Prostration Practice

Set aside a little time, ten minutes? More?

Use a small rug or zabuton or yoga mat to protect your knees. Stand with hands in gassho. Bow at the waist then drop slowly to your knees. Touch your forehead to the floor as well as the backs of your hands to the with palms upward next to your head. Raise you hands above your head. Reverse the movement and return to standing gassho.

Do this very slowly, even to an exaggerated degree. Breath comfortably and match your breath to the parts of the movement as is comfortable. Notice how you feel as you do this practice

From One Bird One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories, by Sean Tetsudo Murphy, Sensei: Changing the World

A student once asked Kobun Chino Roshi about the significance of prostrations in Zen practice. Kobe told the story of how, when he was ten or eleven years old and his father passed away, he'd dropped to the floor weeping in an uncontrollable expression of grief. When he rose to his feet, both he and the world seemed irrevocably changed.

"I think of bowing that way," he said. "You go down, and when you come back up again, you're a different person. The world has changed."