Expansive Heart Awareness: Early Summer Meditation

This guided meditation draws on Buddhist awareness practices to gently expand consciousness beyond separation and into a felt sense of connection and openness. Through spacious awareness and expansion, the practice allows awareness to naturally widen and settle as an expansive heart — supporting ease, presence, and a sense of oneness without effort.

Especially supportive during early summer, a season associated with openness, connection, and outward flow.

Transcript

Hello everyone, Heather here. Welcome. We're going to practice a beautiful meditation ideally practiced in early summer called the expansion and contraction meditation. So with that, Let's get comfortable. Choose either a chair, Maybe you'd like to lie down, Or perhaps you'd like to sit up. Put something under your sit bones. So finding your seat. I'd like you to begin by allowing yourself to soften. Allow the sense of surrender. Think about the area of your hips and your belly, Your legs, Your feet, Softening and surrendering. Feeling the sense of spaciousness. Relax your face, Your jaw, Your eyes, Forehead. Allow the shoulders to come down. Just beginning to notice the breath. And again, We're not controlling anything, Just surrendering in our body and feeling a sense of softening, Letting go. Just allowing yourself to watch the breath cycles. Breathing in, Breathing out like the tidal wave of the breath. We're going to begin this visualization. Start to become aware of your body, The outline of your physical body. Notice how the outline becomes more blurry as you begin to relax. And it's a little bit more difficult to perceive where the body ends and the outside of the body begins. Become now aware of the space around your body and start to sense that you can open your awareness to beyond your physical body. Open your awareness to one side, All the way to the wall. And then do the same to the other side. Become aware behind you, In front of you, Above you to the ceiling, And below you to the floor. Expand your awareness in all directions until you are aware of the whole room. And just begin to imagine that you are able to expand your awareness, Like this outside of the room you are sitting in, To the whole building. Feeling the sense of expanding to the whole of the street, Village, Or town. And open into the space, Which is the sky, The clouds, Over the glens, The city, The mountains, Through the oceans. Allow that feeling of expansion now to the size of the whole planet. Expanding through the atmosphere, The moon, The whole solar system, Planets floating in space, Around the sun, Spiraling, The Milky Way, The galaxy. In every direction there is space. Below and above. Every direction. In every direction, The depth of space, The universe, The stars. Expanding in every direction. And then ask yourself, Do you reach the edge of space? Now, Gently allow yourself to melt back inwards, Contracting through the stars, The depth of space, The galaxy, The solar system, The stars, The moon, All the way to the planet, Planet Earth. Feel yourself gently moving inwards, Contracting your essence as you move inwards through the atmosphere, Through the clouds, The oceans, The glens, The hills, All the way through to your country. Gently drawing yourself inwards, Through your village or town, Into the building, Into this room, And back into the space around your body. In your body and into your heart. Into the very centre of your chest. All of that expansive space is gently now squeezed into the point in the centre of your chest. Relax your concentration and just be for a few breaths. Start to become aware of your breath. Feel that sense of expansion, Your consciousness expanded. I invite you to bring your hands together to the centre of your chest. Take a little bow. And I'd like to think of the millions of people on this planet that would love to be where you are right now. And with that, We have finished our practice. Namaste. Wishing you a connected, Expanded and grateful, Gratitudeful day. Have a wonderful, Wonderful day. Thank you.