Allowing Life To Touch You: An Expansion Exercise

Allowing life to touch you,

A mindfulness practice.

So welcome to another practice where I try to get out of our comfort zone and stimulate you to practice mindfulness in other ways.

In my teacher profile you might find my poetical mindfulness,

Some classical mindfulness guidance recordings,

You can also find some English,

Some Portuguese and you can also find some other techniques of meditation besides mindfulness.

This one is a little bit of mindfulness for everyday practice and it's called Allowing life to touch you.

So let's start by our classical approach by focusing on our breath,

Taking a moment to feel the sensations in our body,

Wherever you are,

If you are lying down,

If you are sitting down,

If you are standing for example in a waiting line like my podcasts about how to meditate in waiting lines,

You just feel the sensations of your body,

Practicing body awareness,

Feeling all the information that your body transmits to you,

Temperature,

Itching and scratching,

Just rest your attention in every where of your body that is sending you some kind of information.

Feel the clothes you are wearing,

Feel with mindful awareness every detail surrounding your spine,

Your shoulders and your neck mostly and in the next three breaths just let yourself go and tell your body to be aware but relaxed for the next few minutes.

So this practice Allowing life to touch you is all about the word touch.

Start for example by touching one hand on the other,

Placing your hand on top of the other and whilst you keep your attention focused on your breath,

The undulation of your body while breathing,

You feel with enormous detail the touch of your own skin.

As you know mindfulness is not only the practice of attention but the practice of full attention with kindness,

With a research attitude and with no judgment.

As you allow your hand to touch your other hand,

You also allow your mind to simply be aware of that touching and if your critical mind starts to make some kind of comparison about your skin and other people's skin,

If really that critical mind starts to talk,

Just notice and thank your mind for that alert,

For that notification and be kind,

Be gentle with yourself and feel the details of your hand,

Feel the skin around the fingers,

Fingernails,

Feel deeply the details around all your hands.

And if you can,

You might want to try to touch your face for a moment,

Your neck and just let us wrap up this first level of allowing life to touch you with this level of the body,

Okay?

Let's touch our thighs for example,

Our forearms,

Maybe our ears and allowing yourself to feel sensation of having a body just for a few seconds.

In the next level of allowing life to touch you,

The verb allow is a magnificent one to practice with.

So let's continue by closing our eyes and thinking about other people,

Other people's bodies,

Maybe a loved one,

Maybe a baby,

Maybe a child.

Take a breath and feel for a few moments a memory or some other information that you receive that you experienced while touching another human being,

Experiencing life here on the planet.

Again,

No judgments,

No taboos,

No second thoughts,

No second meanings,

Just two human beings experiencing the sensation of having a body.

So for three breaths,

Let's just stay with that intention of allowing yourself to be touched by another human being and once again,

Emerge yourself in the experience with openness,

A wonderful,

Beautiful vulnerability of being able to open myself to this experience.

Let's stay with that memory for just a few seconds.

The next level of allowing life to touch you is still a physical level,

But it's not human.

Okay,

So bear with me for a moment.

Two more breaths.

We started with ourselves,

Our bodies,

The other's bodies.

And now we go to non-human.

We can start by,

If you have a cat,

If you have a dog,

Let's allowing life to touch you through another being,

Another sentient being,

Another being that exists here in the same time,

In the same galaxy,

In the same planet and in the same country and maybe town as yourself.

And if you have your cat right now,

Your dog at home,

Maybe your horse,

Go now,

Go to him,

To her.

And for a moment,

Place your hand and feel that sentient being.

If you like birds or iguanas or other beings,

You might want to try allowing life to touch you through that sentient being with a small adaptation of touch.

Go to your canary or bird or iguana or tarantula and stay for a moment and observe the quality of their body,

Their legs,

Their paws,

Ears,

Their tail,

Their wonderful fur and stay for just a few seconds with this other sentient being,

Allowing them to touch you.

Observe the moment.

The next level of allowing life to touch you is all about the things we do.

This meditation I started to write it when I went for lunch with a friend.

When lunch came,

He started to eat,

He was very hungry,

He started to eat voraciously.

And I was kind of shocked because he was quite a spiritual and mindful eater.

But at that moment,

For a moment,

Of course,

He let himself forget for a moment about the importance of allowing the food to touch you,

Allowing the smell to touch you,

Allowing the visual image to touch you.

