Find a comfortable position that is sustainable for your body on this day,
In this moment.
If the temperature of the air in the space where you are is in any way distracting,
Do what you need to do to make your body feel safe and warm and at home.
When that feels complete,
Let's come home to our body,
This precious vessel,
This temporary vessel that is our home,
That we will eventually let go of,
That we will sometimes,
During our time in this body,
Take for granted,
And that we will oftentimes regard with much less respect than this sacred vessel deserves.
So acknowledging that,
Acknowledging with compassion our human capacity to disregard the holiness of this life and every life,
Let us come home to our bodies and be present to its wisdom,
Its capacity for peace and joy and pain and grief.
The body is asked to hold so very much,
And so it deserves so much respect.
The fact that we have incarnated into a body at all is a miracle.
And so with that awareness as well,
Let us sink deeper into an awareness of our humanity with awe and with wonder.
And we start with the breath,
Noticing our capacity to ignore the miracle of the breath,
The breath that in original languages is associated with spirit.
As we just notice,
Become aware,
Perhaps grateful for the movement of the breath in and out of our physical body.
Let us notice,
As we perhaps invite a deeper expression of the breath,
That each breath is different.
Each inhale is different from the next and the previous one.
And each exhale has its own individual characteristics.
Noticing,
Appreciating and keeping our awareness on each movement of the breath,
That connection to spirit,
That connection to our divinity,
The first thing that happens when we are born into this life and the last thing that will happen when our spirit leaves this body.
And so in this way,
The spirit is always with us.
Let's invite a deeper,
Slower,
More intentional expression of this potent breath.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
Breathing in and breathing out.
So simple and yet so profound is this movement of spirit that blows through our physical incarnation.
Jesus said,
The wind blows and we don't know where it comes from.
And so it is with the spirit.
There's a level of trust that we must have with our breath and an experience of letting go that is offered with each exhalation.
There's that sense of pause,
Of waiting,
That liminal space between the exhale and the inhale.
That experience of fullness at the top of the inhalation when the breath is filling us to capacity and the sense of emptiness at the bottom of the exhalation where we begin to sense a need,
A need for spirit,
A need to breathe in again.
There's a sense of taking the breath for granted,
Taking spirit for granted until that breath becomes labored or difficult.
And there's a sense of blissful joy and surrender after a practice like this one.
And so as we draw this breath meditation to a close,
May your day be filled with an awareness of the mystery and the wonder of the spirit that blows through you and fills you and invites you to a deeper appreciation of your own divinity,
Your own incarnation in this complicated world where it's so easy to forget.
