Blue Sky Meditation

Hello again! Thanks everyone for such a warm response to my first post. :) You are amazing! 

For today's post I wanted to share a meditation technique I came across in The Yoga Handbook, An Inspirational Reference for Teaching and Home Practice .  (click here to learn more about the book!)

In this particular meditation technique, you begin sitting tall in a comfortable seated position (easy pose, half or full lotus) and imagine an endless, clear blue sky.  See the color.  Smell the fresh air.  Feel the sun on your skin and on your face.  While sitting there, if a thought arises in your mind that distracts you from concentrating completely on the blue sky, imagine it as a cloud and watch it as it passes by.  Allow yourself to acknowledge the thought, but more importantly, allow yourself to let it pass by as a cloud does in the sky.  Notice how when thoughts or distractions occur while meditating on this clear blue sky, every one passes by, leaving the sky as it was before the cloud appeared. 

 Now imagine yourself as the endless blue sky.  You are pure, infinite, unaffected by the clouds that pass by.  Often times a "cloud" comes along causing us to lose sight of the bigger picture.  No matter what the size of these clouds, they can have the power to cloud our day or life only if we let them.  Similarly, ignoring the cloud does not make it disappear; often times ignoring a distracting thought or event simply makes it a bigger "cloud" to acknowledge later and usually not when we are ready to do so.  Just like the sky, life has clouds that come and go.  Some are bigger and darker than others, but they are temporary.  We are like the blue sky: infinite, vast and pure.  


As you go throughout your day or week, imagine distractions or thoughts as clouds and acknowledge them for what they are.  They are thoughts, they are not you.  You are the blue sky.  


In love and light, Ainsley