Welcome to this practice,
Strength and dedication.
Today we're going to be tuning into what these words represent in us and find the strength,
Find the courage to move with full power into our future but at the same time be sensitive,
Enjoy the journey and find the strength to listen and surrender.
So we're going to begin now by coming into a comfortable seated position,
Making sure your spine is upright,
Releasing any tension in the jaw,
Softening the eyes,
Closing them.
Just coming into your breath,
Slowing the breath down and deepening the breath.
Just becoming aware of any thinking,
Any thoughts that might cross our minds.
And you simply bring your attention back into this moment,
Back into the presence of your body and your breath.
And continuing to with a great sense of compassion,
With a great softness in your breath,
Just really letting go to your body,
To your experience right now.
Taking the opportunity to release anything that's not serving you,
Really just exhale it away and open the stage for your meditation and contemplation.
Slightly deeper inhalation and exhale,
Breathe it all away.
So now we're going to contemplate strength and dedication.
What do these words mean to us?
And how can we cultivate a quality that will enable us to act with both strength and dedication in our lives?
So taking a big breath,
Coming to neutral,
We're first going to contemplate an aspect of strength,
Which is to be able to be in the right place,
Which is to be hard and to be soft.
To be able to be each of these qualities at just the right time.
Sometimes it's the moment to rise up,
To hold your boundary,
To be stern.
Other times it's the case of letting go,
Of listening to others,
Of embracing what life is in front of us.
And so I invite you to connect with this quality of hardness,
Of conviction within yourself,
Breathing with it,
Even adjusting your posture slightly to really embody that quality in this moment.
You can even say to yourself,
I am hard,
I behold hardness.
I am passionate,
Motivated,
Dedicated,
Towards what I believe in.
Continue breathing with that feeling that comes alive in your body.
Take a slightly deeper inhalation and exhale everything away.
Bringing our minds back into neutral,
Back into emptiness.
And now a softness,
Allowing yourself to feel soft.
Let go of any tension in the body.
Feeling you can cultivate this kind of sensitivity,
This kind of feeling,
Intuition that exists outside of the mind,
But in your body,
In your heart,
In the resonance of reality.
So once again,
Just inviting you now to embrace this softness,
This gentleness within yourself.
Maybe even slowing the breath down.
Taking a deep inhalation and exhaling everything out.
And we'll progress to our final contemplation now,
Which is to,
You can even imagine this right here,
On one side of your body,
Imagining kind of a hardness.
Just pick a left or right side,
However it naturally comes to you,
Imagining that hardness,
That quality.
Feel there's a gravity on that side of the body.
And then on the other side now,
Picking a softness,
A gentleness.
So shifting your attention to feel the other side of the body and feeling a softness.
And now with your breath and full confidence in your process,
Kind of allowing the two to merge and the two to coexist.
So you're not exclusively the hardness,
You're not exclusively the softness,
You kind of sit in the middle.
You rest in your awareness and you naturally engage with the two.
You naturally embody the two as needed,
As necessary.
Just have a play around with that now,
Energetically.
Perhaps your body kind of starts to move and sway a little bit and just allow that to happen.
Slowly coming back into a stillness.
Slightly deeper inhalation and exhale everything out.
And now in these final moments,
Just honouring yourself,
Honouring these two aspects of you.
Honouring their coexistence and interconnectivity and collaboration.
And honouring the awareness,
The consciousness,
The presence in you that just knows when they can effortlessly inhabit whichever side is needed.
Thank you.
Namaste.
