Taking a few deep breaths in here to get settled.
Breathing in through your nose,
Sigh it out through your mouth.
In through your nose.
Out through your mouth.
Ah.
And you might notice here.
If you need to move your posture at all.
Rolling your shoulders up and back.
Back.
Scooting your hips,
Maybe forward or backward on the surface that you're on,
Where you can feel upright and alert.
But still comfortable and not efforting too much.
Gently tucking your chin in and elongating the back of your neck.
And again,
Bringing your attention to your breath.
This time just noticing what feels most natural for your breath.
Noticing today in this moment where it's easiest to rest your attention with your breath.
Maybe it's at your nostrils.
Your nose.
Cool air coming in.
Warm air going out.
Maybe it's the sound of your breath.
Quite literally the inhales and the exhales.
Or maybe you're wearing headphones and it's kind of reflecting the sound back to you in a different way.
Maybe it's easier to notice the gentle rising and falling of your chest or your belly.
The movement might be so,
So subtle,
Or it might be a little more pronounced.
And maybe as you checked in with all of these places,
You noticed your attention moving from one to another.
That's okay too.
Mindfulness doesn't always require us to keep our attention locked in one place.
It's simply asking us to be present with where our attention is at that moment.
Finding one of those places to rest your attention and notice what happens with stories in the mind.
Or maybe getting pulled into other sensations.
When you notice that you've wandered from resting your attention in that one place,
Can you just come back?
Kindness,
Softness.
Just always coming back.
So let's practice in silence for a few minutes,
Just resting our attention with our breath,
Wherever it feels most comfortable to you.
And if there's some other place you'd like to rest your attention instead,
That's totally fine too.
Noticing where your attention is here.
Noticing too,
If you have any kind of judgment about how well you did or how distracted your mind was,
It's not necessary to hold on to that.
The practice doesn't ask for perfection,
Rather,
It's just asking us to flex the muscle of attentiveness,
Of mindfulness.
Taking a series of deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth,
You can breathe in softness.
Breathe out judgment.
Breathe in kindness.
Breathe in happiness.
Breathing out criticism.
Breathing in happiness.
Breathing out perfectionism.
Breathing in ease.
Breathing out rigidity.
Breathing in peacefulness.
Breathing out tension.
Breathing in joy.
Breathing out any doubt or worry or anxiety.
Letting your breath here return to its natural cadence.
As you breathe in and out,
You might imagine the exhale coming out through the bottom of your feet and the crown of your head simultaneously.
Breathing in through your nose.
Maybe out through your nose too,
Imagining that air going up and down.
Breathing in.
Breathing out through your feet and the crown of your head.
Breathing in.
Gently letting go of that visualization,
That effort.
Letting your breath be soft.
You might put one hand over your heart and another on your belly.
Noticing that gentle pressure,
That contact.
You might feel your soft breath just gently moving one or both of your hands.
Let's see if you can encourage your breath to be really low and deep in your belly.
Thinking yourself or taking the time to be with your breath.
It's so easy to get wrapped up in our day,
But the beautiful thing about our breath is it's always with us.
You can come back to this practice anytime,
Even just for a moment.
When it feels like the right time for you,
You can let your hands rest back in your lap.
You can gently blink your eyes open if they were closed and come back to the space.
