Feeling your body and mind as a lake.
To reduce anxiety,
Please make yourself comfortable lying down on your bed or on the floor or wherever you can be comfortable.
Maybe putting a pillow under your knees.
Allow your eyes to close and your body to melt into the floor or the bed.
Take a few moments to scan your awareness through the sensations of your body.
And wherever possible,
Soften and release obvious areas of physical tension.
This can be done with great effect at the end of a long day.
Or perhaps at any time you feel your anxiety creeping up.
Allow your attention to gently come into the body,
To the flowing of your breath.
Experience the sense of your body as a whole.
Simply lying here,
Extended and breathing.
When you are ready,
Picture in your mind's eye the image of a lake.
Perhaps a lake that you know well and one that you go to from time to time.
Or one you've seen in a photograph.
Just see if you can bring that image into vivid focus in your mind's eye.
Notice how it's an extended body of water held within the earth's surface and perhaps fed by a spring or a stream.
If you watch and observe the lake carefully,
You'll notice that it's always changing.
And yet it's also always itself.
It changes as the sun moves across the sky.
The light is reflected off the water in different ways.
It changes depending on the weather.
Sometimes on very calm days,
The surface might look like glass and reflect virtually everything with great precision that comes by.
The clouds,
The birds,
The trees that might surround the lake,
The sun as it makes its journey across the sky,
And for that matter,
The moon and the stars at night.
So there are times when the lake is extremely reflective and contain a certain way that everything comes by or over it.
In different periods of time,
The surface might be choppy and sometimes quite pronounced.
In which times,
The light might sparkle off of the waves in different ways.
Of course,
The lake changes through the seasons.
In winter,
Depending on its location,
It might actually be frozen over.
Through the day and night,
And through the seasons,
And through the years,
The lake is constantly changing.
But it is always its own essential nature.
And now,
See if you can invite the lake to exist within your own body,
Laying here.
Imagine that your body becomes the lake itself.
Can you imagine feeling held and embraced as you lie here?
Aware of the many ways in which your own mind is like the surface of the lake.
Sometimes highly reflective,
Sometimes choppy.
Getting in touch with the sense of the entirety of the lake.
The full body of water.
Not only the surface,
But also down below.
As you lie here,
Experience the fullness of your own being.
So that even at times when your mind is choppy and upset,
Or reactive,
Or dealing with difficult things,
You can drop below the surface of your own mind's waves.
And find a stillness,
A calmness,
That has always been here.
It has always been available to you.
With each moment,
With each breath.
And when you come down to lie in this way,
Lying here under the canopy of your vast awareness,
Experiencing the moment to moment changes in your body,
In your sensations,
And thoughts,
And feelings,
And impulses,
And sounds.
And all the while,
Like the lake,
Just simply lying here,
Watching the play of the weather of your mind and body.
Allowing your awareness to hold it all,
Moment by moment,
Breath by breath,
In your own fullness,
In your own completeness,
Moment by moment.
Thank you for your kind awareness.
