Hello,
My name is Celia Roberts and I'm from the Biomedical Institute of Yoga and Meditation.
And today we're looking at happiness and its causes or contentment.
What we really see is those people who focus their attention completely in the moment experience greater satisfaction with life.
So the question is what makes you happy?
What the evidence suggests is if we place our attention to the moment,
Even if we deem this moment as unpleasant or uncomfortable,
Then we will have deeper satisfaction if we focus on positive thoughts that take us out of the moment.
Our minds are wandering 45 to 47 percent of the time.
And so our job is to keep training the mind to bring it back to the moment to develop that deeper state of contentment and happiness.
So we'll begin.
Place your mind attentively in your breath and really notice each in-breath and out-breath.
Now ideally the breath is soft,
Subtle,
Gentle.
If you can focus on the movement of your abdomen as you develop this attention and this close attention to detail of breath,
This will be helpful to your practice.
And then we'll move our attention around the body.
So we want to give attention to parts of the body that perhaps we haven't experienced before.
So bring your attention to the hands and notice three things about the hands that are a new experience for you in this moment.
Bring your attention now to the mouth and have three new experiences about the mouth,
Just seeing different sensations,
Different parts of the tongue,
The amount of saliva in the mouth,
The roof of the mouth,
The gums,
The temperature,
Whatever it might be.
Just observing three new sensations,
Points of awareness.
Move your awareness now to the tip of the nostrils and notice the breath moving past the small,
Fine hair called the cilia in the nostrils.
And notice the temperature of the breath,
The quality of the breath,
Three new things about this area of the body,
The tip of the nostrils and the breath that you haven't noticed before.
Lovely.
Let's ground down into the belly and observe the belly breath.
This time feel into the feet and observe three different and new and exciting sensations about the feet.
And so remember the excitement and the glitter and the magic happens when our mind is fully attentive to the moment.
So we find our contentment there.
Observing the feet,
The skin of the foot,
Temperature,
Sensation.
Okay a more finite instruction.
See if you can notice the way the breath moves down the trachea,
The windpipe.
And just observe the temperature of the breath,
The trachea itself and if you can feel the breath moving from the nostrils down into the lungs via the windpipe.
Just noticing three different sensations there that are interesting and different to you in this moment.
Okay now bring your attention completely into the spine and back.
And as you do that just start to notice three different sensations about your back that you've never experienced before.
Be really observant,
Really attentive.
Then placing all of your attention completely in your whole body and see if you can link the movement of the breath to the body itself.
So noticing the whole body expand with the breath as the spine lifts and the whole body contracting with the breath as the spine gently reduces in its size.
So this is because of the movement of the muscles as we breathe,
The breathing apparatus muscles.
But from a more energetic perspective we believe in the expansion of prana on the in-breath and the contraction on the out-breath.
The expansion of the energy field,
The increase in heart rate on the in-breath,
The exhalation brings a contraction of the energy field and a reduction in heart rate on the out-breath.
So please observe these subtle sensations if these are triggering for you.
Then bring your attention back to the toes and the feet,
The hands,
Really ground into those areas of the body.
But otherwise focus on the breath and notice with deep attention just those simple things.
So I wish you all the happiness in the world and I hope that it comes from the simple things,
The attention to what's at hand.
Even if the task is not something that you enjoy doing,
Make sure you put your attention into it.
This will develop psychological states of flow and that deep attention allows us to be content and satisfied with what is.
So remember to retrain the wandering mind at least 47% of the time the mind is wandering leaving us open to states of vulnerable,
Anxiety,
Depression,
Rumination.
And so our best protection against these mental health disorders and for our energy field,
Our aura,
If you believe in such,
Or our conservation of energy is to place our attention in the body,
The breath and the moment at hand.
And in doing this I wish you all the very best.
May you be happy,
May you be healthy,
May you be filled with deep compassion and may you be at peace,
Attentive to the moment here and now.
