Hi,
This is Alexis and this is your five senses meditation for mindful motherhood.
The five senses meditation is a practice for cultivating mindfulness and present moment awareness.
This is done by focusing on what you see,
Hear,
Feel,
Smell and taste.
This is a practical meditation technique and it can be done anywhere and at any time and it doesn't require any equipment or any experience.
It also doesn't require that you be separated from your baby.
I like to call it the countdown meditation or you can also call it the 5-4-3-2-1 meditation.
So to begin,
You're going to come into a comfortable position.
This can be seated in a rocking chair or on the couch.
If you have your baby with you,
You can hold your baby,
Interact with your child normally.
Let it be nothing different,
Nothing special,
Just an average moment.
If you are alone,
Know that you can lie down for this.
If you're feeling like you need to lay your head down and just close your eyes,
Take a little break,
This is a perfect opportunity to do that too.
However you've placed your body right now,
I trust that it's been positioned in a special way.
Take a soft and easy breath.
Inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth.
Let your breath be as easy and as gentle as it wants to be.
You can close your eyes or keep them slightly open with a soft gaze.
If you're with your baby,
Connect with your baby by looking into his or her eyes.
Relax your eyes and then feel a sense of relaxation move into your jaw and your cheeks.
Let there be a smile,
A soft smile.
Keep letting that sense of relaxation in the body move down into your shoulders as you let them soften too.
And now using your sense of touch,
I want you to feel into five things.
That's five things that you can sense with your body.
This might be the air on your skin,
The clothes on your body,
It might be the weight of your baby.
Let these things come to you naturally.
Try not to think too hard about it.
Just letting the mind be open and receptive and the body as relaxed as possible.
You are practicing what's called open awareness.
And in open awareness meditation practice,
The mind will just be allowed to wander,
To wander from one thing you can feel to the next thing you can feel.
If your attention gets pulled away by your baby or your child,
If your attention gets pulled away by your baby or something else,
You can call it distraction.
And then when it's possible,
You just bring your attention back to your body and just notice what you can feel.
Good.
And now you can let go of concentrating on what you can feel and shift your awareness now to your sense of hearing.
Let your sense of hearing widen and just tune into four things that you can hear.
Maybe the air conditioner is on and you can hear that soft hum of the motor running,
The air blowing.
Or maybe it's your baby or your child playing and you can hear them laughing or giggling.
Or maybe saying mama for the 100th time today.
Really good.
And now let that go and shift your awareness now to your sense of sight.
And tune into three things that you can see.
Maybe you play a little game with yourself and pick three things that are the color green.
And then letting go of that and moving on now to your sense of smell.
And just tuning into any aromas or scents that are available to you and seeing if you can pick out two.
Maybe it's the smell of your baby's lotion or dinner cooking.
Sometimes when we tune into our senses,
Nothing comes.
Like maybe there aren't any aromas available to you right now.
And so just noting to yourself that nothing is available,
I don't smell anything,
Is awareness.
It's still awareness and it can still be part of your practice.
And then finally,
Tuning into your sense of taste.
Is there one thing,
If anything at all,
That you can taste?
Really good.
And now let go of your meditation practice altogether.
Just coming back into the space you're in.
If your eyes are closed,
Let them open.
The space you're in,
If your eyes are closed,
Let them open up.
Take an easy gentle breath here.
Maybe this is your deepest and most conscious breath of today.
Just letting your awareness be there with it.
And noticing how when you exhale,
There can be an opportunity to relax the body.
Maybe it's in the shoulders,
The eyes and the cheeks again.
Or maybe it's somewhere else in the body.
We'll close with some words of wisdom.
When I am out of sorts or bewildered by puzzled pieces that don't quite fit together,
I can remember that the picture will materialize at the moment of expansion.
And in its own time.
Thank you so much for your practice today,
Mama.
You're doing an amazing job.
Namaste.
