Taking a moment now to settle into the space around you,
Finding a comfortable position for the coming meditation,
And as we become still,
Welcoming your body and mind into the present moment.
Releasing that stillness for just a moment,
On your next inhale,
Float your arms up overhead to touch lightly.
As you exhale,
Slowly draw them down to the heart center.
Bowing chin to chest,
We set an intention for our practice.
This intention being that to love is first of all to accept ourselves as we are.
You are enough.
Awareness to the breath.
Begin to slow down your breath even further.
Consciously drawing out and lengthening your inhales and exhales through the nose.
The nose allows us much greater control over the rate of our breath.
It is even said that there is a direct connection between the rate of your breath and your longevity.
For the next few moments,
Focus completely on this slow breath,
Aiming over time to utilize the full capacity of your lungs,
Filling up from the very bottom lobes all the way up into the collarbones,
And reverse.
Return your breath to its natural rhythm.
Allow the flow of it to become natural and slowly fade into the background of your awareness,
Where it will reside for the rest of our practice,
An ever-constant anchor to the present.
The practice moving now more internally,
Into the mind.
Picture yourself seated on a smooth and flat rock in the center of a completely still lake.
The sun shines down from overhead,
Basking you in a warm and comfortable light.
All around you,
The water looks like glass,
Reflecting the near-wooded shoreline and light blue clear sky overhead.
It's an incredible sight.
You've never experienced stillness like this before.
It's almost as if this world is frozen in one beautiful moment.
You come to realize that the wind in this world is much like the thoughts or fluctuations of the mind.
Its presence would disturb the setting that reflects around you.
This is the aim of meditation,
To find the serene stillness within the mind through single-pointed concentration.
When our thoughts are turbulence and have no focused direction,
Our reflection cannot be seen in the water,
For the wind is too violent.
When we focus our thoughts over and over again in one direction,
Slowly the wind dies,
The water stills,
And our reflection is staring back at us,
A serene image of stillness.
It does not need to be any more complicated than that.
We find our anchor and continually refocus on it every time thoughts lead us astray.
This is meditation.
So now find your anchor,
Whether the breath,
A mantra,
An intention,
A dream,
Or an image.
Make it your focus for the next little while.
Know that I will lead you back when it is time to move on.
Begin to release the practice.
Allow your anchor to slowly fade out of your awareness.
Dismiss any thoughts or judgment about how your meditation just went.
Shift into thanking yourself for taking the time to spend looking inward.
Returning to the intention from the beginning.
This intention being that to love is first of all to accept ourselves as we are.
You are enough.
Until next time,
And with love,
Namaste.
