Open awareness practice.
Finding a posture that's comfortable for you,
That's sustainable,
And a posture that embodies wakefulness.
A posture that's going to support you through the next 30 minutes.
Bringing your attention into the body.
Just noticing what's here to be noticed.
Perhaps feeling the pressure of sit bones on the chair,
Or the body on the ground or the bed.
Becoming aware of contact between skin and clothes.
Moving your awareness into your body.
Now becoming aware of all the movements of breathing as you sit here or lie here.
Perhaps it's the expanse and contraction of the belly that grabs your attention.
Or the rising and falling of the chest.
Or the movement of air in and out of the nostrils or the mouth.
Letting your attention settle on the breath.
Breathing if you're breathing in or breathing out.
And coming back to the breath when your attention is drawn elsewhere.
Gently firmly coming back to the anchor point of the breath.
Now shifting your attention to sensations in the body as a whole.
Being curious about what sensations present themselves when you widen your awareness to incorporate the body.
Perhaps sensations in the feet making contact with the ground.
Or the back of the body making contact with the chair or bed.
Or perhaps it's the sensations of breathing.
The whole body rising slightly as you breathe in and falling slightly as you breathe out.
Just wherever your attention is grabbed.
And coming back here when we find ourselves distracted.
Returning to the sensations in the body.
Being curious about them.
The temperature.
Whether they're wet or dry.
Whether there's pulsing or tingling or itching.
Just being with body sensations as they are right now.
And now shifting your awareness.
To incorporate sound.
All the sounds that are presenting themselves to you right now.
Perhaps soft sounds in the room you're in.
Or sounds coming from outside.
Distant sounds.
And again if and when you find yourself distracted,
Your attention taken somewhere else.
Once you awaken from that trance of being elsewhere.
Just orientating back to the realm of sound.
Using sound as our anchor,
Our home base.
Perhaps noticing how sound emerges from silence.
And returns again to silence.
Perhaps noticing the mind's tendency to categorize and understand the sounds.
To label the sounds.
Seeing if we can observe that too.
Moment to moment.
As we sit here,
Or lie here.
As we sit here,
Or lie here.
Just opening up to sound.
To their qualities.
Whether they're long or short.
And again,
If we find ourselves off,
Far from sound,
Perhaps in the realm of thinking.
It's a very small movement to just notice that we're off and come back to sound.
And we can acknowledge where we've been,
Perhaps noting it.
And then simply coming back.
Back to the sounds that we can hear right now.
Yep.
And now shifting our attention once more to move into the realm of thinking and emotions to actively start to follow the flow of our thinking,
Our moods as much as possible.
A little bit like sitting down next to a river and watching the flow of water,
Except we're watching the flow of our thoughts.
Knowing if we're thinking about the future,
Or thinking about the past.
Whether there's a monologue or a dialogue happening.
Whether we're fantasizing.
Whether there's images.
And as best we can just trying to track the process of thinking and the process of emotions as best we can moment to moment.
And of course if at any point we find ourselves stirred up,
Too far away,
Overwhelmed,
Then we can always come back to the breath.
And it probably won't take long before we start to realize as we dip our toe into the stream of thinking that it's very easy to get pulled in.
And that's completely fine.
So whenever we become aware that we're lost off in the realm of thinking,
Not observing it anymore,
Then well you're already back.
And again we can acknowledge it where we've been.
Note it as the type of thought or thinking it was.
And then just come back to observing as best we can.
What's on your mind right now?
What sort of emotions are here?
What sort of mood is here?
Perhaps we're having thoughts like,
I don't think I'm having any thoughts.
Which is a thought.
Or we're thinking we're not able to do this.
Which is another thought.
And there may be an emotional surveillance with our thoughts.
Maybe a thought like,
I'm nailing this.
And the emotions that come along with it.
Or a thought like,
I'm bored.
I'd rather be doing something else.
Which is another thought.
Bringing its own emotions.
Can we just stand back and watch?
Without judgment?
Or knowing that we're judging when we're judging.
Can we just stand back and let it be?
And now letting go of the realm of thinking and broadening out to take in our entire experience.
To let our awareness move in any way that it wants to.
Perhaps focusing in on a body sensation,
Or a sound.
And then a thought.
And then widening out to take in the whole of our experience.
Sitting here or lying here.
Can we just sit without any expectation of doing anything,
Or having any particular type of experience?
Can we just be with whatever experience we're having right now?
And can we stay with that moment to moment as best we can?
Widening our awareness a bit like an open sky.
The weather can pass through,
But the sky is not bothered.
Can we let our experience pass through?
Can we let it into our lap?
And coming back over and over again to this open space.
And if we do feel too lost,
If we feel overwhelmed,
We can always just go back to the breath or the body.
And we can choose to stay there.
Or we can ground ourselves in the breath of the body.
And then when it feels right,
Move back out into a broader,
Wider experience of awareness.
A choiceless awareness.
Understand what we're talking about?
Moment to moment.
What's on your mind?
Knowing moment to moment where your attention is.
Getting curious,
Perhaps asking the question,
What is this?
Not looking for an answer.
But just being open to the question.
What is this?
And now shifting attention back to the breath,
Back to the movement of breath.
To the sensations in the body.
The points of contact.
And perhaps becoming aware of light coming through the eyes,
Even if they're closed.
And sense of sounds around us.
And as we bring the meditation to a close.
If it feels right for you,
Thanking yourself for spending time in this way.
Spending time in this radically different way.
