Come to a comfortable seat.
Root through your sit bones.
Find length through your spine,
Your neck,
And up through the crown of your head.
Stack your shoulders over your hips and draw your shoulder blades a bit closer to one another to elevate your heart.
Keeping this,
Draw your belly button gently towards your spine to create support for your seat.
Today we will focus on pratyahara,
The fifth limb of the eight limb path of yoga.
Pratyahara translates to withdrawal from the senses.
Today we will first focus on each sense,
Finding gratitude connection to the sensation.
And then one by one we will let them slip into the background of our awareness.
As you sit here close down your eyes and start to take in the sounds that surround you.
You may hear the wind or light chatter.
Maybe you hear cars passing or birds chirping.
In this moment find gratitude for your ears,
For the beauty of the sounds that we get to experience.
Now let your awareness drift to your nose.
Take in any sense that surround you.
Maybe you smell a perfume,
Incense,
Nature.
Maybe you smell the changing of weather,
Fresh-cut grass.
Live in just this moment of gratitude for your smell.
Now move your awareness away from your nose to your skin.
Maybe your awareness falls at your palms,
Feeling the texture of your pants.
Maybe you feel the temperature of the room on your skin,
The fabric of your clothing,
A light wind passing by.
Maybe you feel one ankle crossed on top of the other or the feeling of the ground below your sit bones.
In this moment find gratitude for the sense of touch,
Of feel,
For the warmth of a hug.
Bring your awareness away and now to your mouth,
To your taste.
In this moment what do your taste buds taste?
In this moment find gratitude for the joy we get to experience when drinking a cold glass of water or eating a nutritious meal.
Now let that sensation slip into the distance and bring your awareness to your eyelids.
With your eyes closed,
What colors do you see behind your eyelids?
Do you see a fuzziness?
Do you see a darkness?
Do you see shapes?
Do the shapes change?
In this moment with eyes closed think of all of the beautiful things in this world that you have been able to enjoy visually with your eyes wide open.
The view of a sunset over the ocean,
The view from the top of a mountain,
The look of a loved one,
The smile of a pet,
The blooming of a flower.
In this moment find gratitude for all that you've seen with your eyes open but also with your eyes closed.
Now let this sensation travel to the background of your awareness with all of the others.
In these last few moments of quiet stillness,
Which of your senses are still loud enough to focus on?
And when they do take your awareness away,
Can you bring it back,
Back to the contentment of learning how to just be with no distractions but solely with presence?
Start to deepen your breath.
Bring your palms to touch in front of your heart,
Anjale Mudra.
We'll close our meditation together today with one final breath.
Please inhale through your nose,
Fill up.
Open mouth,
Exhale,
Let it go.
Bring your thumbs up to your third eye space.
I bow to you.
Namaste.
