The Back and the Floor

For a back that hurts. Weight, the length from crown to floor, and the volume the ache already occupies.

Guided open-attention meditation · about 5 minutes · eyes closed

The player includes recorded narration and adjustable room tone. Start when you are ready. You can pause or end at any point.

About the practice

This is one of the pain series, after the four steps in Les Fehmi's Dissolving Pain. Nothing in it asks you to push into pain or to change any care you are getting; it changes the shape of attention around the sensation, not the sensation itself. The narrated explainer gives the reasoning. The questions invite an experience of space and attention. There is no correct sensation to produce and no score. This player does not measure brainwaves or confirm alpha synchrony.

Transcript

Spoken cues from the session script. The recording leaves space between these lines; pauses are part of the practice.

Settle in, sitting or lying down, and let your eyes close. This session is for a back that hurts. Find the position that hurts least, and stay there.

Nothing here asks you to stretch, straighten, or sit up well. The questions only ask what you can imagine.

Can you feel the weight of your body arriving on whatever holds it? The seat, the bed, the floor.

Can you imagine the distance from the crown of your head down to the floor, as one length?

The ache in your back is somewhere along that length. Can you find where, without going looking for its worst point?

Can you imagine the volume the ache already takes up? Not what is inside it. The room it is occupying, just as it is.

Can you imagine the openness on either side of the spine, where the ache is not?

Can you imagine the openness in front of the spine, inside the belly and chest, and behind it, between your back and whatever you are resting on?

If there is a gap under your lower back, can you imagine the air in that gap? If there is no gap, can you imagine the surface holding it?

Can you imagine the floor beneath all of it, carrying the weight, so the back does not have to?

Now the crown-to-floor length again, with the ache resting somewhere along it, carried by the floor.

Can you imagine the ache as a region of that same length, no more solid than the rest of it?

If it tightens when you attend to it, that is what attention does at first. Give it the whole length to rest in.

Can you imagine the weight, the length, and the ache all at once, with no effort?

Rest here. The floor is doing the work.

Before the bell, notice the weight again. Where it lands now, and how much of it the back is carrying.

When the bell sounds, move in whatever way is easy, and let the floor stay under you as you go.

Choose another meditation or read about the method and attribution.