This is Janine Tandy and welcome into the practice.
This meditation will focus on inviting in a sense of spaciousness,
Allowing us to rest in what we call open awareness.
And this becomes a powerful practice if we're noticing for a multitude of reasons,
Maybe our perspective is feeling narrow,
Our bodies are feeling contracted,
Which can happen when we're dealing with discomfort,
And that can be physical or emotional discomfort,
Managing perhaps too much on our plates.
We're feeling exhausted,
Maybe from a bit of lack of sleep,
And all of this can really influence how we feel and how we see things.
So when we can feed space around that by resting in the space around our experiences,
This becomes quite powerful in changing that felt experience.
So let's begin.
I invite you to find an alert quality to the body,
So where the spine can feel lengthened,
But the shoulders soften away from the ears.
Allow the fingers to relax and the hands to remain soft,
Perhaps in your lap or on your legs.
Maybe even moving the jaw a little bit from side to side and releasing a bit of space between the upper and the lower teeth,
Softening the eyes and the forehead,
Which in itself can start to release any contracting responses we may have as a result of noticing difficulty in our week or in our bodies.
We begin by relaxing certain areas of the body that can start to invite in a sense of spaciousness and soft presence.
Allow the belly to be soft and the breath to feel natural and fluid.
And we're going to allow our minds to feel as vast,
As spacious as the sky itself,
Where we can hold whatever is here gently and notice what comes in and out of this vast field of awareness without hooking into any one thing,
But allowing them to rise and fall just like the weather moves through the sky.
So as you're gently breathing and resting in your seat right now,
You might be aware of one or two or a flood of sensations in the body.
Noticing the rise and fall of sensation,
How sometimes can move from one area to another.
And sensation can be noticing contact between the body and whatever you're sat on.
Or it could be things like tingling,
An itch,
Noticing the sounds of digestion,
A little ache.
But who we are isn't sensation.
It's something we feel that comes in and out of our awareness.
And who we are is more substantial,
More vast,
More broad,
All around that.
You may notice the sound of my voice rising and falling,
Or perhaps the sound of things around you in the space in which you're in.
Or even the gentle hum of noise outside a window could be birdsong,
A car passing by,
Voices in the distance.
But again,
Gently noticing what's coming in and out of awareness as sound without getting caught up in any particular narrative about that sound.
Resting behind and around it in open awareness.
Might be aware of the quality of breath or the feeling of breathing in your body right now.
Again that can be interesting to notice.
And then we come to rest in the space that's around breath.
And we're going to take a few more minutes here noticing what comes in and out of awareness.
Might be a sound.
And then perhaps there's a drawing back towards sensation in the body.
Perhaps the bubbling of a thought or of thinking mind coming in.
And we can take a mental note,
Ah,
Thinking.
Or the particulars of that thought just in terms of general content,
But letting go of diving down into any narrative or story around the thought,
The sensation,
The sound.
But like a balloon or a bubble sort of bursting and just gently dissolving away from space.
Noticing what comes in and then allowing it to go.
Might be aware of your posture or maybe a shift that the body sometimes makes when we're in a seat for a particular period of time.
And then we come back to resting in open awareness.
Perhaps softening in areas that might need it so that you can feel a little bit more restful here.
So there's a gentle response when needed,
But allowing yourself to come back into this vast sky as if the horizon is hundreds of miles away and we're in it all.
Sounds coming and going.
Another cycle of breath rising and falling.
A thought or a little bit of content percolating to the surface of the mind and then dissolving away gently.
Holding it all.
And taking a few more breaths here.
Perhaps allowing those breaths to feel a little bit more spacious,
More voluminous.
As if we want to invite in a little bit more space,
Not just in the lungs themselves,
But in the entire torso.
And then with the next round of breath,
The entire length of your body.
So wherever might have felt contracted or small,
All of a sudden has a different sensibility to it,
A different feeling,
Openness,
Spaciousness.
Taking one more long inhale in.
And then perhaps releasing the exhale out through the mouth like a nice big sigh.
And then with the next inhale,
Perhaps gently inviting the eyes to open or the gaze to lift if it was shifted in a more downward way or closed.
Allowing yourself to gently make your way back into the space in which you're in,
Noticing how you're feeling.
I hope this has been of benefit to you and thank you so much for practicing with me here.
Take care.
