#844: Be Still — Guided Meditation with Zen Master Henry Shukman

**Tim Ferriss** (0:00)
Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferris Show. This episode is a brand new experiment called Meditation Monday. That means in addition to my long-form interviews each week, every Monday, I will be bringing you a short 10-minute or so meditation, which will help you for the rest of the week. Over this four-episode series, you'll develop a Zen toolkit specifically to help you find greater calm, peace, and effectiveness in your daily life. The teacher, Henry Shukman, has been on my podcast twice before. He is one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach what is called Sanbo Zen. I have found this particularly interesting and effective, and now he'll be your teacher. I've been using Henry's app, The Way, once, often twice a day, and it has lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. As a listener of the show, you yourself can get 30 free sessions by visiting thewayapp.com. So if you like what you hear in these meditations, which will be valuable in and of themselves, you can get 30 free sessions by going to thewayapp.com/tim.
And for the time being, please enjoy this Meditation Monday with Henry Shukman.

**Henry Shukman** (1:08)
Hello, and welcome to this meditation with me, Henry Shukman. I'm really delighted and honored and quite humbled to be offering this to you. This is the first of a little set of four meditations, and it's designed to help you find a moment of peace in the midst of a busy day, or possibly at the end of a long tiring day, or before your day starts. Any time you feel a little intervention to help your nervous system would be a good thing for you. So we're just going to do a simple body scan, basically, which grounds us, centers us, brings us back into the heart of our own being, which then helps us to function and perform better in the course of our day with more peace and a better regulated nervous system. So come into any comfortable seated position. If you want to recline, no problem. Lie down if that's available to you. That's also just fine. I'm going to assume that you're sitting in the guidance that I offer. So just get comfortable. Close your eyes or lower your gaze. Let your hands rest in your lap or on your thighs or perhaps by your side. We're going to start with a little very short poem just to bring us in. Only be still. Only be still. It doesn't matter where you've come from. It doesn't even matter where you think you want to go. For now, all that matters is your being still. Whatever catastrophe or grief or yearning or hope or promise has brought you here to this very seat just now, put them aside. Set them aside. For now, all that matters is your being still. So let your body become still.
Many of us carry some tension in our jaw. So see if you can let your jaw slide forward and down just a little bit, it may only go a millimeter. That can make all the difference. Release the jaw. Can you find a kind of softness in your throat? Jaw and throat, soft at ease. Let your arms hang, be slack, be loose.
Bring your awareness now into your chest area, your rib cage, and see if you can just get a taste of it being warm and soft, like warm wax. Just a general sense of warmth and softness in the upper body, especially the chest area.
And likewise, the belly, let the belly be soft and warm and loose.
Sense the pressure of your upper body in your buttocks, where they meet the seat. Let them relax. Let your hips spread just a little tiny bit. Looseness is our guidepost here, becoming softer and kind of floppier in the body, even while we may be sitting upright. Now the upper legs, let them also be warm and soft. They don't need to be doing anything right now. Just at ease. And the lower legs, let them also be soft, relaxed. Ankles and feet, at ease.
Hands, hands are slack, limp, resting. Face, let face be soft. Let the whole head, the cranium, the top of the skull, the back of the skull, the sides of the skull, whole head, at ease, resting. So now the entire body is still, at rest, at ease. Perhaps you can get a sense of the whole body being enveloped in a warmth, in a kind of energy field of warmth. Or as if in a subtle cloud of ease and warmth. That you're granted this possibility just now of having your whole body find its way to restful ease.