Expanded Awareness Meditation

Starting with the breath, you are guided to gradually expand your awareness noticing more and more experience. Towards the end, you are invited to open the eyes as you continue to open-heartedly embrace experience. All Adele meditations are unscripted.

Transcript

This meditation was recorded by MBSR teacher Adele Stewart,

Wununna,

July 2020.

So finding yourself a comfortable seated posture.

Finding that comfortable yet alert position.

Perhaps spending a few moments noticing the body and any little bits of tension that can be perhaps relaxed a little with a few breaths or not.

Beginning as we often do with noticing the breath.

The invitation in this meditation is to notice the the breath in a more open awareness way.

So rather than focusing in one area of the body,

Noticing the effect on the breath on the whole body.

Still very much focusing on the sensory aspects,

The felt sense of the breath.

No need to control or manipulate it.

But keeping the awareness a bit more expanded.

So noticing the effect of the breath on the whole body.

Nostrils,

Throat,

Chest,

Abdomen.

You may even notice subtle shifts in the lower body,

The sides,

Shoulders,

Maybe even the heads moving really subtly.

Noticing any tendency for the awareness to want to collapse in.

It can be really comfortable to to focus on a really tiny point of the breath.

But that's not what we're aiming to do today.

So if you notice that your awareness is collapsing,

Contracting as best you can,

Inviting it to open up again.

Oh And now continuing to notice the breath and expanding the awareness to notice any sensations present in the body.

So noticing the breath and noticing sensations in the body.

Perhaps there might be some really obvious sensations,

Perhaps uncomfortable ones.

So again,

As best you can,

Not collapsing into this,

But noticing it in the field of awareness of the whole body.

Seeing if it's possible to notice the whole body at once,

The whole body and the breath.

Noticing areas of tightness or looseness.

Heaviness or lightness.

Hardness or softness.

Movements,

Subtle ones like tingling or pulsation or vibration.

Or perhaps more obvious ones like flickering in the muscles or the eyelids or the tongue moving.

Noticing temperatures throughout the body.

But again,

Keeping that awareness expanded right to the periphery of the body.

Noticing breath and body.

And as you continue to be aware of your breath and sensations in the body,

Expanding further to notice sound.

Sounds within the body,

My voice,

Sounds in your environment.

Noticing any tendency to follow a sound and see if it's possible again to keep that field of awareness really expanded.

So you're noticing your breath and the body sensations and the sounds.

Notice any tendency for the awareness to collapse in.

No need to give yourself a hard time about this,

Just a soon as you're noticing,

Seeing how it is to expand that awareness.

Breath,

The sense of touch,

What you can feel within the body,

The sense of hearing.

And continuing to be aware of your breath and body sensations and sounds.

See if you can expand your awareness further to notice thought.

No need to get lost in a train of thought or examine the content of a thought.

Just having that awareness where the thoughts can float past,

Perhaps like clouds or if your mind's particularly busy today it might be more like a waterfall.

But can you have those clouds or that waterfall in that wider field of awareness,

Noticing the breath and body sensations and sounds and thoughts and adding in other mental states,

So any subtle mood states or emotions.

Just being aware of those as well.

Notice when you collapse in on any one aspect of experience,

As best you can opening again,

Expanding that field of awareness,

Being aware of breath,

Body,

Sound,

Thoughts,

Mood states and emotions.

And adding in the sense of smell and taste.

Again keeping that field of awareness wide open so that you're noticing all your experience as well as anything you might smell or taste.

Bringing in a sense of vision now.

So if your eyes are closed,

Starting off by noticing what you can see behind the closed eyelids,

But keeping awareness of all those other aspects of experience as well.

And very soon I'm going to invite you if it feels right today to gently open your eyes and remembering that vision is where a lot of our brain power goes,

So there's no need to really actively be aware of vision,

It's going to happen anyway.

So focusing more on continuing to notice body sensations,

Breath,

Sound,

Thoughts,

Emotions,

Tastes and smells and the sense of vision.

But if you are opening your eyes,

Just opening them very gently,

Not focusing on your device if it's in front of you,

But gently taking in your environment.

Noticing if there's any tendency to want to collapse into looking at one object and keeping that vision really soft and welcoming the wider environment.

So continuing to notice the breath,

The body,

Sounds,

Thoughts,

Mood states and emotions and adding in a sense of vision either from behind the closed eyelids or with the eyes open.

You can keep the head still or you can move it very gently to look around a bit and see without looking behind you if you can while looking roughly ahead see how far in the periphery you can notice.

But not forgetting to be aware of your breath,

Your body sensations,

Sounds,

Thoughts,

Emotions,

Tastes and smells.

Perhaps you can have an awareness of where the peripheral vision stops but you can still be aware of what's further back even though you can't see it.

Continuing to keep this wide open expanded awareness as best you can.

And if possible seeing if you can add a sense of really allowing any experience that's present right now.

Perhaps a sense of opening your heart to it,

Allowing it to be there.

Perhaps if this concepts difficult imagine a favorite pet or grandchild,

Some little being that just makes you smile and you feel warm towards and see if you can use those feelings towards your experience right now.

Which might be really easy if your experience is pleasant but for those of us who might have uncomfortable sensations or had a difficult day or week,

Have a real worry about something,

A sadness,

An irritation,

It's more difficult.

Just playing with how it is just welcome all experience as it is right now in this huge field of awareness.

And I'm going to ask you one of those unanswerable questions in a moment.

So without needing to go to thought just allowing this question to drop into the system and without trying just notice any subtle shift or reaction.

So the question is what is aware of all this?

What is aware of all this?

For the next few minutes the invitation is to as best we can stay in this expanded sense of awareness.

Noticing the breath,

The body,

Sounds,

Our reactions to the body or sounds.

Mental phenomenon,

Thoughts and emotions,

Tastes and smells and softly the sense of vision.

And for the next few minutes you may choose to stay sitting where you are.

You may even want to very slowly and mindfully stand up,

Walk very slowly or stretch the body very slowly.

Perhaps exploring with a soft gaze your environment.

Noticing how it is to keep this expanded sense of awareness.

As soon as you notice that your attention's collapsing in gently reminding yourself to expand and notice all experience and as best you can having that warm loving welcoming sense towards all experience pleasant and unpleasant.

And for those who may be finding this meditation very challenging,

Maybe having some frustration or disappointment,

Is it possible to welcome that in your experience?

Just welcoming whatever layer of your experience can be welcomed.

Same goes for self-critical thoughts.

You don't have to push them away.

They're just all part of the experience.

You you you you you and whether you're sitting down or standing perhaps noticing if the body would like a particular stretch.

Seeing if you can keep that wide open awareness and notice the sensations of the stretch along with everything else.

You you you again noticing as the awareness wanted to collapse in can you open it up again.

You you As we're coming towards the end of the meditation,

Perhaps noticing the effect that the expanded awareness meditation has had on the system.

No need to judge whatever you notice.

And perhaps in your daily life,

When you're waking up in the morning or going out in the garden,

Hanging the washing up,

You can experiment with expanding awareness.

It's welcoming as best you can,

All experience.