Waterfall Guided Meditation

(I wrote this guided meditation after yoga class. I think editorial commentary is unnecessary.)

Imagine that you are in a beautiful forest high in the mountains. You are seated comfortably on a moss covered rock a short distance from a high waterfall that lands in a deep pool before flowing further downstream. The river is surrounded by tall redwood trees that provide a high canopy and shade. The air is cool and comfortable and a gentle breeze blows through the trunks of the trees around you.

Now imagine for a moment that you can feel all of your frustrations and negative emotions physically in your body. Imagine that they are manifested as a kind of tar or sludge that has accumulated in different areas all throughout your body, perhaps in your bones, and in your connective tissues at your joints, and in the soft tissues in your body. Any fears, any negative thoughts or feelings, any emotions that you would like to let go of – imagine that these are all trapped within your body in this sludge.

Could you stay with this feeling a moment, even if it is a little bit unpleasant or challenging? Could you let go of any resistance to these thoughts or emotions and let them be here in your body, just for now? Just be here for a moment, and feel what you feel, accepting that this is truth, this is reality, and you have a choice to reject it or to accept it. You have a choice.

Is there any part of you that is grateful for what these negative emotions taught you in the past on your journey into this moment? If there is, stay here with the feeling of gratitude for a little while. If there is not, that’s ok – could you accept that too, and remain in the moment and in surrender to whatever you are feeling right now?

Now imagine that you are standing up and walking over toward the base of the waterfall. You can feel a faint mist of water hitting your face and arms that gets stronger and stronger as you approach closer.

Just as all your negative emotions are now physically manifested in your body, this waterfall is a physical manifestation of pure Source energy and connectedness to Being. And as you walk under the powerful stream of falling pure water, the purest mountain water that exists, the water starts to interact with all those emotions and gradually dissolve them. Imagine now that you are standing tall on a moss covered rock, with your feet firmly anchored on the rough, green mossy surface, and the powerful stream of water is flowing over you and through you.

Now the emotions anchored in your head are dissolving and flowing away, through your body, through the tips of your fingers, out the bottoms of your feet and through the ends of your toes.

And the emotions and feelings and fears that used to be trapped in your neck and shoulders all dissolve away and flow out your fingertips and toes and out the bottoms of your feet and your neck and shoulders feel massaged and cleansed.

Next the water flows through cleansing the negative emotions out of your chest and arms, and all the sludge of emotion is released and flows away. It’s easy to cleanse the arms because the emotions just flow straight down, out through your fingertips. The flowing water starts off dark and dirty, and runs cleaner and cleaner until there’s no difference between the water entering you and the water flowing out of your fingertips.

The waterfall cleanses your core abdominal area and solar plexus and all the tension and negativity breaks up and flows away, down through your body and out your toes and out the bottoms of your feet.

Now your entire upper body has been cleansed and the entire force of the waterfall goes to work washing away all the negative emotions contained in your hips and genital area.

The powerful stream of water keeps working lower and lower, eroding all the fears and negative feelings contained in your upper legs, in the quadriceps and hamstring muscles, and breaking up any knots of negative emotion in your knees, and then in your calves, and reaching any sludge left over in your feet.

Finally you feel the last fragments and droplets of sludge flow out the end of your toes. Could you remain here for a moment with the purest water that ever existed flowing all around you and through you?

Feel the water flowing from the top of your head, through the crown chakra, energizing it and purifying your connection to consciousness itself.

The water flows downward through the third eye chakra, cleansing your intuition and your fundamental identity.

And the water keeps flowing and energizes the throat chakra and you become aware of the fundamental vibrational frequency of the universe around you.

Moving lower, the stream of water activates your heart chakra and you become aware of a profound tranquility, oneness, and a connection to all things.

You can feel the water flowing around and through your solar plexus chakra, strengthening your physical body and your spiritual body, and creating a feeling of profound power, capability, and tireless energy.

And the water activates the sacral chakra, conferring a sense of fluidity and grace, and a feeling of welcome change, flow, and motion.

Finally, you can feel the water cleansing and purifying your base chakra, creating a deep sense of foundation and anchoring in your physical body.

Imagine that you are standing there for a little while longer, with the pure water flowing along the axis of your physical and spiritual body, from crown to base. And could you imagine that the water now infuses you with a knowledge beyond knowledge and an understanding beyond understanding, of pure Source, Being, and the vast silence and stillness behind, around, and within everything that exists in manifested form? Could you simply stand for a moment in acceptance and in surrender to this new knowledge, that is not only an intellectual understanding, but that has been infused through all the cells of your physical body, and will remain there as long as you exist in this material form?

Imagine now that you carefully step out of the powerful flow of falling water and walk back to the place that you started, seated in a position that is comfortable for you, on the thick carpet of moss a short distance from the waterfall. Just sit for a moment, with your body supported by this natural green carpet of moss, breathing in the cool and refreshing mountain air. Observe for a moment how your body feels. Observe what kind of thoughts – if any – now arise in your mind.

As you stand up and open your eyes and prepare to return to your daily life, could you take a moment to recognize that this waterfall is always with you? Could you take a moment to remind yourself that the Source energy that binds all of us is flowing through you constantly? Any time you want to, at any moment, you can connect yourself to this purifying waterfall of energy, and whenever you desire, it will cleanse your body and mind completely and leave behind only your eternal, abiding connection to the universal intelligence that is the Source of all life and everything that is.