Jack Kornfield Guided Meditation: Becoming Your Own Bodhi Tree

Finding a Comfortable Seat

• 🧘 Settle yourself by sinking down into your seat, creating a sense of stability.
• 🌬️ Take a couple of long breaths to release tension, letting your eyes, face, and jaw soften.
• 🌳 Allow your shoulders to relax, your arms and hands to rest easily, and your belly to be soft with natural breath.
• ❤️ Let your heart be soft, cultivating an open and kind awareness with embodied presence.

Imagining Yourself as a Tree

• 🌳 Imagine yourself as a tree, with roots extending down into mother earth, feeling grounding, support, strength, and steadiness.
• 🌲 Sense your body as the great trunk of the tree: upright, strong, and a little flexible.
• 🌿 Feel your branches reaching out and up to the sky, spreading wide.

The Tree's Connection and Gifts

• ☀️ Feel the well-being of being part of the whole web of life in a beautiful season with warm sunlight and enough rain.
• 💨 Breathe in carbon dioxide through your leaves and breathe out oxygen for all creatures.
• ✨ Turn sunlight into sugar through your leaves, experiencing the magic of converting light energy.
• 🤝 Feel connected to other trees through roots and mycelium, able to send sugar to those in need.

Sheltering and Whispering Wisdom

• 💖 Experience the warmth, compassion, and shelter you offer to human beings who wish to awaken, like the Buddha who sat under a relative of yours.
• 💬 As a tree of wisdom, whisper words of understanding and wisdom to those seeking freedom and awakening.
• 🙏 Express gratitude and love to all the trees of the world that sustain us.

Returning to Human Form

• 👁️ When ready, allow your eyes to open and look out as a human being, carrying the essence of the tree within.