Amaravati Buddhist Monastery

Family Events



Guided lying down meditation

Items need - some mats

If a large group - form groups of 15-20 people.

If possible to this outside on a lawn.

Lie down on your back, and form a sun with your group, each body is like a sun ray.
Feet in the middle, not too close, heads outside

The person reading the guided meditation is in the center of the groups.

Stretch out and make yourself comfortable. Touch the lawn with your palms and feel how it is to loe here. Then close your eyes, please.

Take a deep breathe and fell your chest rising when you breath in, falling when you breath out. What is with you belly? - is that rising and falling too?
Draw in the air from above, and with each out breath, allow yourself to let all weight of the body sink into the ground. Let go of any tension or heaviness

Can you feel your back touching the ground? Your legs, arms, head - Let the earth hold you

Allow yourself to be held and to let go of any holding. With each outbreath, imagine that you let yourself sink…

Sense into the earth. Can you fell the space below?
Imagine that, with each outbreath, you are sending roots into the earth, deeper and deeper….

If you have a good sense of groundedness, open your body-awareness to the space above. Breathe in fully from the space above and through your back, send the air down into the earth with each outbreath - a few times.

Feel the openness above and the groundedness below
Can you feel that simultaneously?

Your breath and your body awareness connects you with the space above and below.
Open to all of it.

That is the realm we are living in, as human beings.


(this is alternative if you have to do indoors
Now stretch your arms to the side as if you want to embrace the whole universe.
Imagine the sky above you, as you are lying there.
Blue sky with cloud formations)

Now stretch your arms to the side as if you want to embrace the whole universe.
Open your eyes
Just watch the sky, as you are lying there.

Remember?
Your awareness is as spacious as the sky
Your thoughts, feelings, sense impressions float through like clouds, arising changing, ceasing.

The awareness does not change and is not touched by it.
You may get lost in watching cloud-formations, suffer by creating dramas, but eventually all disperses.
What stays untouched by it all is the awareness - embracing it all.

Stay with this for a while - being open awareness.


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Family Event Dates 2008

The Theme is Good -Evil and The Way It Is

Rainbows 2nd-5th May

Family weekend 27-29th June

Family Camp 16th-25th August

General information here

Young Persons Retreat 21st-23rd November

Creative Weekend For Adults 19th-21st December

Booking information here


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