Meditation instructions from Guru Bill Murray

A reporter at the Toronto Film Festival, which designated Bill Murray Day, asked Murray: What is it like to be you?

His answer is a gem, and a really good four-minute meditation.

Take three conscious breaths to bring yourself into the moment. And listen to Bill Murray.

Here's the transcript, from Vulture.com:

What does it feel like to be you? What does it feel like to be you? Yeah. It feels good to be you, doesn’t it? It feels good, because there’s one thing that you are — you’re the only one that’s you, right?. So you’re the only one that’s you, and we get confused sometimes — or I do, I think everyone does — you try to compete. You think, Dammit, someone else is trying to be me. Someone else is trying to be me. But I don’t have to armor myself against those people; I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can really just relax and feel content in this way and this regard. If I can just feel, just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feeling funny. How much do you weigh? Think about how much each person here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now. Parts in your feet and parts in your bum. Just try to feel your own weight, in your own seat, in your own feet. Okay? So if you can feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most personal identification, a very personal identification, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now. Then you don’t feel like you have to leave, and be over there, or look over there. You don’t feel like you have to rush off and be somewhere. There’s just a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate up and down, from your top to your bottom. Up and down from your top to your spine. And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile, that makes you want to feel good, that makes you want to feel like you could embrace yourself.
 
So what’s it like to be me? You can ask yourself, What’s it like to be me? You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.

 

Embodied meditation

Before I started meditating I took yoga classes for several years. I was no poster girl for yoga, but I did develop a familiarity with my body's mechanics.  So I was pretty smug when I was introduced to mindfulness of body. I knew my body.
Thing is, I knew how my body worked (or didn't). I knew how it looked. I didn't know how it felt. 
Like James Joyce's Mr Duffy, I lived a short distance from my body. Growing up, I never had a sense of my body as a comfortable place to be. It was to be covered up or flaunted, depending on the situation, and I was most familiar with it from others' reactions to it.

It took a lot of tries to become aware of how it felt to be in my body. I was helped by a teacher who prodded me to identify where I feel emotions. Now I often notice the body sensation before the emotion: gritted teeth = stress; tightness in the throat accompanies sadness; panic is in the chest, in my heart and lunds; tiredness is behind my eyes. And noticing the body sensations I can head off the thoughts.
Buddhist teacher Reginald A. Ray says that the full benefits of meditation cannot be experienced or enjoyed when we are not grounded in our bodies.

"The phrase 'touching enlightenment with the body'... doesn't just imply that we are able to touch enlightenment with our bodies; beyond that it suggests that -- except in and through our bodies -- there actually is not other way to do so."

Maybe I'm getting ahead of the game in talking about enlightenment; the topic is body scans. Which simply means placing your attention on your body. Start at the top and let your attention slide down, like honey dripping along your body, slowly, deliberately. Notice the energetic quality -- is it tense, relaxed, at ease, knotted -- and notice your reaction. Does a sensation in your knee lead to panicky thoughts like "I can't stand this" or "oh, no, what if I need a knee replacement?"
The practice is about staying with sensation, not telling yourself a story about where the sensation came from or what might happen. Just stay -- until you move to the next body part. Don't skip any parts, don't get stuck on any parts, don't judge parts, don't worry about parts. Just gently feel.
It's so simple -- and so complex. It develops awareness, observation, openness, lovingkindness, compassion, resting in the present moment.

Click here for directions and audio for a body scan mediation by a teacher of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

And here are some downloads from the University of California at San Diego Center for Mindfulness