Okay,
Let's get ready to rumble.
Moving our hips so we find that center,
That strong base.
Feet on the floor,
Hands on your knees or on your lap and the mind in the body.
Connecting with the lower part of the body.
Feet on the floor,
The bum on the chair.
I'm really bringing this curiosity into the attention to see what's here for you right now.
The right hemisphere of the brains is this curiosity to explore the present moment.
There might be this process of evaluation happening for threat as well,
But this is where the left prefrontal cortex can come in to invite us not to be judgmental,
But open our awareness,
Allow things to be just as we find them,
Just how we find them.
What's here for us right now in sensations,
Patterns of sensations arising in our physiology,
In this body here.
A lot of theory,
A lot of thinking in your day.
Thought always thinks it has the answer,
Knows how to fix things.
We're inviting that process to rest and just simply rest in this,
Let the mind rest in this body as it is,
Without needing to fix anything.
So in this triangle formed between the belly button and the two hips,
There's a small balloon which inflates and deflates as we breathe.
Let the mind rest in that movement.
In some ways,
It's an imaginary movement.
We don't really have a balloon there.
It's the diaphragm contracting and relaxing,
Opening the lungs.
Now letting this breath be natural rather than timing it.
As we spoke about last week,
The breath,
The body can be an anchor,
Anchoring us in our experience right now.
You might feel the pull of the mind to go into thinking,
Into the past or the future.
In this practice,
We're going to allow it to do that a little bit.
So we only focus on the out-breath.
The out-breath keeps the time,
Keeps the mind coming back into the body,
Into the movement of that body.
And on the in-breath,
You can just let go of the anchor,
Like training a horse.
We have to let it run a little bit,
Then bring it back in.
And that's what we're going to do with our mind.
So we're breathing out,
We focus on the out-breath.
And as we breathe in,
Just letting go of the breath and just noticing where our mind wants to go.
So we bring that curiosity to the out-breath and the curiosity to,
Where's my train of thought going in this couple of seconds before we come back to the out-breath.
And almost inevitably,
You'll forget the out-breath.
When you notice that,
A great opportunity to practice bringing the attention back to the out-breath,
The in-breath and the out-breath.
Sorry,
Mind runs,
We forget to bring it back,
And then we remember,
Bring it back to the out-breath.
It might be that a thought has some kind of emotional charge,
And a lot do.
A lot think their facts have an urgency about them,
Kidnap you for a while,
And noticing when that happens,
Noticing what kind of thought that is,
That has such power.
Come back to the out-breath.
So each time we breathe out and we focus on the out-breath,
Ground ourself,
Body,
In this moment.
And we let the mind do its will.
And then we can start to see the nature of our mind,
The loop it's on.
And the mental events need not be thoughts,
They could be any kind of mental activity.
They can be moods,
Feelings,
Things that occupy our conscience,
Our conscious.
Each time we breathe out,
Focus on the out-breath,
We open the window to witness unique tendencies of our mind.
Here we are alternating between mind in body,
Body in movement,
And movement in mind.
Mind in body on the out-breath,
Body in movement.
Then on the in-breath,
Witnessing the movement in the mind.
As we come to the end of this practice,
Seeing if you can notice this movement in the mind,
Which often can only happen when the mind is in the body,
And we're aware of body and movement,
And it helps us ground ourselves so that we can witness this movement in the mind.
In your own time,
Stretching and opening your eyes.
