Step into the witness state to observe your emotions with distance and reclaim your power of choice.

English

This is the "grand teaching", where all else falls behind this necessary piece of information. Step into your witness state, where your power lives through the separation of stimuli and response. The power of our choice lives in our ability to cultivate this space in each moment. 

This is also a part of a larger meditation series by this teacher, offering Reiki Level 1 & 2 trainings. (13)

The Witness Meditation

Hello! My name is Eden, and I am a therapist, Reiki teacher, and meditation guide. Now, whether you've found this meditation through one of my Reiki courses or just through the web of life, welcome! These meditations are intended to deepen your relationship to your intuition and gifts, and facilitate an understanding of your own internal landscape. Each meditation is also a tool that can be offered to yourself or a client, so I invite you to notice what shifts within you before, during, after, beyond the meditation, cataloging the effects with words and feelings and sensations, just letting yourself take note. Allow it to be personal and universal. Let's begin! Welcome to what is often called the grand teaching. The grand teaching. Go ahead and find some comfort in your physical body, relaxing any tense muscles that you notice, offering your belly a deep breath, and letting the mind gently unwind from the day as you settle in right now, right here, nowhere else as best you can. There is this ancient yogi question that asks, what in me stays the same? What in me is steady? When relationships are always changing, when titles are always changing, when emotions are always changing, thoughts are changing, even memories are changing, what within you is steady, is constant, is unwavering, unchanging? Maybe, if you're like me, you can feel that place in you at times, that unwavering part. But what is that part? What part of you is it? Now, the answer in the yogic lineage is the witness. The witness. It's this part of you that can observe all of these changes in life as they come, but it is not these changes. The witness is the one who watches the emotions and the thoughts as they come and go. The witness is the one who watches the memory, who sees the labels of relationship and watches them change. The one who watches everything. You can think of the witness as an audience member in the movie theater of your life. If you've ever been to one of those IMAX theaters or ones with those really fancy chairs, maybe with this movie that's playing in front of you, maybe the chair vibrates or there's speakers in the chair. Essentially, it creates this experience along with the plot of the movie that draws you in. You forget you're in a theater. You are in the movie. The movie is bringing up emotions in you. You are enraptured. Enraptured. All of your senses are in that movie, and you are the same. Your life is that movie, and the moment we realize that we can be the witness, the audience member, instead of enraptured in the movie, forgetting there's anything else, we gain our power back. In this witness state where we cultivate being the one who watches instead of just the one feeling the emotion, we have power in awareness and in choice. For example, when anger comes up, instead of only being angry in whatever external way that looks, throwing a tantrum, yelling, whatever you're upset looks like, stepping instead into that witness state to be the one who notices the anger, there's power in that. You will always be less enraptured in that anger when you step into noticing the anger. There's this beautiful distance that is created from the anger or whatever it is when we witness it instead of being it. Seeing it from a distance means that you are not it. There is beauty in that. There is importance in that. This is how we move from reaction to response. It's also how we deepen a relationship to ourselves, to our inner landscape. Becoming the one who notices what moves through you. The emotions, the sensations, the memories, the visualizations, what can you notice? Maybe bringing words to it, labeling it, being the one who sees and notices. The witness of all that is. Your power is here. And another really cool layer is that also within that yogic question, the answer of what stays unchanging within myself being the witness, the idea is also that it is the same within each of us. We all have this witness. So there is this beautiful lattice tying us all together through this witness state that we all possess and can tap into whenever we need. The witness is the same within each of us. And yes, our personality, our life experience, it all informs our lens. But the witness is the same. Can you feel the beauty, the connection in that truth right now? Softening the body, letting this idea really soak in. Can you notice in this present moment that I too have a witness state? And I acknowledge yours right now too. And what a gift to be able to step back, to make a choice, and to move forward. Being alive in our life more fully through the witness state. And so I invite you throughout the rest of your day, your week, your life, to exercise that mental muscle of stepping back into the witness state when something comes up that might feel a little sticky, a little hard. Be the one who steps back to say, huh, there's that anger. There's that grief. Hi. Hi. Offering your humanness to it. And creating that little moment of distance between you and the experience to notice, to send love, to make an aligned choice if need be. Deep breath in and long. Taking a moment to thank yourself for being here, maybe noticing how you feel right now, being the witness to you right now. And whenever you're ready to rejoin the day, gently do so, offering yourself some gentle movement, some light in the eyes. Go forth and witness your life.