Grounding & Welcoming What's Here

This meditation, recorded live at my weekly class in Denver, will ground you in the present moment and support you in integrating any tension or emotion in the body that may need your attention. Great meditation to use if you are wanting to wind down from as stressful day.

Transcript

You can close your eyes if that feels good for you.

You can also meditate with your eyes open.

If you want to pick a spot just a few feet ahead of you on the ground and gaze at that spot.

This is a choose your own adventure kind of practice.

So as we go on throughout the evening,

Take what lands with you and leave behind what does not.

I'm going to invite us into a few deep breaths to begin.

So these are going to be really deep conscious inhales,

Deep conscious exhales.

Maybe the deepest,

Most intentional breaths you've taken all day.

Inhaling through the nose,

Letting it out through the mouth quietly or with sound,

Whatever floats your boat.

Deep inhale just like that through the nose,

Filling the lungs and letting it out through the mouth.

Nice and slow and controlled exhale.

It's really the quality of that slow,

Controlled exhale signals to the nervous system that we're going to slow down.

So continuing with these deep inhale exhales in through the nose,

Out through the mouth,

Softening the shoulders,

Softening the jaw.

Let's do one more deep inhale and exhale just like that.

And then letting go of conscious control of the breath as you just to begin to arrive into receptivity.

Just beginning to receive the sounds in the environment with curious ears and just noticing what's here right now,

Hearing the sounds within the room,

Hearing the sounds beyond the room,

Hearing the sound of my voice,

And maybe hearing the sound of thoughts internally and just welcoming,

Welcoming all of it with neither the intention to fix nor to change nor to force nor to adjust,

Just allowing thoughts,

Allowing sounds to come and go as they do.

And again,

Receptive as if resting back,

Allowing the natural flow of experience,

In this case sound,

To come in and out of your awareness,

Allowing thoughts to come in and out of your awareness.

And now dropping more fully into the body,

Feeling the felt sense of what it feels like to be sitting here and receiving the shape,

The outline of the body with curiosity as if asking,

What does it feel like to be in a body?

Another quality of answering that question might be the temperature.

What temperature or temperatures do you notice in the body here right now?

And noticing the weight of the body,

The weight of gravity,

Feeling the heaviness of sitting firmly here in this moment,

In this body,

Feeling the points of contact between your body and the cushion,

The furniture beneath you,

Your legs and your bottom,

Your feet.

Feel how they press up against the earth beneath you.

And again,

Just noticing.

And of course,

As you're starting to turn towards the body,

You'll likely notice that there are some discomfort or some sensations that you're not too stoked about.

And that's okay.

We're going to welcome them too.

We're going to turn to the breath for a few moments,

But then we're going to give them a little bit of conscious space in a moment.

If you're carrying any emotion or pain,

Discomfort that maybe just needs a little bit of loving awareness and attention,

We're going to come back to that in a moment.

But first we're going to really anchor in a little bit more fully with the breath.

So turning your attention to the torso and starting to notice the breath breathing itself.

So you can feel the breath in the stomach and diaphragm.

You may also feel the breath lightly in the chest cavity and the shoulders.

Gently expanding and rising and softening.

You may also feel the breath by the nasal passages in the upper lip.

Noticing how,

In contrast to those first few breaths that we took that were intentional,

They were controlled,

We were influencing the breath.

Here you need not do anything to breathe.

The body will and does breathe continually on its own.

And so herein lies the restfulness of getting to just receive and watch without having to do so much.

So just noticing the sensations that you feel as the body breathes in.

And noticing the sensations that you feel as the body breathes out.

You can add a gentle little whisper to guide your attention.

So as you breathe in,

You can gently whisper inwardly to yourself the word,

Feeling the energy,

Calm.

And as you breathe out,

Ease.

Breathing in,

Calm.

And just following the natural rhythm of the breath,

One inhale and one exhale at a time.

Infusing with it this invitation of restfulness.

Not forcing it,

Just allowing it to become calm and easy on its own.

And if and when you get distracted by a thought or an itch or an ache,

Just gently coming back to the breath.

And beginning again with the next cycle of breath.

Whispering,

Calm,

Ease.

And just noticing where your attention is now.

If it's drifted,

Just gently returning to the felt experience of the breath moving through the body,

To the diaphragm,

To the belly,

The chest and shoulders and the nose.

And just whispering if it feels helpful.

