Hi,
It's Julie Potichur for the Balanced Mind Meditation Center.
Let's find our comfortable meditation posture,
Which is upright in a kind of dignified posture where your sit bones are really noticeably resting and your spine is erect but not rigid.
And then let's take three huge breaths in for four and out for six together with a sigh on the exhale.
You can close down your eyelids now if you're comfortable doing that.
We're breathing in for four and out for six.
Give yourself a wiggle if you need to on your sit bones so that you can really feel yourself rooted.
And then let's close our eyes for a gentle downward gaze if that makes you feel safer.
And let's take three luxurious breaths longer on the out on the out breath on the exhale.
So in for four and out for six.
Big sigh.
Okay,
Letting go.
Relaxing your eyes and your eyebrows.
Releasing your jaws.
Letting the root of your tongue relax.
Giving your jaw a little wiggle right left.
And then when you close your lips,
Allow your teeth to remain parted.
Imagining that slight smile to the outside corners of your lips.
And then dropping that smile down to your throat,
Relaxing,
Releasing,
Softening.
Letting your shoulder blades move down your back,
Keeping your chest nice and open.
Releasing your abs.
Relaxing your hips into what is clearly supporting you and feeling that support.
Letting your thighs and your knees release your calves,
Your ankles and your feet.
And then allowing relaxation to flow from both your shoulders down your arms to your fingertips.
Relaxing,
Releasing.
And taking a few moments to focus on your hands,
Seeing how they feel whether they're cool or warm,
Moist or dry,
Tingly or numb,
Light or heavy.
And then placing a hand or hands where you find it supportive and soothing,
Which might be on your heart or cradling your face or hugging your arms or holding your belly.
One of these places just to remind yourself of your care and love that you're giving to yourself right now during this time.
Feeling the warmth of your hands where you've placed them on your body.
And just gently riding your awareness on your breath.
Imagining your in-breath filling your body with a golden light.
And visualize this light filling up not only your torso but your extremities,
Your arms and your legs,
Your hands and your feet and your neck and your head.
You're just being filled with this golden healing light.
As if your skin is permeable and your body is breathing you with this golden healing light.
Nowhere to go and nothing to do right now as you sit and watch and feel this golden healing light.
Filling your body as you ride your easy breath.
If you'd like to and you don't need to but if you'd like to add a word to take in on this golden healing light something that you would love to savor.
Could be hope or healing or love or light,
Courage,
Strength.
And take that in on your in-breath right into your being.
And you're breathing in all this goodness and you're welcome to exhale some goodness out into the universe.
You might want to choose a word for your exhale to give to your fellow meditators and to the planet.
One for me,
One for you.
One for you.
Allowing your body to be a conduit for healing in and healing out.
With this lightness of being.
And if your mind wanders that's perfectly normal just coming back to lightness and breathing in and breathing out.
Compassion,
Love,
Hope,
Healing,
Whatever it is that you've chosen.
Coming back to the word and the breath and the light.
Returning home again.
Now releasing the words and sitting in open awareness meditation and just noticing what thoughts or feelings or emotions might arise if any do and just allowing them to blow on through like clouds on the big sky of your mind.
Body settled,
Mind settled.
Tranquil.
The days are starting to get longer and we're having more light.
Staying in your meditative state and just allowing the words of this poem Poppies by Mary Oliver to wash over you.
Poppies.
The poppies send up their orange flares swaying in the wind.
Their congregations are a levitation of bright dust of thin and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place in this world that doesn't sooner or later drown in the indigos of darkness.
But now for a while the roughage shines like a miracle as it floats above everything with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold black curved blade from hooking forward.
Of course loss is the great lesson.
But I also say this that light is an invitation to happiness and that happiness when it's done right is a kind of holiness palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields touched by their rough and spongy gold I am washed and washed in the river of earthly delight.
And what are you going to do?
What can you do about it deep blue night?
That's Poppies by Mary Oliver.
And now when you hear the sound of the chimes listening to the sound all the way through to the end wiggling your toes and your fingers and gently coming back into this space.
Giving your body a little stretch if it needs to move.
Thank you for listening.
It's Julie Potichur from the Balanced Mind Meditation Center.
