Hello,
Lovelies,
And welcome to Wise Puppy Meditations.
In this meditation,
We are going to be doing a breath-based practice,
And we are going to be working with the metaphor of training the puppy of our mind to support the cultivation of focus in our practice,
But also compassion and understanding toward ourselves as we embark on our mindfulness journey.
We can remind ourselves that the compassion we are able to extend to ourselves puts the cap on the compassion we are able to offer others.
This brings new meaning to our practice.
If you haven't already,
I'll invite you to find your comfortable seated position,
Embodying a sense of dignity and balance in the body.
As always,
I'll encourage you to take a moment just to remind yourself of why you're here,
Why it is you're embarking on this mindfulness journey.
Maybe it's to cultivate better focus or creativity or connection to yourself and others.
Maybe it's to reduce stress and anxiety or boost overall sense of well-being.
Whatever it is,
Just take a moment to repeat it back to yourself,
And then we can take a moment to set our intention for this practice.
It could be as simple as,
I am going to engage in this practice for the entirety of its duration.
We can seal this intention by taking three deep breaths through the nose,
Inhaling and exhaling,
Allowing our exhale to settle us into our being,
Inhaling and exhaling,
One more inhaling and exhaling.
When cultivating mindfulness,
We are working to cultivate qualities such as curiosity,
Non-judgment,
Openness,
Compassion,
Focus,
A sense of grounding in the present moment,
In this moment.
And yet the tendency when we get into meditation is to notice that we're struggling with these qualities and judge ourselves even more for not already having cultivated them.
I want to tell you right now that of course you haven't.
Many of us have been conditioned to think and feel otherwise,
To judge,
To be closed off.
In these moments,
We are simply seeing ourselves through the same judgment we are trying to release.
These are learned attributes and part of mindfulness is about having faith in the process.
It can be helpful to think about training our mind like training a puppy.
I'll invite you now to bring to your own mind an image of a puppy being trained to walk for the very first time.
If the puppy in your mind is anything like the puppy in my mind,
It is all over the place.
It wants to smell everything and go everywhere and say hi to everybody that passes by.
Every little stimuli it wants to investigate.
When we train a puppy,
We teach it discipline,
But when it walks out of line or struggles to have control over itself,
We don't judge the puppy.
We hopefully don't yell and scream at the puppy.
We look at the puppy with all of the maintained love in the world and see it for what it is,
An innocent spirit that simply doesn't know any better.
We do what we can do to train it to stay in line with patience and compassion and repetition.
This is the same mentality that we bring to ourselves when practicing mindfulness,
A sense of loving understanding,
Patience,
Compassion,
And repetition.
Our focus of attention today is going to be the breath.
As we did in our last practice together,
We can start by just getting familiar with what the breath feels like in the body,
The subtle rising as we inhale,
The falling of the shoulders and belly as we exhale.
We're not trying to change the breath,
Just observing it as it is in this moment and in this moment.
To support our focus,
It can be helpful to label these breaths.
So with every inhale,
You might say breathing in or rising.
And with every exhale,
You might say breathing out or falling.
We're just observing the body,
Observing the breath.
And naturally what we will find is that the mind starts to go in a million different directions.
Maybe it starts labeling the experience.
This is uncomfortable.
I would rather be doing a thousand other things.
In these moments,
We can remind ourselves of why we're here.
We can bring ourselves back to our intention.
I'm here because I want to work on my focus and my intention is to finish this practice.
I'm here because I want to reconnect with myself or practice compassion and so I'm going to continue this practice.
Maybe the mind starts planning for tomorrow or ruminating on something that happened yesterday.
These thoughts tend to be ridden with a lot of anxiety.
It can be helpful to deepen our breath,
Really intentionally blowing out that exhale.
What we're doing in these moments is noticing as the puppy in our own mind is getting off track.
It's starting to pull on the leash and what we can do as the witness is give ourselves a tug back.
Bringing ourselves back on the path.
Mindfulness isn't simply about cultivating perfect attention.
It's also an opportunity to work on our relationship to ourselves as we naturally are unable to stay perfectly on track.
Mindfulness isn't about not getting lost.
Mindfulness is about identifying that we've lost our track,
Lost our object of attention and then gently and sweetly bringing it back.
Just like training a puppy,
We don't have to yank on ourselves.
We don't have to reprimand ourselves so strongly.
You should know better.
We just are teaching ourselves,
Just bringing it back.
Just a gentle tug is all it takes.
Just rising and falling.
As always,
I'm going to be quiet and give everyone an opportunity to practice.
Know that I am on my cushion right here,
Practicing right along with you.
We are in this together,
Just training the puppy of our mind.
Rising and falling,
Rising and falling.
We can seal our practice by dedicating the merit,
Bringing our hands to our heart.
May we be disciplined and yet understanding and compassionate toward ourselves.
May we work on ourselves so that we may be better for ourselves,
Better for the people around us,
And better for the planet at large.
Thank you so much and I will see you next time.
Peace and so,
So,
So,
So,
So,
So many blessings to you.
