We'll begin this meditation in a seated posture.
So finding a nice long spine,
Letting there be a sense of softness but dignity to your posture.
And you might let your hands rest in your lap with your palms facing up or maybe with your palms facing down against your thighs.
Just taking a moment to find a posture that feels comfortable for you.
And then when you feel ready,
You might close your eyes or just let your eyes rest on a point out in front of you,
Letting the periphery of your vision blur.
And take a moment now to scan through your body,
Just noticing if there's areas of tension and see if you can just allow it to be here.
Oftentimes we want to quickly change what we notice,
Especially when it's uncomfortable or we feel like it should be a different way.
So just see if you can create space for whatever is here to be here.
You might notice the quality of your breath in this moment.
Does the breath feel deep and full?
Or does it feel short,
Maybe a little constricted in the chest?
And now see if there's any tension in the body that feels ready to let go.
So again,
Not resisting or forcing any particular way of feeling,
But rather inviting a sense of softness,
A sense of relaxing and letting go,
Maybe in the forehead,
The jaw,
The shoulders,
Relaxing down into the hands and all the way down the legs and to the feet.
And now invite in a deep breath.
And on the exhale,
Letting yourself relax just a little bit more,
Letting go.
And then just be here with your breath for a moment,
Noticing the sensations of the inflow and then the outflow of the breath,
Maybe sensing into where you can feel it most easily in the body,
Maybe in the rise and fall of the belly or the chest,
Maybe in the tingling sensations as it passes through your nose or along your throat.
And with each breath,
Just becoming a little bit more grounded.
And as you sit here,
Let an image form in your imagination of a mountain,
The most magnificent or beautiful mountain that you know or have seen or can imagine.
And just letting it gradually come into greater focus.
And even if it doesn't come as a visual image,
Just allowing the sense of this mountain and feeling its overall shape,
Its lofty peak or peaks high in the sky,
The large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust.
And just notice how massive it is,
How solid,
How unmoving,
How beautiful.
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top and trees reaching down to the base.
Or maybe there's more rugged granite sides.
And there may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.
Maybe there's one peak or a series of peaks.
Just continue observing this mountain and letting it come into greater and greater focus.
And when you feel ready,
And when you feel ready,
See if you can bring the mountain into your own body as you sit here.
So imagining that your head becomes the peak,
Your shoulders and arms become the sides of the mountain,
Your buttocks and legs become the solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair.
And maybe you experience in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.
And with each breath,
As you continue sitting here,
Just imagining yourself as this mountain completely still.
And as you sit here,
You might feel a sense of uplift and as you sit here,
You might become aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The light and shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment.
And the surface is full of life and activity with streams and melting snow,
Waterfalls,
Plants,
Wildlife.
And you might visualize how night follows day and day follows night.
And during all of it,
The mountain rests still.
And there's the bright,
Warming sun followed by the cool night sky.
And the sky is filled with stars at night.
Maybe you imagine the soft glow of the moon behind this mountain,
Your mountain.
In summer,
There's no snow on the mountain except maybe for a few peaks.
And in the fall,
The mountain is covered with brilliant fall colors of oranges and reds.
And in winter,
Your mountain is covered with a blanket of snow and ice.
And just notice that in all of these changing seasons,
In the stillness and the activity,
In the daytime,
In the evening,
This mountain always stays rooted.
Through it all,
The mountain continues to sit unmoved by the weather or what happens on its surface.
And in the same way,
We go through our own seasons of life,
Times of greater stillness,
Times of more activity,
Times that feel more joyful,
Times that feel more difficult or dark.
Sometimes we go through sunnier periods or maybe periods that are more stormy.
But through all of it,
We can access the sense of stillness within us,
This own inner sense of a mountain.
And so take these next couple minutes to continue to embody this mountain,
Tuning in to the qualities of grounding,
Of integrity,
Of dignity,
And just sitting here with your breath despite all the changes happening at all times in life.
