Hello and welcome to this simple forever practice in coming home to the body,
Holding loving yet firm boundary with the mind,
And receiving yourself in all of your cycles and seasons exactly as you are.
Find a comfortable seated or reclined position,
Turn off any bright lights,
Maybe even cover your eyes if you're laying down.
Support yourself with props and pillows as you see fit.
The idea in meditation is to be at ease,
Enough to remain present without acute discomfort or pain,
But also alert enough to stay awake and aware in your practice.
As you settle down and in,
Roll your shoulders back and down,
Circle your head and your neck a couple times,
Stretch your jaw,
Find all the little somatic shifts out of the holding patterns and repetitive postures of your day.
Create space for all the familiar ways of bracing,
Gripping,
And holding on tight to release and relinquish in their own time and in their own way.
Close your eyes,
Such a simple gesture that communicates so much to our consciousness.
Close your eyes to the outside world and open yourself,
Offer yourself to the realms within.
Find a way to bring a bit more length to your spine,
Elongate from the root to the crown and recognize your spine,
Yes,
As the architecture of your physical body and also as the geometry of your metaphysical,
Your subtle body.
Through presence,
Through permission,
Allow the kinks in the cord of your spine to untangle and unwind,
Not by force,
But through presence,
Through an awareness that is spacious,
Receptive,
Responsive,
Through an awareness that is loving.
Coax your next inhale a little deeper down and stretch your next exhale even longer out.
Keep breathing slower,
Wider,
Softer.
The breath is the language of the nervous system.
Silently,
Wordlessly,
Without saying anything at all,
Your breath can be like a lullaby,
Soothing the places that are overwhelmed,
Overstimulated,
Overtired.
And let your presence,
The way you pay attention to yourself,
Have a similar tone.
Be with yourself in a way that brings light to your inner space.
In meditation,
You need not command nor control what's unfolding,
But listen,
Witness reverently what has long been awaiting your arrival.
Listen for what is trying to make its way to the surface of your conscious awareness.
Listen for the subtle hum of your spirit,
Which is here in your body for this life,
This one precious incarnation as you.
The mind has a habit of telling a different story,
A harsher,
More critical story.
As you encounter this propensity of the mind,
As your thoughts take over in meditation,
And they will take over,
Know that this is not a failure.
It doesn't mean that you're bad at meditation.
Quite the opposite.
Coming into relationship with the mind is a very central part of this practice.
What might it be like to hold a boundary with the judging mind,
With the critical mind?
What might it be like to hold a steady,
Firm,
Yet compassionate boundary with the way the mind gets distracted?
The way the mind resists the intimacy of presence.
It is not the harsh voice of the mind that will wake us from our trance,
For that voice is the very trance from which we are awakening.
The trance of unworthiness,
The trance of doubt,
The trance of shame Bring a soft touch to all the hard edges you encounter within.
Be careful not to replicate the very thing you set out to liberate yourself from.
Continuously return to the seat of the witness,
The part that can be with the mind without becoming the mind,
The part that can witness the wound without indulging the wound.
The seat of the witness,
The posture of loving awareness that can become familiar with the endless fluctuations of thoughts,
The part that can see clearly that the mind generates thoughts constantly,
Continuously,
As an attempt to understand reality.
The mind is magnificent.
The mind is exquisite.
The mind is protective.
And we can't get where we want to go with the mind alone.
So let your breath perpetually bring you down to the terrain of the body.
Follow your breath on this invisible pilgrimage that it longs to take you on,
Down and into your heart.
Listen for the other voices within that also have something to say.
Yield to the rhythm of your breath and its eternal dance of expansion and contraction.
Go with the inhales as they guide you outward,
Teach you how to court your edges and follow the exhales as they bring you back in to the center of your center of the center.
Feel for the ways your body speaks to you,
Communicates to you through sensation,
Emotion and vibration.
It's like remembering a language that you forgot you already know how to speak.
