Here is a very simple exercise you can use to get a felt sense of spiritual Awakening. It’s also a very practical exercise to use in moment of intensity and stress.

Tense your right arm. Clench your fist, engage your forearm and bicep. Squeeze it really tightly.

Now slowly and consciously release that tension. Put all of your awareness on the feeling of relaxation. Do it slowly enough that you can really hone in on what the release feels like. Do it a few times. Try it in different parts of your body. The key is to really understand somatically what relaxation feels like.

Now keep going in that direction of relaxation and release. Once all the muscles are completely relaxed, keep going. What would it feel like to continue in that direction inside your body? A relaxation of very subtle tensions that you’ve been subconsciously holding. A relaxation of emotional tension. An energetic relaxation. What is beyond that? How far can you go in this direction?

It may help to close your eyes. You really want to focus on the feeling of relaxation and opening, and practice to see how deep you can take it. Pay particular attention to your solar plexus, many people carry a deep emotional or energetic tension in this part of the body. See if you can relax it. Open it. Expand it.

If you do this well you may start to feel a sensation similar to bungee jumping or a steep rollercoaster. That feeling of your stomach dropping as you are in free fall. You are in free fall, but the good news is there is no ground.

Keep breathing, keep relaxing, keep expanding, keep opening.

I mentioned this is a very practical exercise to use in moments of stress and tension at work or in your relationships. But it’s more than that. This feeling of openness is the direction of spiritual awakening.

The more open and expanded your felt sense the larger your identification of self. The more contracted and tense you are the more you will identify with your human vessel. Indeed the notion of a “self” is a primal contraction, a tension, a coalescing of the particle-waves of reality into an individuated illusion.

I haven’t found and end to this direction of practice yet. Perhaps the ultimate destination is enlightenment.

Note: I just realized this practice may be related to the Alexander Technique, which I need to research further