Welcome to this meditation on acceptance.
I invite you to come into the present moment and deeply accept exactly where you are right now.
I invite you to have no expectations during this 20-minute meditation practice.
So often we want things to be different than they actually are.
So often we fight our present moment experience and we exhaust ourselves trying to tweak things so that we can finally feel okay.
In this practice today we'll realize that whatever is going on can be okay.
So I'll invite you to take the seat of the witness and back up from your present moment experience and see if you can allow it to just be there today in this session together.
And let's drop into this practice together today by doing five rounds of deep breath together.
And what we can do is breathe in deeply through our nose and then have an audible exhale.
Maybe it's helpful to sit up a bit more straight as you're having these first breaths.
So the spine's straight,
The chin is tucked.
Breathe in through the nose.
Audible exhale.
And these feel so good.
Let's do two more together.
Inhale through the nose.
Audible exhale.
In this next one,
Let it be the deepest of your day so far.
Really let it out long.
And then just letting the breath return to normal.
This practice today is one of acceptance.
We're not going to fight any of our experience.
So if you have tension in your jaw,
Your shoulders,
Around your eyes,
That's just fine.
Just recognize and allow.
If there's a feeling of tension and knots perhaps in your throat,
Chest,
Or belly,
Just invite that to have tea with you as they say in Asia.
Instead of saying go away,
Say it's okay.
Come and have tea with me.
Our body wants to be heard.
Our body wants to be accepted and loved.
Perhaps there's a squeezing in the lower area of your body.
See if you can allow it to be there and maybe offer it the opportunity to relax a bit.
So relaxing the pelvic floor.
Perhaps there's an overall resistance to wanting to meditate right now and to be present because of aches and pains in different places in the body.
If you're like most folks,
You tend to go fast and try to do a lot.
Sometimes you can just feel this remaining tension in your body from just everyday life.
Let's spend some time together scanning the body and just accepting whatever we find along the way.
Noticing your toes,
Give them a little wiggle.
Notice your feet inside your socks if you're wearing socks or shoes.
Or if you're barefoot,
Noticing how it feels to have bare feet on the ground or under you in your seated position.
And we're just going on a little journey together of the body,
Recognizing your calves,
Your shins.
Not trying to change a thing.
What a relief.
Notice your knees,
If there's any discomfort there.
See if you can just be okay with it.
Sending it all your love and awareness and attention.
An open invite to be there.
Notice your bottom on your cushion or chair.
Allow gravity to let you be settled.
And as you're breathing in,
Breathing out,
I wonder if there's a part of this that you can tune into that feels settled and okay.
Maybe the sits bones.
It's like you're a mountain and you're deeply settled.
And perhaps there's parts of the base of your meditation posture that don't feel settled.
And aren't quite okay.
Those are welcome too.
So just say hello to those parts.
And maybe focus even more on what does feel settled and okay.
Moving up together to the belly.
And notice how it effortlessly rises and falls.
As we breathe in,
The belly just rises.
And as we're breathed out,
The belly just falls.
And this can be a pretty sweet place to stay for a while.
So I'll be nice and quiet for a few rounds of breath.
Just tune in to rising and falling.
And maybe even internally note if you like.
And then move into your back body.
Next I invite you to move into your back body,
Your lower back,
Upper back,
Shoulders.
And if you're like most people,
There may be some tension or tightness here.
In everyday life we just move continuously moving,
Trying to feel okay.
And in practice we try to stay still but in a loving,
Caring way.
And just recognize and accept whatever we find there,
If it's tight or if there's any aches or pains.
And with the deepest compassion you can muster for yourself for your own struggles and suffering.
And then move into that area with some love and compassion and acceptance.
Each breath is like soothing a crying child who you deeply love.
As we continue this journey we notice our upper chest,
The front side.
Notice the sides of the chest as well.
For a few rounds of breath I invite you to notice the 360 degree nature of your breath.
See if you can even bring a little smile to your face.
And notice how each breath feels like a balloon that's expanding in all directions.
And then releasing,
Contracting,
Expanding on the inhale,
Releasing,
Contracting on the exhale.
