Coming To Our Senses

Experience mindfulness by being aware of your breath, your senses and everything that happens at the same time. Your mind wandering. Distractions from outside. After opening our 5 senses, we spend a moment with our 6th sense, our intuition, asking for clarity in a particular situation or relationship. Slow-paced, not too much guidance.

Transcript

Take up a comfortable seated or lying down position for our mindfulness meditation.

And when you feel comfortable gently close your eyes and make it a soft closing of the eyes.

Try not to squeeze.

And we call this a mindfulness meditation because we will be using some very simple techniques where you will be guiding your attention.

First towards your breathing and then we will be opening all our senses one by one.

And I won't be speaking too much.

Everybody is working their own pace.

So bring your attention to your breathing and start with observing your natural breath.

Find that place in your body where it is easy for you to connect with the breath.

The rise and fall of the abdomen.

Or if you like the flow of the breath at the nostrils.

As you breathe in the warm air or the cool air,

Observe.

As you slowly start adjusting your breath by first of all making the in and exhale equally long.

First notice if they may already be equally long.

Or if you need to make an adjustment.

What frequently happens when we feel stressed or anxious is that our exhale becomes shorter than our inhale.

Literally meaning you are keeping things inside.

So let them match.

And when they do,

You start elongating both.

Making the inhale just a little bit longer.

Pause for a moment.

And then extending that exhale as well.

Breathe fully out a little bit more and hold empty before the next inhale.

That you're extending even a bit more.

When belly and chest are inflated you hold.

Before you exhale completely.

And continue in your own tempo.

With a pause and then the next inhale.

A pause and the next exhale.

Consciously trying to make them longer.

And notice what your mind is doing.

If it has already drifted.

And always gently bring yourself back to your breathing.

Don't judge yourself or your mind for wanting to wander.

That's what it's for.

To think.

But give yourself and your mind a break from thinking.

And every time you get distracted by thoughts or outside sounds.

Remind yourself to go back to your breathing.

A couple of more conscious long breaths.

And then ease yourself back into normal breathing.

Withdraw your attention from the belly or the nostrils.

And from the breath.

And we'll bring our attention to the first sense.

The sense of taste.

Just explore the taste in your mouth.

Bringing all your attention to the mouth,

The tongue.

Maybe hard to sense something at first.

But take your time.

And again notice if your mind is responding.

It's passing a judgement that you're not doing it right.

And dismiss the judgement.

You are doing it right.

Explore the taste.

See if there's more than one thing you can taste.

Or notice a lack of taste.

Let go of the sense of taste.

As we move our attention to our hearing.

Hard to expand your hearing from the sound of my voice to the sounds in your room,

In my background.

Notice and try not to label.

There's no need to label sounds as either good or bad,

Pleasant,

Disruptive.

It will not change the sound,

Only your perception.

Expand the hearing further,

The whole of your house or wherever you are.

And play with it.

Better sounds or dominant sounds.

Find the layers in listening.

Listening further to outside.

Collect noises.

Treasure them.

And then draw your hearing back inwards.

Gently from outside to the house,

Your room.

Into yourself.

And you detect any noises in your body.

Heartbeat.

Something in the belly area.

Anything else.

And gently let go of hearing so intensely.

For a moment take a conscious breath in and out.

As we move to our sense of smell.

And again try to discover a palette of smells.

You can start close.

Literally smelling yourself.

The detergent of your clothes.

Something on your skin.

Expand the smelling things in the room and the house that you are in.

The space that you are in.

Maybe you can smell some food that you prepared before.

The smell of morning coffee.

There is a whole range of smells around you.

Search them out.

And again if this is difficult,

It doesn't mean that you are doing it wrong.

Sometimes we have not used some of our senses in a very conscious manner.

So we need to reconnect.

And as you have your collection of smells.

You withdraw your attention from the nose.

And move it to our skin,

Our sense of touch.

And just scan the whole body.

Start feeling where the air touches your skin.

Notice if the air is warm or cold,

Still or a breeze.

Notice where sky skin may be touching skin.

Again touching clothes.

And again you don't have to have an opinion if the touch is pleasant or unpleasant.

If your feet are on the floor,

Feel where the balls and the heels of your foot and your toes are touching the floor.

Feel that gentle pressure.

Again feel the whole body,

The outline,

The skin.

Just a general sense of touch.

And then withdraw your attention for another conscious breath in and out.

We come to our fifth sense,

Our vision.

Do not open your eyes.

Explore the inside of your eyes.

Notice if you see or perceive colors,

Patterns,

Light,

Dark.

Separate the image of the eyes from the image of the brain,

Which may still be projecting little movies.

Just look on the inside of the eyes.

And then stop exploring the inside of the eyes.

Very gently look up to your third eye.

So with both eyes gently look up to that point between your eyebrows.

Make it very light,

Barely noticeable movement.

Do not strain your eyes.

And this third eye is the house of our intuition,

Our sixth sense.

Start breathing into this point,

Counting one on the inhale,

Two on the exhale.

Following your normal breath.

One on the inhale,

Two on the exhale.

Try to steer this breath to the third eye.

If at any point you'd like to release your eyes from looking upwards,

Please go ahead.

And we will consult our intuition by imagining a situation or a relation that you would like more insight into.

Or if there is such a situation or relation in your life,

For a moment,

Observe the thoughts and the feelings that this particular situation or person elicits in you.

Let's see both thoughts and feelings as clouds drifting by.

Don't attach yourself to any of them.

See them as they are,

Just thoughts and feelings.

Realize what they do to your perception of the dilemma you've chosen.

Notice if they help you or make things more complicated.

And in this case,

Label all of them.

Say to yourself,

I notice I'm angry,

Upset,

Confused,

Sad.

Make a list as long as needed.

Maybe you experience more than one feeling.

Maybe you experience conflicting feelings.

And then very consciously let them go.

See the situation in a more neutral light,

Not colored by your thoughts and feelings.

See your truth.

Your truth.

And if you like,

You can ask for insight,

Deeper insight into the situation or relation.

Maybe you've managed to already obtain this in the last couple of minutes.

Suddenly it will come to you at a moment where you are unaware that your intuition was still working on this.

Don't worry if this is a long process.

We can get so entangled in layers of thoughts and feelings that the voice of our intuition has become so small,

Barely audible.

And then leave this all behind.

Gently bring your eyes to neutral position if they weren't there yet.

Withdraw your attention from your intuition altogether.

Gently stop any thoughts or feelings by again bringing your attention to your normal breath.

And like at the beginning,

Find that place in your body where it's easy to connect.

And just observe how is your breath compared to the beginning of this meditation.

Notice if your in and exhales are equally long.

And if you like,

Later on if you noticed one is longer than the other,

You can always adjust again.

Not now.

Stay here for another minute as I leave you with Namaste.

Reviews

Very calming. No music, which for me...is very welcome. 🙏