Hi,
It's April 16th and today I want to share a meditation with you to help you tiptoe perhaps into santosha or contentment.
As usual,
I invite you to get really comfortable.
Lie down,
Sit,
Use the backrest,
Use a pillow,
Find a way that you can actually be truly comfortable.
Comfortable but still with a sense of alertness,
Awakeness,
So that you can listen in a relaxed and open way.
I'm going to borrow some techniques from a meditation teacher who I really admire,
Tara Brock.
Tara Brock likes to go through the chakras with this image of a smile.
So if this sounds corny to you,
Just do the best you can and hang on and go with me.
Just see what it's like for today.
We're going to start with a feeling actually of a curve of a smile across the sky above you.
Where I am today,
The sky is wide open blue.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
Just bring in the feeling,
The gesture,
And that sense of a true gentle smile of contentment,
Authentic,
Nothing forced.
Maybe invite in a sense of benevolence from the world around you,
The natural world.
Let the curve of that smile,
The bottom part of that curve,
Touch the crown of your head,
Crown chakra.
Let the crown of your head relax a little bit.
Now let your eyes soften and invite that sense of a smile to drop right down into the center of your head,
The Ajna chakra.
Letting your scalp and your forehead relax,
Your temples soften and broaden.
Let the eye muscles completely relax,
Release,
And feel pacified.
Now let your awareness come into your mouth.
Feel your jaw.
Notice your tongue and your gums and even your teeth.
Let this feeling of the slight smile come just to the inside of your mouth,
Just the gentlest curve of a smile there,
Nothing tense,
Softening into and receiving this smile in the mouth.
Let that smile touch all the way into your throat chakra,
Vashuda chakra,
Softening neck,
Shoulders,
Pacifying the fibers of your throat.
Just begin to include breath with this process.
The smiles that are coming in also are allowing a feeling of breathing through your head.
Now a feeling of softening into the shoulders,
The heart,
The upper back,
And chest,
Anahata chakra.
Let the breath start to feel that it's moving through you,
That you're not making breath happen,
But you're allowing it.
Allowing it by resting the vigilance,
Resting through that part that's always scanning,
Scanning for danger,
Letting yourself bask in this feeling that you are totally safe,
So safe that you could feel the curve of a smile moving inside your shoulders,
Across your chest,
And now down your arms and into the palms of your hands.
Let's invite tiny smiles across the palms of the hands,
Breath moving through the skin,
The muscles,
The bones,
Being breathed by this benevolence.
It will encourage this quality to continue down into the belly.
Soften your belly to receive the breath.
Let the breath blow through you like wind through trees,
Like wind through blossoms,
The way the gentle breeze moves through blades of grass or fields of grain.
Let this smile practice continue down into your pelvis.
Really relax even more now through your low back,
Your hips,
And feel that breeze moving through you,
Life moving through you.
Let's invite this to continue on down the legs,
Down your legs into your feet,
Inviting those small smiles into the feet and the toes,
Letting the breath move between your toes now,
Letting the breath move through the bones of your feet.
Allow the whole body to have a sense that it's being breathed and that the body,
Maybe like some kind of special fabric,
That the weave of the fabric becomes looser.
The way fabric naturally loosens over time,
It's happening more quickly today with our willingness.
And as the breath moves through,
There might even be a quality of light,
Light in the sense of luminosity,
But also light as the absence of heaviness.
Feel that the weave of the fabric becomes looser and looser,
Maybe more like a screen or a knitted garment or a piece of lace.
Breath moves through,
Light and lightness become more and more present.
The weave of the fabric becomes looser and looser until the holes are more than the fabric,
Until there's more space,
More nothingness,
More freedom than there is somethingness,
Until maybe the weave of the fabric dissolves,
Disappears,
Disintegrates,
Until there's nothing here but awareness,
Awareness that the breath's still moving,
Awareness of life moving through us,
All the richness,
All the tragedy,
The losses,
The gains,
The known and the unknown.
Let it move through you,
Let it breathe through you without getting caught,
Without getting stuck.
Enjoy this experience of being able to think things,
Notice things,
Feel things,
And they just move through,
Just like wind blowing through the trees,
Just like the breeze blowing through the fields of grain.
Find anywhere in your body that could soften more to allow this breeze,
This benevolence,
This contentment,
Noticing we don't need to reach for anything more right now,
We don't need to push anything away.
To be here in this moment with this breath is enough.
I am doing enough,
I have enough,
I am enough.
Stay with this practice as long as you like,
And please re-listen to this recording if it's helpful to you.
You could also share this with someone else who might need some support now in letting life just move through.
I wish you a glorious day,
And hope to be in touch with you in some form soon.
Namaste.
