Welcome to practice.
I'm glad you're here.
Today we are going to be practicing a brief meditation that is based on Ayurveda,
Indian traditional medicine that has been used hand in hand with yoga and with meditation for thousands of years.
And Ayurveda is the system of healing that works with the elements.
Each of these elements connect with different forms of weather,
Different forms of movement,
Even different times in your life.
And today we're going to be working with the dosha or constitution called Vata.
Vata is connected to the elements of air and ether or space.
Vata is light and changing,
Cold and dry,
Active and alert.
And in the southern hemisphere where I am right now,
We're coming into Vata season,
That season of autumn and of early winter where it's cool and dry and windy,
Where we can start to feel a little bit anxious perhaps,
Where our skin goes dry and we can feel a little bit spacey.
So for today's practice,
We're going to move through this meditation that allows us to pacify Vata,
That allows us to work with it rather than work against it so that we can move with it in a way that is creative and free-flowing and free-moving rather than untethered and spacey.
So we invite you today to come into some kind of comfortable seat.
You might have a pillow or a folded blanket underneath your bum.
And I'd like you to make sure that you are quite warm and cozy here.
So maybe there's another pillow stacked in your lap,
Maybe you've got a blanket wrapped around you,
Maybe you're in your favorite hoodie and sweatpants.
And you might even like here to rub the hands together or to rub the hands along the thighs,
Creating a little bit of heat and weight and the sensation of really being in the body.
You can either close your eyes or lower them down towards the ground.
And I invite you today to observe all the little ways in which you are moving,
Even when you are still.
Your heart beats,
Pumping blood around your body.
You're breathing,
That air,
That breath,
That prana moving in and out of you.
With that blood,
With that breath,
You have all these tiny little micro movements,
Your belly and your chest moving.
If you zoomed in,
You might be able to see your pulse flickering at your neck or at your wrists.
And then think about some of those subtler movements,
The movements of messages through the nerves in your body to your brain and your brain to your body.
The movements of electrical impulses in your brain,
Creating thoughts,
Creating motions,
The movement of your attention.
And while we can embrace this free flowing movement and thought,
We also want to be able to anchor it as well.
So I invite you now to draw your awareness down to the base of your body,
Down to the lower belly and the pelvis,
Feeling the heavy bones here,
The weight of your organs,
The weight of your physical vessel.
Feeling here this connection to the floor.
Notice all the parts of you that are connected to the earth,
Your sit bones,
Your bum,
The base of your spine.
Feel that sense of groundedness,
Of steadiness here.
And as we feel into this groundedness,
This steadiness,
Let this act almost like an anchor or a root system.
Really get to know this part of you,
The sit bones,
The tailbone,
The lower belly and pelvis,
The stable,
Strong parts of you.
And notice how even though your lungs are still breathing and your heart is still beating and your neurons are still firing,
They're doing so in the knowledge that they are supported.
They're doing so because they have this steady base from which they can move and flip and create and expand.
And know that you too have this sense of stability within you.
Maybe you feel it in your bones.
Maybe you see an image in your mind's eye of something stable,
An anchor,
A mountain,
A tree.
In fact,
A tree is a wonderful example.
Its branches sway,
Its leaves rustle,
But its trunk stays immobile and strong.
Take just a few more moments here with your awareness in this space of groundedness.
And then with this knowledge,
This feeling of groundedness and stability,
You can gently blink open your eyes.
You can shrug off the blanket.
You can remove the pillow,
And you can go about the rest of your day.
