telling everyone to wiggle their fingers and toes and sit up.

I want to reverse the process.

Begin to feel your body on the mat again.

Feel its weight.

Notice the places where your body meets the floor.

Begin to notice your feet.

Your legs.

Your hands.

Your arms.

Feel the shape your body is making in the room.

And slowly begin to feel the boundaries of your body again.

Let those boundaries become a little more definite.

Notice where your body ends and the space around you begins.

Then allow small movements to return.

A deeper breath.

Movement in the fingers and toes.

Eventually, when you’re ready, open your eyes.

You haven’t been trying to escape your body.

You’ve been practicing another way of experiencing it.

And now you can come back to its familiar shape.