Just Like a Mountain: 10-Minute Meditation on Accepting Change

A 10 minute guided meditation on mindful, nonjudgmental acceptance of change by Theo Koffler, founder of Mindfulness without Borders, adapted from Jon Kabat-Zinn

The idea of this meditation is to bring an expanded, spacious and accepting awareness to be with whatever experience is arising, just as it is without judgmental thoughts.

For this meditation, I invite you to find a position that makes you feel comfortable. It can be sitting in a chair or laying down on the floor. To get started, take a moment to bring your attention to your presence. Surroundings. I invite you to move your eyes around the room and notice your environment.

If you want, you can stretch your body. You can move your head from side to side, raise your shoulders up to reach your ears, and then drop them a few times. Simply settle into a posture that feels comfortable to you.

Notice how your body feels. Feel the places where your body makes contact with the chair or the ground.

If you’re comfortable, gently close your eyes, or look for a reference point somewhere on the floor in front of you, where you can return your eyes when they get distracted.

Now, bring your attention to the flow of your breath.

You don’t need to breathe in any special way. Your body knows how to breathe.

Simply notice each breath coming into the body with an in-breath and leaving the body with an out-breath

Now picture a beautiful mountain, perhaps it is a mountain you already know, or it may be one you create in your imagination.

I invite you to see its shape from base to peak noticing its size and solidity.

I invite you to just sit, follow your breath with this image of your mountain in mind.

Now I invite you to sit still experiencing yourself as the mountain, actually as if you are the mountain rooted in the ground.

Visualize the mountain solid base in the lower half of your body.

Imagine the mountain sides in your shoulders and arms.

Imagine the mountains peak in your head.

Feel the mountain strength in the elevation of your spine.

If you can, feel the mountain stability and rootedness to the ground in your legs and feet.

As you sit, notice how your body feels, knowing that just as mountains experience, all sorts of changes, so too, does the body’s sensations change.

Light colors and shadows transform the mountain’s appearance throughout the day. Wind rain, lightning, snow hail, and all forms of clouds arise around the mountain and touch its surfaces. Throughout all of these changes, the mountain just sits calmly unmoved by the turbulence around it. It remains rooted to the ground still in the face of change.

As you sit still, see if you can experience this sense of unwavering rootedness. Regardless of the internal weather that arises, you can remain stable and strong, just like a mountain.

Thoughts, feelings, worries, and physical sensations arise and change yet you can remain grounded through it all.

Now I invite you to allow yourself to become one with this mountain, seeing if you can embody it as if you are the mountain.

Allow yourself to open and be receptive to whatever arises from moment to moment, much as the earth holds the mountain, so to the earth is holding you.

As you sit embodying the mountain, allow yourself to fully experience moments of windless stillness, as well as moments of storms.

See whether you can recognize, accept and celebrate these changes, allowing the stormy weather conditions to be just as acceptable as a calm, sunny day.

For the next few sips of breath, let whatever thoughts, feelings, and body sensations arise, accepting them just as they are.

Continue sitting and breathing with this experience of being a mountain.

Let each in-breath be a new beginning and each out-breath letting go.

And as you are ready, open your eyes and return your attention to your surroundings.

Stretch the body again in ways that are comfortable and notice how you feel.

As best as you can, bring this expanded more spacious and accepting awareness to your day.

Credits

Written and performed by Theo Koffler
Audio mastering by Christian Parry and Chris Boulton