Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 29-minute guided meditation session, Karyn Williams leads students through a two-part healing practice designed specifically for coping with chronic illness and emotional distress. She begins with mindfulness of the breath, then guides a foundational loving-kindness meditation that extends from the self to all beings. The second portion shifts focus to physical and emotional tension release. Williams walks students through body-scanning techniques, breathing into areas of tightness in the neck, shoulders, abdomen, and head, systematically releasing tension with each exhale. She then teaches a practice of expanding awareness from the heart center outward, filling the entire body like candlelight in a room. Finally, she addresses the crucial transition back to daily life, emphasizing how to carry the meditative calm and centeredness into ordinary activity. Suitable for both newcomers and experienced meditators.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Karyn 20th October Part 1.mp3
UUID: 9fd66793-d657-424e-a5be-e30e8ce52a3c
Teacher: Karyn Williams
Collection: Meditations (Karyn Williams)
Date: 2016 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 29.7 minutes
Words: ~1,730
Okay. Well, welcome to healing meditation. We usually do it in two two lot. Well, we always do two lots, but usually we start out with a mindfulness, which is either concentrating on the breath or into maybe slightly guided. And then the second one is more healing, and that is to look at issues that you may have either personally, emotionally or actual physical illnesses.
The one today we’re going to do is actually coping with illness because those of us who do have chronic illnesses or debilitating conditions can get emotionally down from those issues. So we’re going to do a little bit of a coping. It may be just thinking if you’re brand new, it may be a little bit different than from what you’re expecting. Usually we do talk about healing and calming our bodies And this is the same, but I I just letting you know that we’re going to actually deal with coping with these things emotionally. Okay.
So, basically, we’re just going to now get into our meditation poses. If you are sitting in a chair, have your back straight and your feet squarely on the ground or on a cushion below your feet if your feet don’t reach the ground. And your eyes gently closed. It is okay to meditate with your eyes slightly open if you do want to. That’s having them cast down towards the floor about three feet in front of you.
However, it’s an introducing another sense to our mind when we’re trying to close it down a little bit. Shutting our eyes does help to keep that one extra sense from bothering us and having our thoughts go with what we’re seeing in front of us. So just now quietly, in your own time, just breathe gently for a few moments and settle yourselves. And as we’re settling ourselves, just have your thoughts go to to goodwill, thoughts of goodwill. And thoughts of goodwill go first to yourself because if you can’t think goodwill for yourself, if you can’t feel a sincere desire for your own happiness, there’s actually no way you can wish for other others to be happy as well.
So just tell yourself, may I find true happiness. As you just sit, gently breathe. Just repeat that to yourself a few times. And just remind yourself that true happiness is something that comes from within. So this is not a selfish desire to find your own true happiness.
Consider that if you find and develop the resources for happiness within you, you’re able to radiate it out to other people. It’s a happiness that doesn’t depend on taking anything away from anyone else. So it’s truly altruistic. And so now spread goodwill to other people. First, think about the people close to your heart, your family, your parents, your very close friends.
And in the quiet time, just think that they may find true happiness as well, wishing them happiness, seeing them in your mind’s eye, wishing them every happiness you can they can possibly have. And now spread those thoughts out into ever widening circles, people you know well, people you don’t know so well, people you like, people you just see in the street or every day at the shop, people you know are neutral about, and even people you don’t like. Just don’t let there be any limitations on your goodwill, for if there are, there will be limitations on your mind. And finally, spread your thoughts out to all living beings, all kinds of creatures in all directions, east, west, north, south. Let your mind move out, wishing happiness out into infinity.
May everyone and all things find true happiness. And now bring your thoughts back to the present. If you want true happiness, you have to find it in this present moment, for the past is gone, and the future is an uncertainty. So you have to dig down into the present. What is it that you have right here, right now that you can be happy about?
You’ve got your body. You’re sitting here, and you’re breathing. You’ve got your mind thinking and aware, and you’re alive sitting in a lovely place on a beautiful day. That’s happiness. And now think about the breath.
