So I'm going to invite you to take a comfortable seat wherever you will find yourself to be most comfortable.
Take your time to settle in.
I'd like you to find a posture that feels stable,
Grounded,
But also where you have your spine erect.
So you're sitting up straight but with a sense of relaxation.
So whenever you're ready you can settle down,
Lower your eyelids and come into stillness.
And for a moment just find yourself arriving here,
Meaning that you can leave behind anything else that has happened so far today and simply concentrating on being present.
And I'd like you to start paying attention to your sit bones,
Your buttocks,
Resting on the cushion or the chair beneath you and allowing your spine to elongate and straighten.
You can invite the shoulders to drop down the back and at the same times it helps you broaden across the chest and then if you can very slightly tucking in your chin.
And so from this stable posture we are going to be bringing awareness to the various touch points of the body.
What that means is that you're going to be noticing all of the places where your body is making contact with the chair or the cushion or the floor underneath you,
Bringing awareness to your feet and notice any sensation.
It could be temperature,
Warmth or coolness,
Pressure,
Tightness,
Tingling.
So exploring,
Placing your awareness in your feet.
What can you notice?
If your mind is starting to wander that's completely okay.
Practicing mindfulness of the body means that we need to let our mind do what it does and when we notice that it's gone away,
Gently we bring it back to the exploration of our moment-to-moment experience.
Now moving our attention to the sit bones,
Noticing where the sit bones are,
Resting on the chair,
A mat,
A cushion underneath you.
Can you bring your attention to any sensations there?
What can you feel?
What is present?
Now moving your attention to your hands,
I'd like you to explore this.
How do I know that I have hands without seeing them and without thinking about them?
We're talking about the realm of pure sensation.
How do I know that I have hands without seeing them,
Without thinking about them,
Just sensing into them?
As your attention rests in the hands,
What can you notice?
Can you feel any sense of pulsing,
Tingling,
Temperature?
Maybe it's touch,
The contact with a fabric of your clothes,
Your thighs,
Your armchair.
So there's this immediate experience of sensation.
We can even call it a river of sensation because they are moving moment to moment.
You'll notice that the sensations are subtle,
They come and go and that's where we learn to rest our attention when we practice mindfulness of the body.
So right now we are resting our attention in this river of sensation that we can call a hand.
That's where we are.
Now you may become aware of your body breathing and as we practiced yesterday,
Resting your attention with the breath wherever you find it to be the clearest.
So it could be at the belly with the nice gentle rise and fall of the abdomen or maybe you may feel more aware of the breath around the chest area or it could be at the nose right at the tip of the nostrils.
So bringing this awareness of the immediate experience of the breath of the body breathing,
Can you bring your focus and keep it on where your breath is the clearest.
If you notice that your attention has been drawn away from the breath,
That a thought or several thoughts have come and disturbed your focus,
It's completely normal.
So with gentleness we notice that the thinking mind has come up and tried to grab our attention but we let go of the passing thoughts and we come back to the immediate experience here and now breath and body.
Now as we close this meditation maybe you want to take a moment to send some appreciation to yourself for taking the time out of your day to cultivate this mindfulness meditation practice.
I will end with a quote by Eckhart Tolle,
Wherever you are be there totally.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Om Shanti.
Namaste.
