Let's start with you getting comfortable.
Get comfortable with a good posture.
Put your feet flat on the floor.
If you want,
You can lie down.
But whether you are sitting in your car,
In a bedroom,
In the living room,
Or out in a park,
See if you can get your feet flat on the floor,
Or fold your legs,
Or lie down.
Make sure there is enough room in your posture to take a good deep breath.
And let's do that right now.
Slow in-breath.
And briefly pause at the top.
And slowly,
In a controlled fashion,
Exhale.
If you breathed faster than I guided,
That's perfectly okay.
Let's do another one and follow my speed.
Inhale.
Inhale.
Briefly hold.
Slowly exhale.
Slowly.
Now force all of the air out of your lungs.
Briefly hold.
And relax.
And let your breath come naturally as you feel your body needs it.
Notice where your mind went when I stopped talking.
If you're like most people,
Some thought occurred to you.
Your mind is always churning,
Always moving,
Always working.
This kind of meditation will allow you to rest your mind.
You cannot not think,
But you can still your thoughts by doing something else.
Observe.
Observe your shoulders.
Observe the muscles in your shoulders and neck.
Are they tight?
Are they relaxed?
On your next exhale,
Allow those muscles in your shoulders and neck and arms to get heavy.
You just observed.
When you were observing your muscles,
You weren't thinking.
If you want to still your thoughts,
Observe.
You can observe sensations in your body.
You can observe sounds.
You can observe visual cues like color or shape.
For a moment,
I invite you to very slowly observe three different sounds you can hear right now besides my voice.
As I extended that silence,
You probably had a thought or several thoughts occur to you,
And that's okay.
It just is.
Observe the fact that you had thoughts come to your mind.
The purpose of this meditation and most other meditations is to get better at getting grounded,
Not relaxing your mind,
Giving it a break from thought so that your skill of getting into this space grows.
Take another deep,
Slow breath at your own pace.
And as you come to the close of that breath,
Your eyes may want to flutter open,
And you can observe whether they were even closed in the first place.
As you come back to the room,
Allow the corners of your mouth to curve up in a very faint smile because you just had an experience.