And here the word touch begins to expand.

And so this level is all about understanding touch not only as a physical touch,

But everything around us can touch us.

Not overwhelm us,

Not absorb us,

Not letting ourselves overflow,

For example,

In the case of emotions.

Let everything touch us like touch and go,

Touch and feel.

Not touch and stay and overwhelm,

Overstay your journey.

So this next level,

It's all about,

For example,

Food,

Thoughts,

Emotions.

We're still at the level of our city,

Our town,

Our kilometers around us.

We're still here nearby and we will overflow out of here.

But for now,

Be aware just for a moment.

Do you allow life to touch you?

Do you allow the food that you put inside yourself first to touch your lips,

To touch your tongue,

To touch your nostrils and just for a moment smell it deeply?

Do you allow the visual information to touch your heart?

When you pass by other people in the street,

Do you allow yourself to be touched by their looks?

The way they look at you,

The way you feel about them,

The emotions that arise at any given moment.

Do you allow yourself to be touched by life?

When you walk on the street,

Do you allow yourself to be touched by all the data around you?

And so we grow from this allowing life to touch you and we give touch another expansion of meaning and we expand our heart and we try to allow all life,

All human beings on the planet to touch me,

To feel the life within them.

And in another expansion I try to connect,

Expand,

Allow myself to feel all the sentient beings in all this planet,

The one I'm sure that there's life on.

Even so,

Let's expand a bit more.

Let's try to allow myself to be touched,

To be connected,

To be related to all sentient beings in the galaxy and finally in all the universe.

Let's try to be touched by all entities,

The human beings,

The sentient beings,

The plants and then the wind and then the rain and then the grass and then the sands,

All the sands and all the deserts and all the beaches and all the trees and all the florists and all the plants and all the flowers and all the world,

At least our world,

Our planet earth and all the sunsets and all the sunrises and all the sounds on the universe and all the feelings of all the human beings,

Of all the sentient beings and all the universe and you feel your heart growing because you're allowing life to touch you.

You don't have to suffer.

It doesn't have to be positive.

It doesn't have to be negative.

It doesn't have to be polarized.

You're just allowing life to touch you.

You're just allowing yourself to connect with everything,

That's it.

You're just sitting down,

Breathing and instead of looking inside yourself,

Instead of scanning your body,

Instead of listening to the sounds around you,

Your typical mindfulness practice,

You're trying to expand yourself.

You're trying to allow everything to come in connection with you and there's so much more.

Let's try one last expansion.

Let's try all the oceans,

All the rivers,

All the skies and all the clouds.

You know,

Maybe you have a memory of a photograph taken by some astronauts from the space and visualize for a moment for these last few seconds,

Visualize planet earth.

Let's leave the galaxy and the universe and come back for a moment and visualize planet earth right in front of you and you're there,

You know?

So are six,

Maybe seven billion people.

So are billions and billions of sentient beings,

All kinds of animals that breathe and feel and get scared and get happy and feel lots of emotions as you do.

And for a moment,

Let's think of our thoughts,

This wonderful complex things that our brain are evolved and complex brain,

Our prefrontal brain.

Finally,

After millions of years of evolution,

This brain can think thoughts and it can think about thinking thoughts.

This ability that's make us so special beings.

And for a moment without judging,

Let's try this enormous challenge of allowing ourselves to be touched by all the thoughts,

The billion and billion and billion of thoughts of all six,

Seven billion of human beings in the world.

And don't judge and don't say it's right or wrong,

It's good or bad.

It's just human beings,

Fabulous brains,

Fabulous beings having thoughts,

Having emotions,

Having desires,

Thinking,

Loving,

Maybe hating or maybe meditating just like you all over the world.

And to finish,

Let's stay for a few seconds,

Allowing yourself to be with yourself,

To be with life for just five full breaths.

And next time you need to just stop,

Breathe,

Smile.

You can think I'm allowing life to touch you.

I'm not escaping.

I'm not running away from my emotions,

From others emotions.

I'm not running away.

I'm allowing life to touch you.

And then I don't get overwhelmed.

I don't deny.

I don't get absorbed.

I'm just allowing myself to get touched by everything around me.

And stay with this sensation for just five breaths.

Thank you for being with me,

My dear one,

For these wonderful moments where we exercise the ability of allowing life to touch me.