July 15, 2011 – Here’s how to do a 10-Minute Mind Spa in your Hot Spring Spa. Calling it a “Mind Spa” instead of meditation takes some of the fear out of it, don’t you think?

Learning to meditate is on many people’s bucket list. It’s not enough to learn how, it’s the practice that makes it better. Many Olympic hot tub customers use a simple breath awareness meditation in their hot tubs as they hot tub before and after work.

Oh, you say you can’t meditate because you “can’t stop thinking”.  But, really, not thinking is not what hot tub meditation is all about. The point of meditation is to bring you to clarity so you know you are in fact thinking, or planning or being depressed or hungry or angry or happy.

The point is to become mindful not mindless. Most mental activity, you see distracts you from knowing what’s actually going on around you. We’re so often lost in thought or worry, absorbed in the past or future, running our “tapes” over and over that we are not aware of what’s happening in the moment.

Meditation slices through the fog and brings you right back home to where you actually are in the here and now. It’s not woo-woo,  esoteric or exotic. It’s brain training. Try this in your hot tub to get the flavor of meditation:

* Sit up Comfortably in your hot tub. Scan your body to check that you’re relaxed: your eyes, jaw, shoulders, belly, hands, and legs.  Sit and know that you are sitting.

* “Watch” your breath. Be aware of your breath moving in and out of your nose. Think “out” when you feel the fall of the exhalation, “in” when you feel the rise or pressure or stretching of the inhalations.

* Wandering mind? When your mind wanders-and it will-acknowledge that you’ve lost contact with your breath, and watch the next inhalation roll in.

* Reach for clarity-one breath at a time. The most important thing to realize is that every moment you notice you’ve wandered off is a moment of being aware, of clarity. That’s what you’re going for. What does it feel like? Within nanoseconds you’ll be thinking again, and becoming aware that you’re thinking, and starting again.

* Practice, practice, practice. The more you do it, the more you’ll have the experience of that pause when your mind is actually clear and present.

You can do this anytime, for any length of time (although best not to exceed 20 minutes in the hot tub meditating). Try it for a minute. Try it for ten. Play close attention to a single in-breath, a single out-breath. Every experience of awareness makes the next more likely and refreshes your awareness like nothing else. It must be experienced to be believed.

SANUM PER AQUA. Latin for Health through Water.