Welcome to this mindful awareness of breath meditation.
I'll invite you to choose a posture that allows you to be comfortable and to pay attention.
We're going to practice falling awake.
So,
I'll invite you to align your back,
Straight back,
With your head rising up towards the sky,
Letting your shoulders come down from your ears,
Having your shoulders over your hips,
And letting your hands rest comfortably wherever that is for you.
Making sure that feet and ankles are uncrossed and your feet are in touch with the ground beneath you,
They're in contact.
And then allowing your eyes to gently close if you feel safe and comfortable,
Or leave them open.
You can open and close your eyes whenever you'd like throughout the meditation as you feel safe and comfortable to do so.
So,
Bringing attention to the breath now,
Just finding it in your body.
And on your next out breath,
I'll invite you to take a full exhalation all the way out.
Then when you're ready,
Taking a breath in through the nose,
Gently and comfortably filling the belly,
And then letting the chest fill,
And then letting the breath go.
And then just allowing the breath to come back to a natural cadence and rhythm.
Your body knows how to breathe,
So just let it go on its own rate and rhythm.
And we're going to take a few minutes to pay attention to the body.
And we're going to take the next few moments to just tune in with the body,
Check in with the body,
With mindful awareness.
So,
I'll invite you to bring your attention to the top of your head,
Noticing your hair perhaps,
Your scalp,
The position of your head on your neck where it's balanced,
And then moving your attention over the top of the skull to the forehead and the eyebrows.
Our purpose is to pay attention,
To be objective observers of what's present.
So if you notice that there's anything that you don't need,
Perhaps there's some tightness or holding or discomfort,
As you notice it,
You might invite it to just soften or loosen,
To rest on an out breath.
So breathing in awareness of the rest of the face now,
The nose,
The cheeks,
The jaw,
The mouth.
Breathing away anything that doesn't seem necessary at this moment.
And as you invite it to leave,
It may or may not.
Just giving it the option to.
Paying attention now to the throat and the neck,
To the shoulders,
Noticing if they're the same or one side is different from the other.
Allowing your attention to move down your arms,
All the way down to the hands and the fingers and thumbs.
And then bringing your attention back up through the arms and coming to rest in the upper part of the torso.
So noticing how the breath moves in the chest,
Perhaps noticing how it elevates and expands as you breathe in,
And how it contracts and falls as you breathe out.
Moving attention now down into the lower part of the torso,
To the low back,
The pelvis,
The belly,
Noticing what's there for you right now.
And then bringing attention to the buttocks,
To your seat,
On the chair.
And really take a moment to notice what it feels like to be sitting.
Feel the contact with the chair,
The cushion,
Whatever it is that's beneath you,
Feeling how soft or firm it is,
Noticing the edges of it,
Really feeling what sitting feels like.
And moving your attention from the hips through to the knees,
Noticing your thighs,
Then the knees and the lower legs,
And then the ankles and the feet.
Pausing at the feet for a moment to really feel your contact points there.
So feeling what the surface beneath your feet feels like.
Is it soft or firm,
Warm or cool?
Noticing what you're wearing on your feet,
So really paying attention to your feet.
And just knowing that at any time during this meditation,
You feel like you get lost,
You can come back to the sensation of your feet on the ground or your seat on the chair and just get reconnected to your body in this present moment.
We're going to take a few moments now to practice stabilizing our mind by paying attention to our breath.
So I'll invite you to just take a moment and notice where is it in your body that you are most vividly aware of breathing,
Where you're most aware of the movement of your breath or the flow of air.
And that might be a different place each day,
So just take a moment to notice.
Is it at the nostrils where you might feel the air moving?
Is it in the throat?
Or maybe it's the movement of the chest with each breath or the rise and fall of the belly.
Choosing one of these places to hold your attention as best you can as we follow the breath.
And our job is just to observe the breath,
Letting our attention ride the entire length of an in-breath and the entire duration of an out-breath.
Just observing.
No need to change the breath or alter it.
Just see if you can pay attention to it.
Now you might notice that your mind has a mind of its own and it takes off.
No problem.
The mind does have a mind of its own,
And our job is just to simply guide it back to paying attention to the breath.
So when you notice your attention has wandered,
Just gently come back.
Find that in-breath.
Notice as much detail of that in-breath as you can.
And then do the same for the out-breath,
Just focusing as much detail as you can about it.
Now sometimes it can be helpful to give your mind a job to do while you're doing this exercise,
While you're practicing paying attention.
So you might invite the mind to count the breath.
One as you breathe in,
And two as you breathe out.
One and two.
One and two.
If you prefer words instead of numbers,
Feel free to describe what you're doing.
I notice I'm breathing in.
I notice I'm breathing out.
I'm breathing in.
I'm breathing out.
Just repeating those phrases to help you hold your attention on the breath.
Our minds are conditioned to be entertained and to be busy,
So it's normal for the mind to wander.
Just gently bring it back.
We're trying to develop the ability to be present at a level deeper than what's going on in the surface of our minds.
So notice that the mind wanders,
And then just come on back.
Find the breath.
Now you may notice a sense of relaxation,
Or you may not,
And it doesn't matter.
This is not a relaxation exercise.
It's a bonus if it happens,
But really what we're doing is we're practicing paying attention,
Being aware of our present moment.
So following that breath as best you can,
And gently coming back to it every time your attention wanders away.
I'll invite you to deepen your breath now,
And on your next out breath,
Go ahead and breathe all the way out.
When you're ready,
Take a big breath in,
Gently filling the belly,
Then letting the chest fill and expand.
Whenever you're ready,
Exhaling one more time,
All the way out,
Moving fingers and toes,
Opening your eyes when you're ready,
And coming back to the space that you're in.
Thank you for your practice today.
