Korean Bowing Meditation: 108 Bows With One Phrase

When I suggest a bowing meditation, people who are new to my classes usually tense up a little. Is this the bow you do at a Buddhist temple? The bow Koreans make at ancestral rites? Can I do it if I am not religious?

Many people also know bowing as exercise. In a full bow you kneel, bring your forehead to the floor and stand back up, again and again, so your legs and lower belly work the whole time. When strength gathers in the area below the navel, the place fitness trainers call the core, your body starts to hold itself upright with less effort.

But if you want bowing to be a meditation, there is something to decide before the number of bows. It is the one phrase you will say out loud with every bow.

Below is the order I actually use in class: checking your feet and center of gravity, one full bow step by step, deciding how many minutes rather than how many bows, choosing the phrase, and the quiet sitting at the end.

An illustration made for this post — an empty practice room with a floor cushion in morning light

Before It Is a Ritual, a Bow Is a Way of Setting Something Down

This is how I explain bowing in class. In Korea it was handed down as a practice long before it belonged to any single religion, and each part of the movement carries a meaning.

Lowering your body means setting yourself down. What you set down is not your true self. It is everything you have come to treat as "me" while living: your thoughts and feelings, the ideas and beliefs that hardened over the years, even your body. There is a sentence I come back to often: my body, my thoughts and my feelings are mine, but they are not me. Each bow is a chance to check that sentence with your whole body.

If you have a faith, you can use its language. A Buddhist might call it uncovering the Buddha nature within and polishing away the rest. A Christian might call it keeping only God's heart and laying down what is empty. If you have no religion, it is meeting the pure nature inside you, your true self. The names differ, but they point to the same place.

One thing needs to be clear. Setting down does not mean hating your thoughts or feelings or trying to get rid of them. It means stepping them one pace back from the seat of "me" so you can look at them. Once you can look at something, you can also let it go.

The same movement feels very different when you know what it means. That is why, in a bowing meditation, we talk about the meaning first and the movement second.

The First Few Minutes: Feet and Center of Gravity

The shape of your feet matters more than you would expect. You will repeat the same movement dozens of times, so if your starting stance is crooked, the crookedness is repeated dozens of times too.

Stand with your feet hip to shoulder width apart and parallel, toes pointing straight ahead. Most of us habitually stand with our toes turned out, so you will probably need to bring your toes in a little more than feels natural. If you are unsure, simply keep your feet together.

Bend your knees slightly and let your weight drop down. Bring your chest a touch forward. When your weight settles toward the front of your feet, you will feel your legs and lower belly switch on.

Close your eyes and feel the soles of your feet in four parts: heel, ball, inner edge, outer edge. Then compare left and right. They are rarely equal. Adjust until your weight feels evenly spread.

Bounce gently at the knees and shake your body loose. With your mouth slightly open, breathe out with a soft "haa" and release tension part by part: head, neck, shoulders, arms, chest and back, lower back, hips, legs. You do not have to do this well. You are just loosening up.

If your hands, feet and lower belly grow warm while your head feels cool, things are going well. If your chest or head feels hot and you get dizzy, the tension has not let go yet and energy has rushed upward. Breathe out slowly and imagine the heat sinking downward. If you are still dizzy, stop bowing for the day, sit down and simply let your breath settle.

One Full Bow, Step by Step

Stand with your palms together. Imagine gathering energy from the sky into the crown of your head, then letting it travel down through your head, your chest and your lower belly.

With the intention of setting yourself down, kneel. Lay the tops of your feet flat on the floor and sit your hips back onto your heels.

Rest your forehead on the floor and stretch your arms forward. Keep your elbows on the floor and turn your palms up toward the sky. This is the moment of letting your true nature shine.

Bring your hands back down to the floor and tuck your toes under.

Bring your palms together as you rise. Come up as if you are being born again.

Keep your gaze on the floor about 45 degrees ahead with your eyes half open, or close them if you prefer.

Count Minutes, Not Bows: 20 Minutes Is 50 to 100 Bows

One hundred and eight is the famous number. But if you start with 108 as the goal, bowing turns into counting. Your mind sits on the number still left, you speed up, and your knees and back get tired before anything else happens.

In class we set a time instead: 20 minutes. Bow quickly and that is about 100 bows. Bow slowly and it is about 50. The standard is not how many you did but whether you filled 20 minutes at a pace that suits your own body. Reaching 108 is less a target you set on day one and more something that follows once your body knows the movement.

There is also more than one way to bow. In my classes there are four broad kinds:

Bowing while watching the sensations in your body, at whatever pace your body wants

Bowing while feeling the flow of energy

Bowing quickly while reciting a text, such as a scripture, one syllable at a time

Bowing while saying one phrase aloud with every bow

If you are new, I recommend the last one. While the movement repeats, your mind has something to hold on to.

