Namaste.
Coming into your practice in a simple way,
By finding a place for your body that feels comfortable,
Your spine supported and relaxed.
Tune into whatever position you've chosen now,
And notice anything at all that can be adjusted to make your experience more comfortable.
Take a few easy breaths now in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Feel the way that your body resettles as it listens to its own breath.
Returning to normal breath in through your nose and out through your nose now.
The premise of today's meditation is that you are not alone.
While your life is completely unique and you are completely unique,
Your story,
It has similarities to the stories of others.
Your life is similar to the lives of each and every human being on this earth.
You and your story are one among many,
Belonging here among us.
Begin to bring the palms of your hands towards one another,
Creating Hakini Mudra,
Where the tips of your fingers are touching and the palms of your hands spread apart.
The space between your palms is like a sphere,
Rounded and open,
And bounded by your fingers and palms.
Rest this shape now in your lap or before you,
Re-relaxing through your shoulders.
Holding this Mudra to aid your concentration and balance various parts of your mind.
Focus all your awareness now on the feeling of your fingertips,
The sensation in your hands,
And lightly begin to press into your pinky fingers,
And now into your ring fingers.
Keep the barest pressure amongst the remaining fingers.
Your pinky and ring fingers hold the steady pressure without creating any strain in your shoulders or your breathing.
A light pressure remains in your other fingers.
Take a few easy breaths here,
Noticing where you feel your breath moving in your body.
Perhaps your breath moves low in your abdomen,
Belly,
And low back.
Now lighten up on the pressure between your pinky fingers and bring slightly more pressure to your ring fingers and middle fingers.
Now ring and middle fingers hold steady,
Unstrained pressure with a light connection remaining in your other fingers.
Once again,
Take a few breaths and become aware of where you feel breath in your body.
Begin to ease up on the pressure in your ring fingers,
Engaging your middle and index fingers with the rest of your fingers lightly touching.
Again,
Find your breath and notice its movement in your body.
Perhaps your breath moves wide between your ribs,
Your abdomen and mid-back warm,
Broad,
And easy.
Finally,
Ease the pressure in your lower fingers so that just the index fingers and the thumbs press strongly together,
A surge of energy in your index fingers and thumbs.
Take a few breaths noticing where you feel breath now.
Perhaps there's a feeling of a light uplift in your chest,
Collarbones,
A soft opening between your shoulder blades.
Over the next few breaths,
Begin to balance out the level of intensity in all of your fingers,
Bringing it somewhere between full intensity and light pressure.
Create an even pressure amongst your fingertips.
As you breathe in,
Feel the fullness of the space between your fingers.
As you breathe out,
Bring your fingers and the palms of your hands together,
Closing the gap.
Let your hands move with your breath,
Space opening up as you breathe in,
Space closing as you breathe out.
Take a few more rounds of breath,
Aware of sensations in your hands.
Now rest your hands back in your lap or by your sides,
Finding a natural position,
Bringing awareness now to the quality of breathing happening within you.
When your mind moves away from your breath,
More often than not,
It moves to a concern,
A problem to be solved,
A plan to be made,
Some behavior already passed for which you have regret.
Your mind can also move to rest on the celebration of a recent achievement or a daydream of being somewhere pleasant wherever your mind moves.
Know this is the natural working of the mind.
We'll use your next thought as an example.
Follow your breath until you find your mind wandering.
And the next time a thought comes along about you,
Your life,
Your story,
Witness it happening.
Hold this thought with tenderness.
As you hold this thought,
Know that somewhere,
Someone else on this planet can identify with it.
No one has been exactly where you are at exactly the same time,
But it's very possible that someone at some point has faced a similar thought.
And so you breathe in your story unique and you breathe out one story among many.
Breathing in your story,
Breathing out one among many.
Breathing in your story,
Breathing out one among many.
As we move into silence and my voice goes away,
You can stay with whatever part of this practice keeps you most present.
You might reconnect your fingers to feel Hakini Mudra or follow the feeling of your breath within your body.
Perhaps you'll repeat the silent phrase,
My story,
One among many.
Before you choose,
Know that you will not be sitting alone.
Two players to call out.
The poet Mary Oliver writes of your belonging to something great and mystical in her poem Wild Geese.
She writes,
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair,
Yours,
And I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
Over the prairies and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese,
High in the clear blue air,
Are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
No matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese,
Harsh and exciting,
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Thank you for taking the time to practice today.
Your story makes us more complete.
