And when you're ready,
Bring your attention to your body.
Where is your attention drawn?
Let it be spontaneous,
Let your body choose.
And label that location,
What's the name of it?
Say that inside your head or out loud,
Whichever feels better to you.
And as you do,
Fully,
Deeply,
Richly make contact with that body sensation.
Feel it.
Absorb your attention into it.
Open up to it.
Allow it to be.
Now release.
Where does your attention want to go in the body now?
Anywhere is fine,
Same spot,
Different spot.
Pleasant sensation,
Unpleasant,
It's all good.
And how about now?
Let your attention find a location,
Label it,
Deeply feel.
Keeping a steady cadence,
Every three or four seconds,
Release your hold.
Let your attention wander,
Find a spot,
Label,
Then observe closely and precisely,
Explore.
Let your presence and your awareness soak into each body sensation.
With each body sensation,
As you feel it,
Giving yourself completely over to it as best you can.
Let it fill your entire awareness.
Letting go of all else but that body sensation.
Whatever you're feeling in your body at this moment,
Is the perfect,
Correct,
And appropriate thing for you to be feeling exactly as it is.
This is an opportunity for you to fully and completely be yourself.
Being yourself even more than you usually do.
As long as you don't get up,
You can feel whatever you would like right at this moment.
The most strong emotion ever if you want.
Forbidden body feelings are totally fine.
Welcoming it all.
If you notice that thoughts are distracting you,
Perfectly normal,
Perfectly fine.
But notice where in your body do you feel those thoughts?
Many times tension in the body drives compulsive thinking.
Compulsive thinking can create body sensations of tension,
Contraction,
Pressure,
Agitation.
We're aiming for a continuity of contact with the feeling of the body.
So verbal thoughts arise for you,
Or visual thoughts.
Trying not to let them pull us into mental worlds of there and then.
Letting your body be an anchor in the here and now.
Do you feel any sort of strong emotion today?
Whether it's pleasant or unpleasant,
Seemingly created by the meditation or something you were feeling earlier.
Big or small.
Strong or subtle.
See if you can feel that emotion in the body.
Where in your body do you feel it?
All emotions have a somatic bodily aspect to them.
You might notice that a thought or an emotion or a sound changes how your body feels.
Your awareness of your body might vanish for a second and you're pulled into the distraction.
Maybe a sound or a thought triggers your body.
It's all good.
We're just noticing.
As always,
Mindfulness meditation happens in the current moment.
What are you feeling at this exact moment?
When we meditate,
We continuously return to the eternal now.
All of life happens right now.
And right now.
And right now.
When we deeply feel our body in the present moment,
There is an aliveness and a magic to it.
As always,
When we practice mindfulness,
We want to bring a sense of friendliness for meditation.
So with each body sensation as you feel it,
Bring a sense of acceptance,
Spaciousness,
Patience,
Respect,
Treating our body with respect.
One of my teachers used to say,
Our job as meditators is to tolerate the intolerability of being human.
So how much of how your body feels can you not only tolerate,
But welcome?
Perhaps even with patience,
Feel some love for,
Even when it gets difficult.
We want that clarity aspect of mindfulness,
Where we notice more of the details of each body sensation.
Experience more of the subtle nuance,
Sensitize our awareness.
Things become more vivid and awake,
Alive,
When we think in deeper each body sensation as we feel it.
When we meditate on the body,
We want to fully inhabit each physical sensation as it occurs.
We want to feel fully and completely,
With nothing left over,
No residue remaining.
Like a battery that runs its charge off until it's empty,
We want to feel each sensation all the way to the bottom,
So it's complete and done with.
We want to feel in such a way that the energy has moved through us,
That it's not stuck anymore.
Sometimes something that happened a week ago is still lingering in our body,
Dysregulating us.
Here's your chance just to be complete and fully done.
As always,
The three most important words in mindfulness practice are,
Just begin again.
If your mind wandered and you got lost in thought,
No need to analyze,
Just start again.
If you fell asleep,
No need for commentary or internal dialogue,
Just start again.
If you find yourself doubting and getting negative,
No need to make it complicated,
Just simply start again.
What's your next body sensation?
Again and again and again,
We lose the meditation,
And we simply start it again.
Anytime you're pulled into really strong thoughts,
Emotions,
Distractions,
If you can have dual awareness,
If you can't let that other content just drop into the background,
Try to remain grounded in how your body feels,
Even as you're distracted.
Don't lose the body completely.
Deeply entering the primordial world of pure feeling and being,
Feeling your body in a raw,
Alive,
Fresh,
And direct way.
Body not as a concept,
Body as an experience.
Taking one last intentionally deep breath,
Breathe in and then release.
Your eyes are closed,
Slowly opening them,
And great job,
Everyone.
