We'll begin this meditation by taking some time to find a comfortable seated position.
Letting your feet rest flat on the floor.
Let your hands rest in an easeful and effortless way,
Maybe resting them in your lap or letting your palms rest against your thighs.
Let your spine be nice and long and bring in a sense of openness to the chest.
You may close your eyes or if it feels better for you,
You can just let your gaze soften on a point out in front of you.
We'll begin by tuning into the sounds in our environment.
So first letting your awareness rest on the sounds outside of the space that you're currently in,
Seeing just how far you can detect sound and trying not to label the sound or create any stories or mental chatter about the sound,
But just noticing it as vibration,
Sound waves.
Then you can let your attention float into sounds closer to you,
Maybe sounds inside the room,
Letting your awareness move from one sound to the other and just letting all of the sounds that are here right now be here,
Accepting all of it as part of the moment.
Then you can let the sounds fade into the background and let your attention turn inwardly,
Just taking a moment to notice what the internal landscape looks like.
Notice if your mind feels busy,
If the body feels tense,
And for now just allowing it to be just as it is.
Sometimes we can create extra tension in the body when we resist or contract around the tension that we might already be feeling.
And so when we bring this spaciousness to what we're experiencing,
We start to cultivate a sense of acceptance and in that acceptance,
Whatever we are experiencing has the space to just be and that alone can help it soften.
And so softening your forehead,
Your brow,
The space between your brow and softening the space around your eyes and your temples,
And you might unhinge your jaw and move it back and forth,
Relaxing the jaw and letting the tongue relax all the way down to its root.
Let your shoulders fall away from the neck.
Let your hands be soft,
Bringing in a sense of spaciousness into the hands,
Letting them rest in an easeful and effortless way.
And with your next inhale,
Breathe in a sense of relaxation into your belly.
And again,
Letting the inhale invite in more space and softness into the abdomen.
And now,
Tuning into the feeling of the pressure of your sit bones against the seat,
Just feeling held and supported,
Letting your body relax just a little bit more into your seat.
And then feel into the weight and the volume of your legs,
Moving all the way down into your feet and sensing the temperature in your feet,
Feeling any sensations,
Maybe tingling,
Or the feeling of the pressure of your feet against the floor.
Now you can let your awareness fill the entire body,
Just tuning into this field of sensations that is the body.
And inviting a sense of spaciousness into the body from head to toe,
Noticing if there's anywhere that might be able to relax just a little bit more.
And then I invite you to bring your awareness to the breath.
And you can do this by just noticing where it feels easiest for you to detect the breath.
So since we've practiced bringing our awareness to the body,
It might feel easiest right now to rest your awareness with the rise and fall of your belly,
Rest your awareness with the rise and fall of your belly,
Or the rise and fall of your chest as the lungs inflate and deflate.
Or maybe for you,
You can most easily sense the breath as it passes in and out of the nose,
Maybe noticing how the air tends to be cooler on the inhale and warmer on the exhale.
Wherever you feel it most easily,
Just let yourself rest here.
Let your awareness rest with the breath.
And if the mind wanders,
As it does,
This is very normal.
You just notice that your attention has wandered and followed a thought.
And then just gently bring your attention back to the breath.
It might help to imagine that the breath is like a deer in the woods,
Imagine that the breath is like a deer friend that you're having dinner with.
And in the restaurant,
There's a lot of chatter around you.
It's loud,
It's busy,
But you really care about your friend and you really want to hear what your friend has to say.
And so you lean in closer and you really focus your attention on your friend so that all the distraction around you fades into the background.
So just imagine yourself being with the breath in the same way.
When the mind wanders,
You just notice that it's wandered and gently bring your attention back.
If the mind feels really busy,
You just notice that and then just do your best to be here with the breath.
