mind map meditations

mind map meditations

We read maps, and we travel territory. The maps we use are flat, point A to point B. But our bodies, well they are multi-dimensional. Traveling routes guide the mind and the breath. The revelations come through experience-moving through time and space.

If we learn to read maps, we can better explore our relationships, find the patterns from the interplay. Manipulate your breath. Use it to empower your mind and your body. Traverse the territory. Go for the revelations.

  • The Magic Square / The Body As a House

  • Body Scan Visual Meditation

  • The Art of Now Yoga Flow Visual Expression

The Body

As a House

This is a meditation to orient and situate yourself in time and space.

The Katonah Magic Square is a map with 9 rooms. Each room represents a part of your body, both external and internal. Each room is assigned a coded number.

Start by turning on your imagination and start to establish a breath that is consistent, rhythmic, and energizing.

Orient Yourself

Room 1

Go all the way down to the pelvis, the boiler room, your root, your foundation.

Drop into where you are and into what you want.

Gain Insight.

Walk up the staircase, all the way to the attic. Your right eye.

Reflect.

Look back in time.

Reflect and react on the goals in the back of your mind.

Use your experiences that have turned into memories.

Travel down one floor to the kitchen, the left hand.

The hand of the heart and your ability to articulate and ventilate your feelings.

Start to move towards your potential.

Knowing that feelings are valid but they aren't everything.

Articulate Yourself.

Travel up to the bedroom, the front of the left eye.

Look out into your day and see the dawning of your potential on the horizon.

You have the ability to see forward.

The ability to refine and define your vision.

You can look out and imagine what your days could look like. Next month, next year, whatever it is, you can imagine what you want it to look like.

Most times it's the simple things that make up an expansive life.

Good practices, who we spend our time with, how we spend our time, our own self-talk, the simple joys, a walk at sunset, being able to rest our head well at night.

See all of it.

Travel into the center of the chest, the living room. Organizing the self to be in the center of one's circumstances.

The ability to be in the driver's seat, with two hands on the wheel.

So think about where you're headed, what are you creating along the way, relationships, things, memories.

Put your mind all the way down into the right foot, step in, step out, take a risk, move out of the “garage”.

What direction are your actions headed? It's not to say that we will get to that destination, but just moving forward is enough. We might see something unexpected along the way. So it's our ability to see into our blind spots, to see everything. Knowing what we see is true. What we don't see is also very true. So what are we choosing? To see and hear and digest where are we positioning ourselves in life that matters.

Ascend to room seven, the right hand, the office. A place to make deals with the world.

How do you show up to the deals you have made? Learn technique and skill. Muscle memory. Catch yourself when you fall. Don’t care what other people say.

Put your mind all the way down into the right foot, step in, step out, take a risk, move out of the garage.

What direction are you headed? It's not to say that we will get to that destination, but just moving forward is enough. We might see something unexpected along the way. So it's our ability to see into our blind spots, to see everything. Knowing what we see is true. What we don't see is also very true. So what are we choosing? To see and hear and digest where are we positioning ourselves in life that matters.

Traverse behind the back staircase, the laundry room, the left foot.

Tenacity, grit. Our ability to put our foot in it, to stick with it, do the laundry. Always something to do knowing that this is another opportunity to start over. It's not just to stick with something to say that we did it. It's like, what do you really want? You can decide again and again, and again, to start over tomorrow is a new day. This moment is a new moment.

Ascend to room nine, the observatory, top of the mountain. The center of the brow.

See everything. See all of who you are. All of the people you love and all the people you spend time with. Everything you've done along the way. All of the emotions you’ve experienced. All of these memories that have made you.

If you don't like your memories, we change the direction we're headed. We reflect back differently. We see something different in the rearview mirror. So it's really just our ability to be sneaky. Sneaky in a way that is working to our advantage.

10 exhale, ascend to 10, the rooftop rise above, avail yourself of the inclusive and the exclusive things within the things around you. Transcend or descend again.

Breathe into the whole, right? The hole that is you. Nothing is broken to be fixed. We are just orienting ourselves differently, reorienting, readjusting, again and again and again.