Mindfulness

An exercise in mindfulness created by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk. The exercise can last a few minutes, or up to half an hour, and is based on breathing and visualization, in which you imagine your body has become one with the earth. Here are the instructions:
• Lie on a bed, or on a mat or on the grass in a position in which you are comfortable. Don't use a pillow. Begin to take hold of your breath. Imagine all that is left of your body is a white skeleton lying on the face of the earth.
• Maintain a half-smile and continue to follow your breath. Imagine that all your flesh has decomposed and is gone, that your skeleton is now lying in the earth 80 years after burial.
• See clearly the bones of your head, back, your ribs, your hip bones, leg and arm bones, finger bones. Maintain the half smile, breathe very lightly, your heart and mind serene.
• See that your skeleton is not you. Be at one with life. Live eternally in the trees and grass, in other people, in the birds and other beasts, in the sky, in the ocean waves. Your skeleton is only one part of you. You are present everywhere and in every moment. You are not only a bodily form, or even feelings, thoughts, actions and knowledge. * Dr Weil from "8 Weeks to Optimum Health."