Chinese Meditation

on thursday our philosophy class attempted to meditate according to a directive tape, where an English translator spoke over the voice of the original Chinese language. the directions were not simple; in fact, they became so complicated that it tested both my mental focus and my physical ability to maintain the positions required. at the very beginning of the tape, the man said that we each had to take our hands and place one over the other a few inches apart from each other, and then keep them an inch or two away from our bodies. additionally, our hands had to be so that the lower hand was next to the navel and the other was centered with our chest. immediately after, he said that females had to have their right hand on top and males had to have their left hand on top. this was interesting, because at that moment, more than half of the people in the class had to switch their hands. what does this mean? my initial instinct was to put my left hand above my right, rather than the correct way. it was probably at this point that i started to lose focus. after moving past my initial frustration of having to remain in an "uncomfortable" position, i began to refocus my attention on the voice. the English voice was so quiet and calm in comparison to the quick, unfamiliar sounds flowing out of the Chinese man's mouth. he spoke like a friend; like he was right next to me, watching as i fumbled and then immediately gave me new directions. it was as if i was making every mistake he had luckily anticipated. fortunately, after getting into the appropriate, correct starting posture, he changed aim. rather than focusing on our bodies physically from an external standpoint, we were asked to imagine a light beam shooting through our foreheads into our heads, bending so it came out of our nostrils, and then aimed at hitting our bottom hand so that it could enter our bodies again through the navel. i absolutely loved this image. for whatever reason, it totally clicked inside. maybe those directions weren't even right...i honestly couldn't say. but that's what i imagined, and it took me to a deeper state of mind. it was like i could feel the light inside me, cleaning and inspecting every square millimeter of my body, from the inside-out. amazing. in retrospect, i think it makes sense that this was the part i connected to the most, because i have always had a strong attraction to light (mainly sunshine). there were two other parts of the exercise that i remember as well: the pores and the lotus flower. each of these images was also very touching, but for different reasons. i was sick on the day of the meditation, so the pore exercise was meant to relieve myself of the sickness, releasing it through my pores at the end of each breath. my skin was a membrane, granting permission for fresh life and air to enter my body whilst forcing the negative pathogens within me out. the voice indicated that for ill people, during each inhalation you should imagine every pore on your body open and for each exhalation they should also be open until the very last second of your breath, when you transition back into inhaling. this was contrary to healthy people, who simply had to imagine their pores open at they inhaled, and closed as they exhaled. i don't know if this makes me crazy or not, but i was convinced that this process would heal me (or at least, that it could if i allowed it to). (in fact, this was the main reason i was upset that i couldn't maintain my focus and had to stop the meditation process early.) later, Mr. Summers told us that this was indeed a traditional medical practice for healing in China. (in case you're wondering-the coughs and congestion actually did stop for the rest of the day, but started up again during crew practice...) finally, a lotus flower began to pulse within my lower abdomen. its petals swayed to and fro, opening and closing as they twisted. the lotus flower was my heart. it controlled my inner consciousness. it was like an dimly-lit orb portraying the steady beat of life within a living beast, making me wild, but controlled. that it what we are. wild, but controlled. i think the lotus flower was the most powerful image for me, because it was embodied constancy. i loved the exercise all-in-all even though my legs went numb, encouraging me to call it quits for the first time. i'll definitely try this again. can't wait for the uncontrolled swaying and standing to occur. :)