It's lovely to be with you all.
My name is Larissa and we're going to practice for about 15 minutes.
And as you're getting situated,
It's taking a couple of moments here to settle in.
Little tiny wiggle in your torso so that you can settle into your cushion.
Any adjustments in your body.
Just moving your chin in a circle,
Taking some deep breaths.
Letting your eyes slowly close.
And as you choose to either let your eyes close or set your gaze downward.
This opportunity to go inward.
And this invitation to go inward.
And to witness yourself with as much kindness as possible.
And that invitation.
Is incredibly important so that we're not sitting with our inner critic and accidentally judging ourselves the whole time.
And when that does happen,
That's when we need our kindness the most,
The tenderness the most.
And so this intention.
Our intention is incredibly important.
We also start to pay attention to the impact.
Our intention is not always the same as the impact.
And so we witness all of it.
Beginning,
Though,
With his intention of being gentle.
Notice the gentleness of your exhale.
There's an invitation in every single exhale to rest a bit,
To soften a bit.
This is your body wisely balancing what the yoga sutras remind us of to find the balance of effort and ease.
There can be so much effort in our day-to-day,
So much effort.
In being human.
And when we let go of the effort and we just surrender to the exhale,
It helps us find a bit of balance.
And just witness here for some time,
Your inhales and your exhales.
Expansive and soft.
Anytime your mind starts to move,
Just witness it in its movement.
You might even thank your mind for wherever it just was.
And then invite your mind back into the rest of your exhale.
Watch the wise effort of your inhale.
And then invite in that softening,
The gentleness of the exhale.
And we practice this again and again and again,
Just this balance of effort and ease.
Is our breath truly one of our greatest teachers?
Your breath.
Whatever it is about us taking our first breath as a baby.
Already animated inside the womb.
Breathing in a different way,
Respiring in the womb in a different way.
This human vehicle,
This body that you exist within.
Has always been taking the wise effort to breathe for you.
Wise effort for your heart to beat.
The life's effort to digest the energy that we take in,
Whether it's food,
Some brilliant podcast,
Or some incredibly difficult news.
Your body always metabolizing everything to bring you back.
To this wise balance.
We just have time here to trust in the wisdom of the body.
And so often we're oriented to going to the mind.
We need both mind-body.
And right at the center we need this wise eye of the heart.
I've been working with the eye of the heart,
This concept.
Not necessarily a big eyeball in your chest that you can open and stare at the world with love,
And yet it exists.
Every time you close your external eyes and you soften into an exhale,
You open the eye of your heart just a little bit more.
Bringing together your mind,
Your body,
Your heart,
The eye of your heart.
And in this way,
We start to see the world through pure spirit,
Pure awareness,
As it's sometimes called in Buddhism.
The awareness that doesn't require judgment.
It's not even that we're trying not to judge.
It doesn't even require judgment.
And we can experience this in moments.
The softening of the exhale where we just land for a moment.
Just one breath at a time.
In this effort in ease.
This is one of the steps on the Eightfold Noble Path.
One of the steps quite literally being called wise effort,
Wise action.
And in order to take the wise effort,
We first begin the first step on the Eightfold Noble Path.
Wise perception,
Wise understanding,
Wise view of the world.
And very often we try to look through our physical eyes.
What we need to temper our physical eyes.
Because our physical eyes are relational to our mind.
We need our heart to help support our physical lenses.
This eye of the heart as it becomes more and more open.
We start to see the world with a little bit more compassion.
We start to see ourselves with a little bit more loving kindness,
Loving awareness.
And we begin that.
And just simply witnessing how your breath is already loving you.
Caring for you,
Tending to you.
Even if you had a breath scare.
Even just a small incident,
You're swimming in the lake and a wave crashes and all of a sudden you can't breathe for a second,
That moment of sputtering.
Those are the moments where we remember how important our breath is,
How important our body is.
How much our body is trying.
So much to care for us.
There's never anywhere we have to get to.
I don't have to figure out how do I love myself better.
You already are.
It's very often closing the external lenses,
Letting your mind rest for a moment.
Letting all of the figuring of the mind land in the eye of the heart.
And let your big,
Beautiful eye of the heart open for just a moment and witness.
The care that's already right here for you.
Just breathing.
Heart beating.
Can you allow your mind just to rest in your exhale just for this moment?
Sometimes in our wise perception.
Requires us to see the lens with which we're looking at the world and remove it for a moment.
And then slow down enough that we can get used to this new vision so we don't reach for the old glasses just because it's familiar.
It takes time to change your perception.
And that's exactly what we have,
Just spaciousness to be for a few moments.
You don't have to fix or change your vision.
It's just witnessing.
Witnessing when you see the world with a little bit of a bend.
When you see yourself with judgment instead of compassion.
We certainly need discernment to make wise choices in the world.
But it's the harsh judgment.
It takes us out of that naturally radiant seeing eye of the heart.
We start to blend the two,
Just seeing our darkest moments with a touch of compassion.
And in simplest form,
We begin here.
Just witnessing your body caring for you breath by breath.
I'll invite you to bring your hands into any of your closing habits or practices.
In the yogic tradition that said that your hands are an extension of your heart.
This is actually true in many traditions.
Just contacting yourself.
With your hands,
With your heart.
And from this intention.
We end with our loving kindness praises.
These phrases help us incline our mind towards the goodness within us so that we can share that goodness externally.
Just repeating these phrases back as they make sense for you.
May I remember the innate goodness of my breath.
May I remember the innate goodness of my body.
May I continue to open the brilliant eye of my heart.
And when action is needed.
May I choose to move with ease.
And peace.
May the merits of our practice ripple out to benefit all beings.
And may all beings be free.
And whenever you feel complete,
You can find a little movement,
Open your eyes,
Take a moment to thank yourself.
