Hello friends.
I hope you are all keeping well.
Both Noah and I miss seeing you in person.
And we are both keeping you very much in our heart and mind,
Especially as you are approaching the end of your senior year.
And we wanted to offer you a practice to explore during this time.
And it's a practice that we've already done together.
It's the practice of settling into a spacious dimension of awareness.
A quality of knowing that's not confined to just the area in the head.
But a sense of knowing that includes the entirety of the body and perhaps even the space outside of the body.
And as we mentioned in our time together,
This quality of knowing can be especially useful when we feel ourselves narrowly confined,
Overwhelmed.
Feeling as if there's just not enough space.
I can't take it anymore.
And if you encounter this feeling,
Hopefully you'll remember this practice of letting your awareness become more spacious.
Giving yourself room to experience whatever's present,
Allowing it to naturally arise and pass.
And with this,
I invite you to find a comfortable posture,
Something that supports you in keeping the spine straight,
The belly soft and the chest open.
And as we've done before,
Let's begin our session by relaxing into the eyes.
Softening the intensity of your gaze.
And let your awareness settle evenly throughout the space of the body.
And if you feel your awareness is stuck in the head,
See if you can progressively let your awareness descend from the head into the jaw,
To the center of the chest.
And eventually letting your sense of knowing be expansive throughout the entire body.
And with this embodied awareness,
Note whatever sensations and feelings are present.
And if you discover a part of the body that feels tight,
Explore what is it like to breathe into this area of tension,
Breathing in expanding,
And then breathing out releasing.
And in this way,
Settling the body at ease,
Letting the expansion and release of the breath be felt throughout the entire body.
And again,
Observing this experience from within the body,
And not isolated somewhere in the head.
And allow this quality of relaxation to deepen.
With stillness,
With the recognition of having nowhere else to go,
And in this moment,
Nothing else to do.
And finally,
Complementing relaxation and stillness with an inner curiosity,
A wakefulness.
And then allow the breath to settle into its natural rhythm.
And at the end of each exhale,
Can you reveal a moment of silence,
A moment where you're able to rest your inner voice?
And finally set the mind at ease.
Becoming relaxed mentally so that whatever comes to mind can simply come and go.
We're not gripping,
Tightening around anything.
Resting in the stillness of spacious awareness.
And now with a sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
And perhaps spread in the space outside of the body.
And observe what comes and goes in the immaterial space of the mind.
And let that deep core sense of ease continue to rest in the stillness of spacious awareness.
Knowing what arises without getting caught up and carried away.
And of course,
If we lose this sense of knowing,
Of observing what arises and passes within the space of the mind,
Then come back.
Come back to resting in the stillness of spacious awareness,
Awareness not confined to the head.
Awareness that extends evenly through space.
And now with a sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
And perhaps spread in the stillness of spacious awareness.
And of course,
If we lose this sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
Then come back.
And let that deep core sense of awareness continue to rest in the stillness of spacious awareness.
Resting in the stillness of spacious awareness amidst the movements of the mind.
And now with a sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
And perhaps spread in the stillness of spacious awareness.
And now with a sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
And perhaps spread in the stillness of spacious awareness.
And now with a sense of knowing,
Evenly spread throughout the body,
And perhaps spread in the stillness of spacious awareness.
And before bringing this practice to a close,
I invite you to bring forth the intention to recognize that whenever you feel the mind becoming narrow or contracted throughout the rest of the day,
Can you restore this spacious quality of being and give space to whatever arises?
Let's bring this practice to a close.
