I remember being in junior high school, standing on the trampoline in the gym. The first time I jumped down hard, I felt the force push through my legs and then—boom—the trampoline sent me flying back into the air. It wasn’t just fun; it trained balance, flexibility, and timing. We tried tricks, we competed, we rated each other, but I didn’t realize at the time that I was learning something far deeper.
Decades later, I see the connection to meditation. The trampoline became a metaphor. Negative news, disappointment, irritation—anything that lands heavily in the mind—acts like the downward push. You let it hit, you feel it, you notice the weight. And then, when the tension reaches a certain depth, the spring releases. Energy flows upward through the body. Awareness follows.
It’s a pivot. The heavier the push, the higher the spring. The body carries it first, and the mind is drawn along for the ride. What once felt purely negative becomes fuel for presence, for sensation, for a larger field of awareness. In that sense, the mind and the body are like the trampoline together: the weight of one triggers the lift of the other.
And so, intentionally, I sometimes let myself feel the weight first. I read the bad news. I acknowledge the irritation. I crouch down on the mental trampoline. And then—inevitably—the energy rises. It pivots. It spreads. I feel it in my spine, in my chest, in the subtle movements of breath. The mind, which was captured by the weight, is suddenly freer, carried on the spring of the body.
It’s a small, almost invisible shift, but once you notice it, you can start to work with it. The trampoline was just a childhood game, but it taught me something essential: to fall, fully and intentionally, is to rise.
Spiritual Gravity 