Season 1, Episode 15: The Field of Delight

This practice came about from a few different ideas rattling around in my mind.

First, I wanted to create an Open Focus practice that sought to embrace pleasure rather than dissolve pain, a concept that also fits nicely in with a gratitude practice. Sometimes in life, we want to celebrate a moment or a memory, and I tend to find formal gratitude practices a little puritan sometimes — I wanted to bring the pleasure back in. And, as someone who sometimes has difficulty celebrating success and happiness, I thought others might also need a leg-up in this area, too.

And also, I wanted to try out a body scan that connected the heart and the hands, something I haven’t seen done in quite this way before (although Nirlipta Tuli has a very nice spiral practice that starts in the feet, spreads to the hands, and then to the heart that I love). I love embodied breathing as part of the body scan, and I love finding ways for the outbreath to be longer that go beyond counting. So this was a fun experiment that I hope folks find useful.

As this season winds down, I also wanted this practice to bring in elements of others in the series, so there are echoes here of the labyrinth (in approaching pleasure rather than pain), the cave (in the flowers dancing), the ocean (in a spiral of breath), and of course the garden (in the general theme). In fact, this is a variation of the garden, but then again, almost everything I do is, in a way.

I also want to acknowledge my use of Dr. Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s gorgeous “more than enough” language here — not everyone will have a moment of pleasure in mind, and she is always gentle in her acknowledgment that not everyone needs an intention (a nirvikalpa, rather than a sankalpa).