EVENING RITUAL: ≈ THIRTY MINUTES

This ritual includes an introspection activity and body scan meditation. The body scan calms both the mind and body after a busy day, preparing you for a restful night. The introspection activity aligns with the Second Sāntimāggā Insight, where time is set aside to reflect on and investigate one of your peaceful or unpeaceful reactions or notable peaceful responses from the day. Both activities contribute to practical wisdom and promote self-compassion. Do this ritual every evening immediately before bedtime.

PREPARATION:

Begin by taking a few moments to relax and setting an intention to perform each part of this ritual wholeheartedly.

Conclude the day’s business and home chores. Treat yourself. A warm shower/bath does wonders for the mind and body. Many find it helpful to read something inspirational before starting. You may want a top blanket for the body scan.

Introspection ≈ 15 Minutes

Respected research suggests we have about 6,200 thoughts daily (research details). Thoughts condition feelings that condition peace of mind. When you’re not experiencing peace of mind, you’ll likely not be peaceful with others. Therefore, it’s essential for you to routinely reflect on how your thoughts and feelings condition your behavior and vice versa. Introspection helps ground you in wholesome beliefs and understanding, facilitating your ability to be peaceful within yourself and with others wherever you are, doing whatever you’re doing as you do it.

For Sāntimāggā, introspection involves an internal dialogue about one's feelings and thoughts, as well as an understanding of the underlying beliefs behind them. As a practice, it consists of acting as an investigator, asking what and how questions. Introspection is always available, but for this evening’s practice, you’ll recall one experience from your day and reflect on what you felt and thought during the experience, and how you reacted or responded to the situation and others. The chosen experience can be either peaceful or unpeaceful. If it was a peaceful experience, express your gratitude for what you felt, thought, and did during that experience. Identify the associated wholesome beliefs and understandings, as this reinforces your knowledge, practical wisdom, and capacity for peace of mind. If it’s an unpeaceful experience, reflect on and investigate the unwholesome beliefs and understandings associated with the feelings and thoughts. Asking what might be a different belief and/or understanding helps you see alternatives to unwholesome entrenchments—this facilitates letting go or shifting perspective. It’s essential to ask how a change in a belief and or understanding might influence your emotions, feelings, thoughts, tolerance, and behaviors—this also facilitates the practice of letting go or shifting perspective. Note: We rarely ask why questions because their answers tend to reinforce our entrenched beliefs and the stories that support them—asking why questions is helpful when we want to understand others’ behaviors, situational events, and things that happen in our surroundings.

You may find it helpful to record your findings in a journal. In the absence of a journal booklet, use the online journal Day One for this purpose, as it allows you to record insights gained during contemplations and meditations. You can find this journal in the Apple Store and Google Play Store.

Body-Scan Meditation: ≈ 15 Minutes

Contrary to popular belief and regardless of your house address, the “where” you live, and the only place you can live, is in your body. It’s one of only three things in the whole of things that’s truly yours; your mind and behaviors are the other two.

Mind and body inter-are. All experiences are mental and somatic—various forms of meditation serve the mind. Body scanning and various forms of movement meditation serve the body. Both help us find and manage the afflictive influences of unwholesome beliefs and negative stress. You can be aware or unaware of mental states. All mental states have physiological effects associated with them: positive or negative sensations felt in the body. For example, the mental state of anxiety causes you to produce stress hormones, resulting in tension in various places in your body. Your mind may not be aware of these tensions until you look for them when scanning. Whether you regularly do other forms of meditation, doing body scanning every day is beneficial. The less tension held in your body, the easier it is to be present, attentive, compassionate, and peaceful.

There are hundreds of guided body scan meditations on the Internet. You can search and choose one to your liking or use this one narrated by Diane Winston, author of The Little Book of Being.