Our Friendly Mindfulness Spider Meditation
This meditation uses the power of visualization to hold our attention and help us focus our mindfulness.
To help balance the busyness of our natural thought patterns, we bring our attention back to our breath. If we find ourselves distracted from our breathing and we're caught up in our thoughts, we can use our imagination to help reinforce our focus and stillness of mind. As we breathe slowly and deeply, we can visualize all of our many thoughts coming together to form the image of a cute, friendly spider in our mind's eye. We can imagine this spider dropping down from the mind, gently traveling down a silken thread towards our heart and belly (this is a mindfulness spider, so it’s very non-harmful and nonthreatening,). Allow your mind to disconnect from all other thoughts as you focus all your attention on this imaginary spider attached to its delicate thread. We're using the imagery of the spider descending on its thread to represent bringing our busymindedness out of our mind and bringing our attention back to our body and breath. We concentrate on visualizing the spider as we slowly lower our focus down further and further, allowing our silken spider thread to stretch all the way into our belly.
There are no thoughts in our belly, only space for our breath. We inhale, expanding our belly. Exhaling, we slowly deflate our abdomen. We can visualize our mindfulness spider building a delicate web, piece by piece, breath by breath, connected to our mindful inhale and exhale. As we breathe, our graceful spider friend loops web from one side of our expanded belly to the other, propelled by our inhale and our exhale, building a beautiful web of concentration. We can start with four sections to our web (breathing in 1-2-3-4, traveling north - east - south - west), and we can increase the complexity of this mental web with each meditation/practice. We slowly work around the web with our inhale and exhale, enjoying the creative process of creating a design in your imagination. Keep extending the edges of your web for as long as you can concentrate, still breathing, stretching your lungs and pushing rich, lively oxygen deep into your belly. If you wish, you can just hold your mindfulness spider still inside your belly as you breathe, visualizing keeping it still while it's connected to a single web silk as you breathe in and out. Both exercises have different results so I recommend experimenting with this meditation.
If we have any thoughts other than breathing, developing our visualization, or just being in the present moment, we refocus and guide our our attention back to our mindful web, disconnecting from the busyness of the mind, dropping back down to our abdomen, starting over with our breathing and web building. As soon as we notice we’re worrying, overthinking, or stuck in a negative perspective, we can use this as a cue to move out of our head and back down into our belly. There is no fighting in our belly, only gentle rising and falling as we breathe. There are no judgements in our belly, only a soft expansion and deflation with each breath. If we’re struggling with painful or difficult feelings, we’ve moved our awareness back up to our mind. We gently return our attention to the sensations of breathing with our whole diaphragm, focusing on the rising and falling of our belly, holding our concentration on the action of breathing in the present moment, either by concentrating and by being still, or by creatively connecting our breath to our imagination in a focused way.
There are no thoughts in our belly, only space for our breath. We inhale, expanding our belly. Exhaling, we slowly deflate our abdomen. We can visualize our mindfulness spider building a delicate web, piece by piece, breath by breath, connected to our mindful inhale and exhale. As we breathe, our graceful spider friend loops web from one side of our expanded belly to the other, propelled by our inhale and our exhale, building a beautiful web of concentration. We can start with four sections to our web (breathing in 1-2-3-4, traveling north - east - south - west), and we can increase the complexity of this mental web with each meditation/practice. We slowly work around the web with our inhale and exhale, enjoying the creative process of creating a design in your imagination. Keep extending the edges of your web for as long as you can concentrate, still breathing, stretching your lungs and pushing rich, lively oxygen deep into your belly. If you wish, you can just hold your mindfulness spider still inside your belly as you breathe, visualizing keeping it still while it's connected to a single web silk as you breathe in and out. Both exercises have different results so I recommend experimenting with this meditation.
If we have any thoughts other than breathing, developing our visualization, or just being in the present moment, we refocus and guide our our attention back to our mindful web, disconnecting from the busyness of the mind, dropping back down to our abdomen, starting over with our breathing and web building. As soon as we notice we’re worrying, overthinking, or stuck in a negative perspective, we can use this as a cue to move out of our head and back down into our belly. There is no fighting in our belly, only gentle rising and falling as we breathe. There are no judgements in our belly, only a soft expansion and deflation with each breath. If we’re struggling with painful or difficult feelings, we’ve moved our awareness back up to our mind. We gently return our attention to the sensations of breathing with our whole diaphragm, focusing on the rising and falling of our belly, holding our concentration on the action of breathing in the present moment, either by concentrating and by being still, or by creatively connecting our breath to our imagination in a focused way.