Be aware of your breath as it comes in and goes out, and keep your thoughts directed only at the breath. This is mindfulness. Being aware of the breath as it comes in and out, watching it, staying in tune with it, that’s called alertness. We’re practicing mindfulness with an alert mind. Breathing in your own rhythm, try to breathe as comfortably as possible.
A very concrete way of learning how to provide your own happiness in the immediate present, and at this time, also strengthening your alertness, is to let yourself breathe in a way that’s comfortable to you. Everyone breathes differently. It’s just getting your own rhythm in a comfortable level. And generally speaking, the smoother the texture of your breath, the better. Think of your breath not simply as the air coming in and out of your lungs, but that it is the entire energy flow that courses through your body, bringing life, vitality, and well-being.
And if your mind wanders off, gently bring it back. If it wanders off ten times, a hundred times, bring it back ten times and a hundred times. Don’t give in. Meditation is not idle. You’ve got work to do.
Work in learning how to breathe comfortably, how to let the mind settle down in a good space here in the present moment to make it work for you. It’s that alertness along with the relaxation that is the key to meditation. It may be that as you start to fall into such a comfortable rhythm that you start to feel fatigued and even ready to doze off. A way of getting around that is by exploring your breath coming into the body in different areas. Frequently, we can restart at the nostrils, and then we can take it straight down at the breath following into our abdomen.
We can feel our abdomen rise as we take in a breath, and then we can take it as watch it as it goes down and the breath leaves our body. Just watch your tummy area now for a couple of breaths and notice if there is any tension there. It’s very possible that tummy can hold tension. And if there is, just breathe into the area and relax. Just think of that tension dissolving away with the insight with the sensation of the in breath and the sensation of the out breath.
Just work through any tension or tightness you may have there. Or if your tummy is completely relaxed, just follow the breath gently as it rises and subsides in that area. And now think of any part of your body where you generally hold tension, perhaps your neck or across the shoulders or in your head, across your forehead. And then bring this part of your body into your awareness. Think of it specifically as you breathe in and then breathe out.
And continue to do that until you feel any tension or tightness physically, consciously go away or subside and just relax there. And think of your breath very gently coming in, just moving down from the top of your head to the back of your neck. Just with each breath, thinking of your body as you scan down and loosening any tension that you may have anywhere in your jaws, around the eyes, and then down your back. You can feel that everything is draining away. Relaxation is replacing the tension down your back, out of your legs, out of the tips of your toes, out into the universe.
And then you can repeat that process beginning again at the back of your neck, but this time going through your shoulders, down through your arms, past your wrists, and out through your fingers, sending the tension away with that with each out breath. And now turn your attention to your heart. Simply let your attention rest there at one with your breath. And at the same time, let the range of your awareness spread out from your heart so that it fills your entire body like the light of a candle in the middle of a room. The candle flame is in one spot as is your heart, but its light fills the entire room.
And try to maintain this broadened sense of awareness for a while. You’ll find that it may shrink like a balloon with a small hole in it. So keep at it. Keep broadening your range. Think whole body, whole body, breath in the whole body from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes.
And make a point of staying with this centered, broadened awareness as long as you can. There’s nothing else you have to do, nowhere else to go, nothing else to think about right now. Just stay in this centered, broadened awareness of the present moment where you’re happy. And now it’s almost time to leave this meditation. The first step in leaving is to spread thoughts of goodwill once more that we started out with in this beginning of the meditation.
So spread those thoughts of goodwill once more to the people around you in this room, people that you also love and thought of earlier. And then before you open your eyes, remind yourself that even though you’re going to have your eyes open, you want your attention to stay centered in the body at the breath. Try to maintain that center as long as you can today as you get up and walk around later, whatever you’re doing. The skill of leaving meditation lies in learning how to not leave it, to take it with you, what you’ve cultivated within within you, regardless of whatever else you may be doing today. Whatever else you do, always act from that sense of being centered.
So holding on to that, we can gently come out of our meditation. There’s no rush. You don’t need to jump out of it. But just gently, in your own time, you can open your eyes and start to wiggle your fingers and toes.