Please be comfortable if possible.
Letting your body and also your mind and maybe also your kind of innermost feeling for what's important.
Be part of what helps you find your place in your posture.
How to let your body be and be gathered and also supported and spread enough space,
Enough support,
Enough cozy,
Enough ventilation air.
And even playing with a simple gesture like just turning your hand over and feeling how that affects your whole body and also inner state.
And then letting your hand find where it feels good to rest and letting that filter through.
And as you're letting yourself get gathered,
Supported,
Spread,
Cozy or free,
Whatever feels more appropriate to you.
Letting your hands come to rest and maybe allowing a hand to come to your chest or your belly.
What feels more like connecting to an innermost heart kind of place.
We often think of the heart in the chest,
But sometimes there might be a sense of a deep inner heart in the lower belly or maybe just on the ground.
Feeling where your heart,
Your hands might land that feels like a heart place,
If that feels helpful.
And just breathing through that heart,
Whether it's earth,
Belly,
Chest,
Hands,
Whole body,
Whole mind,
Whole universe.
So it could just be a simple hand on chest and a sense of breathing through the chest,
Hand on belly,
Breathing through the belly,
Hand on earth,
Breathing with the earth.
Letting yourself be here and be inside yourself.
Acknowledging that you're vulnerable and strong and here.
How vividly you're here as well as how slippery it is.
This here.
And just letting reality be itself,
Slippery and vivid,
Alive and ungraspable.
But right here,
Right within our ability to sense directly.
There's something that we can directly feel just now.
Warmth or coolness,
The pressure where the body meets the ground,
The lift of the heart.
With the breath.
And especially if you are feeling the chest area or physical heart as a way of connecting to a sense or quality of heart.
Perhaps just riding the way the heart swings with the breath as the diaphragm lowers as we breathe in and the heart can kind of drop in.
And as we breathe out the diaphragm lifting everything above it including the heart.
Being allowed to care,
Being allowed to feel,
Allowed to be here as you are.
And then again perhaps just allowing a more abstract or general sense of breathing through your heart.
And noticing what emotions are present.
Sometimes calling them by name,
Calling an emotion by name can be helpful.
But especially if we're really feeling ourselves on the ground and here and allowed to be as we are.
And so first getting a sense of how is the emotional life today.
If it's kind of wild and hairy then maybe first settling more into your body and feeling where is a place that feels okay in your body or maybe even good,
Pleasant.
Where feels okay or good in your body and body-mind.
And if there's a lot going on emotionally and the place that feels good or okay is also in the same area as what feels complicated or out of control or overwhelming.
Maybe finding another place that has more shelter.
Maybe lower down or farther back in your body.
Is there somewhere a sense of okayness anyway?
No matter what happens.
Is there even a sense of the preciousness of life no matter what happens?
And even though what's difficult or painful or loud is much easier to pay attention to,
Perhaps it's really worthwhile to give a little bit more time and space to feeling for this,
Maybe more of a whisper of okayness.
Or maybe there's something else than upset.
Or maybe,
Yes,
I am allowed to actually feel even more so the preciousness of life no matter what happens.
And maybe getting a sense of if there's a texture of that experience of okayness or preciousness.
Maybe three different kind of qualities that you feel in your body there or in your mind there.
Even though mind and heart might be loud somewhere and okayness that feels soft or grounded or solid or fluid,
Cool or warm,
A relief or settled or uplifted,
Quiet or silky perhaps.
What does it feel like for you?
And if emotions and thinking is loud for you today and feeling through all of that interference to something that's got some okayness in it or some goodness beyond right and wrong goodness.
And really playing with is it possible to relax anyway and feel this rather than straining or trying too hard to feel okayness or goodness.
Really playing it like a game or playing with it like you're working with clay or a dance.
Rather than work to do.
And when you would like to,
When it feels possible,
Again feeling what's happening in the realm of emotions,
Heart and mind,
Stories,
Ups and downs,
And perhaps calling it by name.
These simple human chords that we all have.
We each play our own particular music but we have this very similar instrument each of us.
Fear is here sometimes.
Fear is possible in every human being.
Happiness,
Hope,
Anxiety,
Shame,
Anger,
Ease,
Delight.
Connection,
Isolation.
Just feeling that note of emotion or mood,
The state of mind.
And often it's,
There's many layers to our states of mind.
And if we can really simplify by just acknowledging and allowing,
Yes,
In a human being there can be anger,
It happens.
It's part of this evolutionary form,
It's part of this being that we find ourselves in the midst of.
By taking it less personally,
We can acknowledge it perhaps more solidly and honestly and simply.
There's heat,
There's tightness.
Just here and here.
And gently noticing what happens in acknowledging an emotion or a mood or a state of mind.
Sleepy,
Keyed up,
Dull,
Sharp,
Soft.
We could play a game of feeling when it's possible to accurately name some part of our state of mind,
What happens.
Is there some sense of alignment with that acknowledgement,
A relief,
Ground?
Feeling the flavor slightly and then maybe coming back to a place of okayness or goodness.
And whenever you like,
Letting that all go and just the ground and the body and the breath.
And this kind of crowning of every body with life from within.
So full of life,
No matter what shape or flavor it takes.
And perhaps staying close to the ground with your mind,
Resting as if you're really resting your head on the ground,
Resting all that thinking and doing and trying to be someone else or trying to make things be different.
Resting into reality,
Not what we think it is,
But just here we are.
Reality beyond what we can think about.
Reality that we can sense,
We can kind of sip through sensations.
Heavy light here.
Letting cool be cool and warm be warm.
And just that light celebratory sense of wow,
We're able to feel.
It happens that life is able to feel these sensations just now.
Wow.
Thank you.
Being available for life sensations to be felt to arrive and leave in one gesture.
Like writing on water.
Your body and your being a wholeness within the wholeness of life.
Wholeness within wholeness.
Nestled deep and simple in this life.
For a while.
May there be peace on this earth.
May there be peace on this earth.
