Start by bringing your body into a comfortable position,
Perhaps seated or lying down.
Take a moment to make any small movements or adjustments in your body,
Maybe rocking forward or backward or side to side,
To bring a sense of ease and comfort into your posture for the duration of this practice.
To begin,
Perhaps take a moment to notice your breathing.
Maybe you can sense that on an inhale your body expands,
Noticing that you take up more space in the room,
And that on an exhale the muscles of your body might relax and that the weight of your body almost becomes heavier beneath you.
Let's take a long,
Deep inhale together,
Filling the lungs,
And a slow,
Relaxed exhale.
Two more like that.
Slow,
Deep,
Long inhale,
Drawing energy up the length of the body,
And a slow exhale,
Relaxing the weight of your body down with the breath.
Once more,
Deep,
Slow inhale up the length of the spine,
Filling the lungs,
And slowly releasing that energy back down the body and into the earth.
Now release control of your breathing and settle your body into a sense of stillness,
And soften your gaze or close your eyes if they aren't already,
And offer your mind the opportunity to relax.
Gently bring your attention to your breath in and out of the nose,
And notice that you are breathing without trying to control it.
If the breath is deep,
Let it be deep.
If the breath is shallow,
Let it be shallow.
Drawing awareness now to the area of the nose,
Can you identify any physical sensations of your breath?
Perhaps you can feel the draft of air flow deep within the nostrils.
Maybe there's a sense of temperature,
Of cool air being drawn in,
Or warm air being released.
Maybe a draft of the breath can be felt on the outer rim of each nostril,
Or perhaps brushing against the upper lip.
Perhaps the sensation of breath isn't found in the nose at all,
But in the gentle rise and fall of your chest or your belly.
Maybe awareness of your breath arrives as a subtle shift of clothing against your skin,
As your body expands and empties.
Wherever you find an awareness of the physical sensation of your breath,
Focus your attention to that place.
When you notice the mind wandering into thought,
As it does,
Kindly notice the thinking and gently draw the attention back to a sensation of your breathing.
Meditation is not the absence of thought,
But rather it is the practice of drawing the attention,
Your awareness,
Back into the present moment when we get pulled into thought.
And so the anchor of the breath can be a helpful tool to arrive back here in your body again and again,
As many times as needed.
In coming to a close,
Gently and mindfully begin to deepen your breathing,
Widening your awareness from the sensations of breath into the whole physical body.
We'll take a deep inhale through the nose together and let it fall out of the mouth.
