It’s Day 1 of Tricycle Meditation Month, our annual challenge to commit to a daily practice throughout the month of March, and we’re getting started with the first of four free guided meditation videos led by our Meditation Month teacher, Guo Gu.

Guo Gu is the founder of the Tallahassee Chan Center and a professor of Chinese Buddhism at Florida State University. For Meditation Month, he is leading this four-part series that explores the Chan (Jp., Zen) teaching of silent illumination. A new video will be released each week introducing an approach to meditation and building on the previous weeks’ teachings. These instructions and tips from Guo Gu are designed to help you develop a regular practice and connect to your experience at each moment. 

In this first video, Guo Gu gives instructions for relaxing the body and connecting with the breath. This foundational teaching will create a sense of stability in our practice that will last throughout this month-long commitment to meditation. While we tend to spend a lot of our time living inside our heads, Guo Gu asks us to shift our awareness into the tactile sensations of the body, inviting in awareness of the “undercurrent tones” that shape our experiences. 

Download a transcript of this talk. It has been edited for clarity.

Meditation Month is free for all participants. Tricycle is here to support your journey with helpful articles, two live calls with Guo Gu on Saturday, March 6 at 12:00 p.m. EST and Friday, March 19 at 5:00 p.m. EST, a Facebook discussion group, an interactive group on the Insight Timer app, and other free resources for meditation and Buddhist practice. Visit tricycle.org/mm21 to learn more.

This week’s Meditation Month articles:

To keep up with all of our Meditation Month offerings, sign up for our newsletter using the form below.

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