Another thought/question on this meditation:
A well known performance anxiety help book talks about focusing on a center point just below the navel. Although the author doesn’t say so in so many words, I think he’s speaking of the Chinese low Dantain which roughly corresponds with the manipura chakra. Perhaps the center point you suggest in the meditation refers to this as well?
I’ve found it interesting that while I have always felt my upper chakras (heart, throat, third eye, crown) humming away, even before I knew what they were, I’ve never really been able to sense the lower ones. Hmmm… In the meantime, I “listen” to them, to see if one day they will speak to me.

Thanks for your podcasts. I used them last night and this morning for the first meditation of my life.

I began suffering from panic and anxiety about a year ago, returning home from abroad to visit my mother with Alzheimer’s. I have steadily used medication and exercise, therapy and anything that works but basically I am far from cured. One of the features of my condition, that doctors are at a loss to explain, is that I experience an intense internal trembling when I lie down to sleep at night that feels like an electrical current running through my body, a kind of “buzz”. It makes me so anxious and feels like the sky is about to fall on me. Inevitably, I don’t sleep, sometimes for two or three days in a row, which leaves me totally nuts. I even have difficulty with breathing, although I swim as much as I can. Doctors gave me a clean bill of health but say I am suffering from symptoms of panic disorder. Usually on waking, my body trembling is intense and lessens once I have fully woken up and move about.

This morning I greeted it with you in my ears and the Stillness podcast taking me on a journey. Letting go and detaching but also being aware I tried to not be annoyed or panicked by the sensation of trembling as it jumped around my body, in my chest, in my hands, in my shoulders and always at the core of me somewhere in my lungs and stomach listening to your voice guiding me. I visualized something natural and saw a tree but needed something inert and saw a beautiful deep grey stone that was almost the blue, of very early morning light and I became as still as that stone. My body for a brief moment disengaged with the buzzing and I felt a palpable ripple of sensation flood over first my feet then my legs then slowly the rest of me. But I was absolutely still. Tears leaked onto the pillow on my bed. I have always thought meditation took effort and I am going to do it again tonight before sleep.

I would sell my house for a night of ordinary sleep and this maybe the reason, thanks to your generosity of putting podcasts on the net for free, why I won’t have to.

O