Hello friend.
I'm so glad you're here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
If we were in person,
You would see me just beaming with light and excitement to get to practice with you.
But even though I can't be in your physical presence,
I can feel your practice.
So thank you for that.
And for this practice today,
We're going to be exploring what it's like to nurture a sense of being calmed through intentional body and breath awareness.
We'll be using the acronym CALM,
Which is an adaptation,
A slight modification,
On a practice I've come across that uses the acronym CALM for a body scan.
I believe it was created by a teacher named Lisa Bayliss.
So I've just added two additional letters in my efforts to round out the experience.
So let's begin.
Let's start here by assuming a comfortable position for our body,
Either seated or lying down,
Being intentional with where our hands are resting,
With where our legs are resting,
And our head.
And if it feels all right,
Maybe allowing our eyes to close with intention or to soften our gaze.
And then perhaps allowing the next few breaths to be the place where our attention rests,
Taking a slow,
Gentle in-breath,
Noticing the air as it enters the body,
And then exhaling slowly,
Deliberately,
Allowing ourselves to really settle here,
Arriving here in this moment.
And now let's bring our attention to the area of our chest or the core of our body,
This center part of our body,
Where we can really sense the rising and falling sensations of the breath here.
So feeling the movement of the breath in this area,
The expansion and the release.
Feeling how the in-breath just naturally fills the core of our body,
And how each out-breath maybe releases tension or allows for greater softening.
So staying here for a few more breaths,
Simply observing sensations,
Breath by breath,
In the area of the chest or the core of the body.
Now let's move to our arms,
Shifting attention there,
Feeling sensations from our shoulders,
Down our upper arms,
Elbows,
Forearms,
Wrists,
And all the way into our wrists,
Hands,
Fingers.
And then sending the breath down and up the arms,
Noticing that breath energy there,
And maybe sensing that feeling of aliveness.
Our arms and our hands often have a lot of sensation,
A lot of vibration that we can attend to,
Delight in.
Now moving our awareness to the area of our mouth,
Observing the position of our jaw,
Lips,
Tongue,
And where it's resting in the mouth.
And sensing if there's any unnecessary tightness or clenching in this area,
And if possible,
Releasing it,
Be allowing the lower part of our jaw to drop a centimeter,
And for our lips to part slightly.
And with the next few in-breaths and out-breaths,
Just sense the breath filling this area,
Maybe particularly inside the mouth,
And softening it,
And then spreading it to include the whole area around the mouth.
And hanging out here for a few more moments,
A few more breaths.
And next,
Let's intentionally shift our attention to our ears,
Taking a few moments to begin receiving whatever is here to be heard.
Perhaps also noticing sensations happening within and maybe around the ears.
And with the next few cycles of breath,
Maybe we can sense the air flowing in and out of the ears,
As if we're breathing with these audible vibrations in complete harmony.
We may even be able to hear our own body breathing,
Or the sound of our breath as it leaves and enters the body,
Becoming one with all sounds.
And finally,
There's this invitation to delight in the body as a whole,
Discovering the body as a whole.
Our whole body breathing,
Noticing how the in-breath just naturally nourishes our entire body from the inside out.
And the out-breath,
Noticing how it organically relaxes and releases any tension from our body from the inside out.
And let's continue to feel the gentle rhythm of our breath here through awareness of our whole form,
Delighting in this sense of being calm,
Delighting in this discovery of our entire body in this moment,
And breathing with the natural rhythms of life,
Being one with what is,
Inner and outer,
Moment-by-moment,
And gently interrupting any patterns of thoughts that may be pasting over this body and breath awareness,
And returning to the practice of being calm.
Maybe checking in with the chest or the core of the body,
The arms,
The mouth,
The ears,
And delighting within the body as a whole,
Discovering the body as a whole.
And simply repeating this practice again and again and again as many times as needed so we can continually nurture and strengthen the essence of calmness,
This deep feeling of being calmed through awareness of the breath in the body.
And in a few moments,
I'll ring the bell,
And I'll just offer this invitation to continue resting in stillness for the whole duration of the bell ringing while attending to whatever's happening in the realm of the body in the breath.
And then upon the sound of the last bell ringing when it trails off,
You can begin to invite some very gentle movement to maybe the fingers and toes and delighting in those sensations.
Before we close this practice,
I'd like to invite maybe just a moment here of nurturing any wholesome states of mind that might have been kind of generated over these last few minutes.
So when we feel a greater sense of calmness,
There tends to be other wholesome mental states that follow,
Like gratitude,
Appreciation,
Ease,
Joy.
So I invite you to just take a moment to reflect if any of those qualities of mind are present.
They don't need to be glaringly present.
Maybe they're just like a faint sense of them.
And taking that with you to the next few moments,
Minutes,
Hours,
And the rest of your day.
And really maybe taking with you the sense of being calmed or that it's accessible.
Really,
It's available at any time.
So thank you so much,
Sweet one,
For your practice.
Hope to practice with you again soon.
Take care.
