Relax

Pause, Relax, Open can be seen as three parts or three aspects of the same moment. The moment may be long or so brief to not be separate from a flow of experience. But it is helpful to experiment with each of these three parts separately.

The second part of the core interpersonal meditation instruction is Relax. We Pause into awareness and Relax the body and mind. At its basic level, this instruction is as simple as it sounds. We bring mindfulness to those parts of the body where we tend to accumulate tension and allow the tension to relax. Becoming aware of the body as a whole, we give ourselves permission to let down, to let go, and not grasp at the reactive state we find.

In this practice we recognize tension and choose ease. There is no other practice, really than letting go. We only need to choose the ease. Choosing the ease over and over again is itself the practice. Our formal support for making this choice, for remembering that this choice is available to us, is the simple instruction Relax.

GK p. 119

These comments are just the beginning of Chapter 11: Relax, pages 119-128