And just enjoy for a few rounds of breath on your own.
And I wonder if there's any thoughts of wanting this experience to be different.
Perhaps you're wanting a deeper breath.
Perhaps you're wanting to feel more settled.
Perhaps you're not wanting to feel agitated or jumpy or any discomfort.
Acknowledge that you have those preferences.
But then come back to the fact that this is your present moment experience.
So if you can muster a gentle smile,
A little sense of okayness,
That although I prefer this experience to be different,
I'm okay accepting it just as it is.
Simply breathing in,
Breathing out.
Pleasant sensations,
Unpleasant ones.
You're just okay with it all as best you can be.
Let me continue the journey up into our neck.
Perhaps there's tightness in the throat.
Perhaps there isn't.
Recognizing and allowing it to be just as it is.
Moving up to the jaw.
For most of our busy culture,
It's totally common to have a tight jaw.
I wonder if you even want to open your mouth a few times and just stretch out the jaw if it's tight.
Not because you need it to be different,
Just because you want to send it some ease and love.
I wonder if you can tune into the area around your eyes.
Totally normal to have some tension in the temples,
Around the eye sockets.
In a normal life,
You may want that tension to go away.
You may think it shouldn't be like this.
If only it would not be tense here,
Then I'd be happy.
And that's the trap.
The solution is to be okay with whatever is arising right now in this present moment.
With the deepest compassion and empathy for your suffering that you can muster.
So it's like your awareness is imbued with this deep compassion and self-love.
And then moving into the back of the head,
Top of the head.
Just noticing what it feels like to have skin wrapped around your skull.
Or perhaps hair on your head.
Or perhaps for some of us,
Absence of hair on our head.
Feeling right to the tip of the crown of the head.
And now what may be a beautiful experience is let's tune into the entire awareness of the body from head to toe.
All at once.
And in our everyday busyness,
We might miss this.
But notice the broad range of experience.
Of all the tingling in the skin.
All the temperatures that you may be feeling.
The places that make contact with the cushion or chair.
And the places on your skin that have no pressure on them.
And for a few rounds of breath,
Let's be in silence together.
Simply breathing in,
Breathing out.
Aware of it all.
And although we may have our preferences to feel different,
See if you can do your best to just find some equanimity or okayness with whatever you're noticing.
And if you're pulled away by thoughts,
Just let them fall into the background.
It's like the volume knob gets turned down.
And the volume knob gets turned up on present moment awareness.
Right here,
Right now.
As okay as you can be with it all.
And just let that little smile on your face.
And just a couple minutes left.
A couple minutes left in this session.
And you're doing a wonderful job.
Continuing to relax the jaw.
Let the tongue rest on the roof of the mouth.
The base of the tongue relax,
Settle down.
Relax your pelvic floor and your toes.
And for the last few moments of this practice,
Just allow the breath to be as natural as possible.
Continue to recognize everything that's going on.
Allow it to be there.
And nurture as much as possible.
So it's like your body and mind and sensations are like a crying child that you care greatly about.
Just be with your present moment experience as much as possible,
Imbued with that love and compassion.
Simply breathing in and breathing out naturally.
And in these last few moments,
I invite you to make an internal intention for yourself.
And sometimes we can be so mean to ourselves with our internal speech.
You should be better.
You should work harder.
You shouldn't do this.
You shouldn't do that.
But instead,
Let's say to ourselves in this last moment,
Something like,
I love you.
I care about you.
I promise to notice and do my best to be with all of the unpleasantness and pleasantness here in this present moment.
And to keep coming back with my practice to care for you and soothe you and love you as best as possible.
And we can bring that intention out to the whole world,
To all the beings who chase and struggle and suffer and think they should be different and that are harder than themselves.
May our practice somehow relieve them of their pain.
May all beings learn to just be with the simplicity of the present moment.
Let's all just give ourselves a break.
And then when you're ready,
If your eyes were closed,
You could gently start to open them.
And just head on into your day or your evening with great love and compassion for yourself.
Namaste.