Calm.

Ease.

And as your mind begins to settle,

And if it does begin to settle,

You can start to deepen your connection to the breath.

Really with a gentle attentiveness,

Being with each momentary movement.

With calm.

With ease.

Maybe you've drifted away from the breath and that's okay.

Congratulations,

You're a human being.

Happens to the best of us.

Just going to gently come back to the next breath.

To start fresh.

And now I invite you to open the lens of your attention up to the whole body again.

So expanding to notice the head and neck and arms and torso,

The upper and lower legs and feet.

And just checking in.

Perhaps asking,

Reflecting inwardly,

What's here that may need my attention?

And then allowing your attention,

If it's accessible to you,

To drift to whatever sensations are calling your intuition.

So if you're not really sure where to go,

If nothing calls you very clearly,

You can check in to the chest and shoulders and neck.

We carry a lot of tension in these areas.

Maybe you have an ache that needs a little bit of loving attention.

We tend to go about our days with a lot being carried in our bodies just below the surface of our awareness.

Sometimes we can sense something's here,

Something's off,

Something's icky,

Something's not feeling so good.

But because we're not really giving it the space and the attention it needs to fully be and process and move,

It just kind of stays stuck there.

So if you're like me,

After a day of doing things and stressors,

You come into a space and you pause and you start to pay attention to what's really here,

You notice that there's some shit here.

And it just wants a little bit of love.

If so,

Drawing your attention to whatever sensations call to you.

And if nothing calls your attention,

You can just stay with the body in general.

And just breathing into the sensations or allowing the breath to draw itself into the sensations with the same gentle,

Curious,

Receptive awareness that you were following the breath with.

So there's no intention to change or force or resist,

Though that may be present initially.

You're just going to notice what's here.

Oh,

There's some tension in my chest.

And the million dollar question,

Can I be with this?

And if the answer is yes,

Just gently resting your attention with whatever sensations are here.

And if the answer is ever no and that feels like it's too much for you,

You can come back to the breath.

You can shift your attention down to a neutral spot in the body,

Such as your feet.

You can open your eyes.

But if the sensations are manageable to be with,

I invite you to rest with them,

To allow them.

Just getting to know what's here.

Can I be with this?

Or what would it feel like if I didn't try to change this,

If I didn't try to push it away?

If I didn't react or resist to it?

And maybe noticing a shift in the sensations that are present here.

Maybe a bit of a dissolution or maybe a movement to a different part of the body,

In which case you can absolutely follow your gut to a different part,

Your somatic experience.

Or maybe it stays static,

It's staying the same,

And that's okay,

Too.

Can I be with this?

You can play with creating a little bit more spaciousness.

If you want to expand your attention a bit beyond the borders of the sensations,

To create a little bit of space around it,

That can be supportive.

Or maybe you want to zoom in.

You can play with it.

Just checking in,

Getting to know what's here,

And really just welcoming it.

This is the welcoming all of you.

This is the welcoming,

That stress,

That anxiety,

That grief,

That pain and discomfort that's been begging for our attention as we go about our busy,

Highly responsible,

Overwhelming 24 hours.

24-7 information overload lives.

We get a moment to sit and really give our bodies and our hearts and our minds the attention that they crave.

So this gift that you're giving yourself,

Even if it's a bit uncomfortable in this moment,

Just getting to know how capable you are of being with,

Capable of being with,

Even discomfort.

And if the sensations shift,

They move,

You're more than welcome to follow them.

If they fall away altogether,

You can back up into the body and just wait or return to the breath.

And now letting go of whatever you've been focusing with.

Coming back to the breath for a few moments.

Just noticing the in-breath.

Noticing the out-breath.

If you want to whisper calm and ease,

You're welcome to,

Or you can just notice the sensations themselves.

Opening up to the whole body again.

From toes to head.

And just checking in,

Checking in with the tone of your energy.

Noticing if there are any shifts in your nervous system,

In your body,

In your mind.

From your practice.

Just taking note.

Cherishing a new reference,

A reverence,

Excuse me,

A reference point for what's possible in your system.

And we slow down and turn towards.

As if internally going,

In fact,

To close our practice,

I'm going to invite you to take a big deep breath in through the nose and exhale with an ah,

Just like that.

And as you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

Just take your jolly time coming back into the space.

Move a little bit if you need to.

Drink some water.

Have some fun.