Balancing the body
Why are we supposed to balance? Unless you balance, your mind will be continuously in the body. There is a beautiful word by Patanjali: sthiram sukham asanam. When the shoe fits, feet are forgotten, am I right? When the belt fits, belly is forgotten. When the chain fits, neck is forgotten. When the ring fits, finger is forgotten. If the ring doesn't fit, you will be continuously remembering the finger. If the chain does not fit, you will continuously be remembering the neck, if the shoe does not fit, if it is either tight or too loose, you will be continuously remembering the feet.
What is the scale whether it fits or not? If you have forgotten the feet, you can be sure the shoes fit. If you have forgotten the belly, you can be sure the belt fits. If you have forgotten the neck, you can be sure the chain fits. If you have forgotten the finger, you can be sure the ring fits. When you can forget the body, then only you can be sure the body is comfortable. Whenever your body is not comfortable, you can never forget about it.
Get ready for the first session for forgetting the body. First if you are a little bit balanced you will be able to forget the body, and you will be able to enter into the second session. First thing, you need to balance your body to forget it, if the body is balanced, you will forget it.
If you can forget about your body, you can understand that you are healthy. You see you can forget your eyes, if you don't have pain in the eyes. You forget your head if you don't have headache. If you have headache, can you forget? That is why the spouses always give headache to others, so that you will not forget them. If some part of the body troubles you, you will never forget that part. If you forget that part, what does that mean? You will have no trouble.
If you are comfortable you are totally healthy. When you are healthy you forget, when you forget you are healthy. It always happens the other way. On the pain to bliss cassette there is a beautiful technique. Whenever you have pain in some place throughout your body if you just remove the word pain from that place, the pain will disappear. Actually the word pain and pain are one and the same. I'm explaining this in a very deep way step by step in the cassette. When you are comfortable, the body is forgotten. When you forget the body it becomes comfortable automatically.
So now we learn a small technique to balance it.
You see, think of your mala as a centre of gravity line of your body. If this line is straight, then it means this mala is in the rest position. If the mala is held to the side, it is not resting. If I leave it, it will come back to the restful position. This down position, this mala is totally resting and comfortable. Same way your centre of gravity line should fall in a straight line. Then if the centre of gravity line in your body falls in a straight line you will be totally comfortable, you will be able to forget the body. Let me teach you how.
Just sit with the right leg on your left thigh. If you really can't sit on the ground then sit on the chair, but try your best to sit on the ground. Do you understand? Sit with the right leg on your left thigh, your legs should be seen. See, if your legs are really under your control, understand, if your legs are really under your control, you must be able to do the ardhapadmasana. Then only your legs are under your control, otherwise your legs are under someone else's control. You see, you don't have to sit like this the whole day, just once, then the whole day, you will be balanced, you will be comfortable.
However often you sit in the balanced posture, whether you sit in your house, in your car, in your office, your whole body will be balanced. You see, your body has its own inbuilt mechanism to balance itself, until the age of 7. Once you have grown into this great society, you have forgotten the original balancing technique. Now I am just giving the original balancing technique to your body back.
Once you learn it, you don't have to sit the whole day like this, you don't even have to sit straight. Even if you sit in the ordinary way, the body will balance itself. It is like when you start training the cycle you need to sit straight and hold properly, once you have mastered the position, you can even put your legs on the handlebars. You can put your legs on the handlebars AND you can ride the cycle. So the knack of balancing needs to be learned.
Actually, only five minutes it is going to take. So sit with the right leg, with the left thigh. First thing, you understand, for one moment put your whole body on front side and feel the weight of the body. Naturally you will feel the whole body is being pulled by the gravity. The gravitational force, slowly slowly slowly, inch by inch, if you raise and make your body straight, at one point you will feel weightless. You see when your body is leaning forward you will feel the weight, the heaviness. Your body is being pulled by the ground. Step by step, very slowly, (leaning backward to mid point) you will see the gravity is becoming less and less. At one point you will feel totally weightless. You are totally weightless. That is the line which the centre of gravity line falls in a straight line. Very slowly lean backward, and bring in back very slowly to the straight position. Just be in a straight line. At one point you feel totally weightless, relaxed.
You will see depending on your body, it will be a little different position. Only one thing should be understood. Your centre of gravity should be in a straight line, and you will feel the weightlessness. At which point you feel you don't have weight, at which point you feel your body is light, that is the point. The hip motion should be totally fixed, it should never be moved. It should be totally fixed. Start balancing your body. Do it very slowly. You need to observe. Only the back bone should bend, front side or back side, never the thighs or the legs. If you are balanced then close your eyes. You will be able to catch the point you are feeling weightless. Or sit on a chair also and you can balance the body. You can open your eyes. We are going to do the mediation in this posture. Once your body learns the language of comfort , whenever you sit, automatically you will sit only in this posture. If you observe me, you will have observed, always whenever I sit, wherever I sit, my body will be very straight. Only with the instruction I have to bend myself. With you, normally you will be bent, only by instruction you will sit up straight. So the taste of the comfort, if it is learned by the body, you will see the total attitude change. The body's attitude will change, and it will make itself comfortable completely. Now we will do the mediation. This is a meditation actually working on the body, making your body layer into energy.