How to Choose Your Phrase

The phrase does not need to be grand. It only needs to reach you today. These are the ones we use most often in class:

I love you — said to yourself, when the urge to blame yourself is strong

I forgive you, or May we forgive — when there is someone you resent, with that person in mind

I'm sorry, or Thank you — when regret weighs on you, or when someone you are grateful to comes to mind

Who am I? — when the questions of what you live for and how you should live run deep

Say it aloud, not only in your head. It feels awkward at first, and people often tell me exactly that. Let the awkwardness come up and watch it as part of the practice.

"I forgive you" and "May we forgive" are not the same

In one class, someone shared what had been weighing on them. They had posted their honest opinion in an online community, and a crowd of people descended at once with harsh words. That was not what they had meant, they could not say anything more, they felt stifled, and they kept wondering whether they really deserved that much abuse.

First we tried looking from where those people stood. How much anger must someone be carrying, with nowhere else to put it, to pour it out like that? Seen that way, a little compassion arrives before the resentment does. So at first I suggested bowing with those people in mind and saying "I forgive you."

But "I forgive you" runs in one direction, from me to them. The position that I was right and they were wrong stays in place. So we changed the words. In Korean the phrase becomes a request rather than a statement, something like "May we forgive." It is a wish that you and I and all of us forgive one another. I forgive them, they forgive me, and I forgive myself. It is a phrase that sets down the question of who was right.

If you are trying to forgive someone and it will not come, try changing the shape of the sentence this way. It is the same bow, but the heart you put into your body changes.

"Who am I?" is not a quiz with a right answer

Another person said they wanted to live in the present moment. When they placed their attention on their steps while walking, or on the water running over the backs of their hands while washing, that moment went quiet. Then they were pulled straight back into the past and into thoughts about the future. They had read enough books to understand it in their head, but it was not happening in their heart.

For them I suggested "Who am I?" It is a question you ask inward. You are not trying to recite a tidy answer. You keep asking until knowing it in your head turns into knowing it with your whole body and mind. That shift sometimes arrives all at once. Until it does, you hold the question and keep bowing.

If You Felt Nothing, That Is Something to Look At

After 20 minutes of bowing we sit in a circle and talk, and one sentence comes up often: "I didn't feel anything."

One person had been saying "I love you" and felt nothing at all. When I asked why, they said they had focused on their body and not on the meaning of the words. I did not stop there and asked once more: why might you have avoided putting the meaning in? I was not fishing for a correct answer. Whatever made them step around those words was exactly what their next practice was about.

Another person, bowing with "May we forgive," said the people they still needed to forgive kept coming to mind. If I want someone's forgiveness this much, someone probably wants mine just as much, so why do I hesitate? Something was blocking them, they said, and they needed to look further to see what it was.

A bowing meditation gives you more than a refreshed body. It shows you how your heart reacts to a single phrase and where it gets stuck. If you saw where you got stuck, that was a good day of bowing.

The body works the same way. Many newcomers stay tense all the way through, even while shaking loose and bowing. It is their own body, yet they cannot feel where they are holding on. Once you can see that, you can let go of it. Some things release in the heart when you release them in the body, and some release in the body when you release them in the heart. The two are connected.

Do Not Jump Up Afterward: Sit and Watch

Sit on a cushion, push your hips as far back as they go so your spine stands upright, then relax.

Simply watch the breath coming in and going out through your nose. As it comes in, let your lower belly swell a little. As it goes out, draw it in a little. Do not force the breath.

Silently repeat the phrase you used while bowing, three times, as if sending it deep into the center of your chest.

Watch the thoughts and feelings that rise in response. Listen for when they began and where they came from.

Rub your palms together until they are warm, cover your eyes with them, then stroke your face, head, neck, shoulders and legs to finish.

After bowing has used your whole body, sitting still is much easier. Do not skip this part, even if you only have a few minutes. This is where you look at what came up while you were bowing.

On Some Days, Sit Instead of Kneeling

A full bow means kneeling and bringing your head all the way to the floor, over and over. Do not do it when your knees or back hurt or are recovering from an injury, or when a doctor has told you to be careful about lying face down or lowering your head.

On those days you can sit in a chair, bring your palms together in front of your chest, and repeat your phrase aloud. What stays with you from a bowing meditation is not the number of bows. It is the phrase, and how your heart answers it.

If You Are Starting on Your Own

Practicing alone is quiet and peaceful. What is hard alone is seeing where you get stuck, so for the first few sessions it helps to follow guidance.

If you would like to begin with short guided meditations, WECOSMO has practices you can follow along with. To follow the whole sequence above from beginning to end, there is also a guided bowing meditation video (narrated in Korean). And if you keep getting drowsy during the closing sit, Falling Asleep in Meditation may help.