It's simple,
But it's also difficult.
And notice the incessant way your mind longs to interrupt the way your mind might actually be afraid of losing your attention.
And so the practice becomes about being sweet with the mind while also remaining steady in the boundary.
Not to control or master the mind,
But to mother the mind,
Father the mind,
Steward the mind into containment,
Into coherence.
And we all have this capacity.
It just takes time,
Patience and devotion.
Bring some attention to your body and feel for a posture of devotion.
What would it be like to sit with dignity to lay yourself down in honor for all you've been through to be here now?
What would it look like if your meditation practice was an embodiment of reverence,
Of gratitude for the gift of being alive at all in all of the beauty and all of the pain?
What would it look like,
Feel like,
Sound like to let your practice,
This moment,
Right here,
Right now be an offering of love,
An act of devotion and a way to generate compassion to see with kinder eyes and receive yourself and this life with a softer touch.
Keep breathing slower,
Wider,
Deeper.
Keep opening at the impulse to close.
And keep receiving yourself gently,
Sweetly,
Even reverently no matter how you arrive,
Even on the days you are devastatingly disconnected from how any of this could be beautiful at all.
Meditation is inclusive so on the days you doubt,
Bring,
Bring presence to the doubt.
In the moments rife with judgment and criticism,
Bring awareness,
Loving awareness to this part that exists within all of us.
And continue to open yourself to all the other parts within the voices that are more subtle.
The messages that require silence and solitude to hear.
And in this way the breath becomes a lullaby not just for the mind but also for the heart.
The heart as it feels so deeply the immense spectrum from beauty to terror the heart as it breaks and aches and opens and expands What would it be like to breathe in a way to be with yourself in a way in the privacy of your own inner space that lets your spirit your divinely sensitive soul feel welcome,
Feel safe,
Feel held not just in your body but in your life Could you let your your body,
Your physical vessel be more held up by the ground that's beneath you Could you let your roots drop down even deeper which reliably lets your heart lift up a little higher And as you encounter the parts and places that continue to resist to hold on tight to what's familiar and repetitive instead of demanding that they soften or change or relax let your practice be a space where you get to know these parts intimately and honestly a place where you can even befriend these parts and get to know what they might need to feel supported,
To feel seen and heard and understood enough to relinquish the tight grip,
To lay down the weapons and take off the armor In meditation we are not asked to offer ourselves to the change that occurs through force but to offer ourselves to the change that occurs through presence organically and emergently Just like the flowers that grow towards the light of the sun that reach towards the encouraging warmth of light let the crown of your head rise effortlessly into the space above you feel the way that you too grow towards the light reach towards the sky and rise towards whatever it is that you call sacred and just like the flowers every part within you that is closed off protected like the bud will open,
Will bloom not when they're told to,
Not when they're commanded to when they feel nourished enough to,
Supported and safe enough to for these last minutes of practice,
Can you breathe and be,
Can you hold yourself in a way that communicates encouragement,
Can you offer a field of trust,
Trust in the organicity of healing the innate capacity to organize into coherence,
To move from fragmentation to integration that we all have access to breathe a little slower,
Notice the generosity of your lungs as they breathe for you and with you without you needing to do anything at all lungs breathing,
Heart beating,
Even when you forget to notice,
Even when you forget to say thank you and this is what it is to be human to forget and then remember and then forget again and reliably eventually remember meditation is also like this repeatedly reverently back to the breath away from the mind into the heart over and over turning our attention inward and turning towards the very places we would rather turn away from bring your hands into a position that embodies reverence and acknowledges your willingness today,
Right here,
Right now to be with yourself to begin again we can close this practice remembering that meditation is a devotional act,
An offering of love,
A practice in generating compassion and leaving no part out from this circle of light,
This circle of belonging that is cast by our own presence,
Our own loving awareness and in your own way thank yourself for your practice and in your own way remember that practice is not a punishment not a performance practice is a portal a prayer,
A pathway home to love
