Gratitude & Grounding

An invitation to slowly arrive into meditation through the feeling of gratitude.
Settling inward with a comfortably longer out-breath, holding a finger, or even letting movement happen. Untying the body like a bundle of grass, resting into the back, receiving sensations and sounds, and opening to aliveness weave throughout.

When you feel gratitude, what do you feel in your body?
Jaya offers brief practice suggestions after the bell ending the meditation.

Transcript

Please feel welcome and let yourself get comfortable.

A process of arriving rather than some kind of switch that you would turn on like a machine.

A process of arriving like the shift from night to day or day to night.

Shifting into comfortable with what's here.

Shifting into being allowed to be with whatever is here in you and in our world.

The first or last time that human beings have been in unexpectedly intense times.

Shifting back and down and in.

And as you get settled,

If you wish,

It could be a good beginning just to allow to come to mind some gratitude,

Something that you feel grateful for.

That you have food,

For example.

And feeling how gratitude feels in your body,

Even if there's other stuff going on.

Maybe it's possible to feel something of the breeze or the grounding,

The embrace or the opening coolness or warmth in your body of feeling grateful.

And if you feel really not like trying to feel grateful for something,

Then maybe the relief of not having to do it.

Just feeling what relief feels like in your body if you wish.

Just for a few moments as we settle.

If you wish,

It could be settling,

Helpful for settling to let the outbreath be a bit long a few times.

Or even for two or three outbreaths to play with really pouring all of your outbreath out.

Really,

More actively pulling your belly in with the outbreath.

As if playfully you were going to try to touch your backbone with your belly button.

Sometimes it can feel that you've breathed out everything you have,

But then if you imagine,

Well,

What if we breathe out a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more?

And then just letting the inbreath come in.

If you feel like it,

It can be helpful for some people just to hold one of the fingers of,

With one hand holding a finger of the other hand.

Not in any special way,

But just having contact.

Holding the thumb or the first finger or the ring finger might be especially helpful these days.

And letting ourselves feel the contact with the ground.

And if you're feeling agitated or you feel like there's so much going on that trying to be still is a wrestling match,

It could be that allowing your body the possibility of moving is a way to settle more easily and to connect more easily with yourself and to come into a space of allowing what's here in your inner and outer worlds.

So feel free.

It's one of the great freedoms of connecting online that you won't be disturbing others in our virtual meditation hall.

Or if you feel like being still is a good way to go,

I would suggest feeling your back for a little while.

The skin.

The volume.

The bones,

The breath,

The connective tissue.

The amazing and strange sculpture of a human back.

Resting back and letting your back breathe.

And perhaps feeling the whole back of the whole body for a while.

As if you're resting in a place that you love to be.

Somewhere in nature or somewhere at home or with someone you love.

Or somewhere that you imagine.

Or just here as it is also is good.

The whole length of the back of your body that's here for a while.

An ongoing stream of sensations.

Letting your body be heavy.

Letting your body know it's here and feel it's here already.

Without doing any meditation or doing anything at all,

The body is already here.

The aliveness of the sensations is already happening.

In some mysterious way that there's a receiving of the sensations as well already happening.

Resting back and allowing your back,

The many,

Many layers of your back to have their movement and their space.

The weight,

The openness.

To spread out perhaps.

There's an ancient instruction for meditation posture that would be starting with a bundle of grass,

So grass that's been tied together.

And to come towards meditation,

We would untie that grass that's been tied together,

Untying the body.

Opening to the moment.

Allowing life to come in and allowing life to open out and to sink down and to be felt and to be juicy and to be out of our personal control.

Here we are already.

If there are sounds inside and around your body,

Near and far,

Perhaps if you wish,

Allowing your body to hear and even maybe to feel the sounds,

Letting them come.

Like a breeze along the surface of a lake or the way the skin of a horse is so sensitive.

It sometimes may shiver with the slightest touch.

Resting back and maybe finding room for everything.

Perhaps enough room for whatever thinking is going on as if it could be way out there.

And here in the body,

Enough room for everything that you feel.

It's even a sense of the body spreading a bit wider than the body.

As if we could sense a wider space in which body sensations are coming and going like writing on water,

Like the flames of a fire,

Like the breath.

Resting back and allowing the heaviness of your body,

The openness of your body.

Letting sounds come through.

Letting sensations be warm and cool and here and gone by themselves.

A mystery and okay.

You may be giving up on trying to catch all those sounds and sensations,

Letting it through.

Letting it come through,

Letting it come to and through you as if you would have your hands in a stream.

Letting the freshness and letting it flow on.

Resting back and allowing the heaviness of your body to be way out there.

Resting back and allowing aliveness to be so alive.

So beyond imagination.

Just this sensation,

This sound just here and now is already more than we can describe in many pages.

Giving up,

Commentary,

Giving up,

Deciding if it's good or bad.

Letting it all be.

What if it's okay?

Whatever you're feeling,

Whatever thoughts are there,

Whatever sensations.

What if it's not a sign that means something about you?

What if aliveness is moving as too much of this or too little of that?

What if it's just aliveness moving and is allowed?

And also,

If you're feeling that your alarm system is on high,

High volume.

How about a sense of visiting the lower body?

Do you feel your legs rounded and heavy?

Blood and bone and skin,

Electricity in touch with the earth,

Made of earth.

Do you feel your feet?

Even a little bit.

The contact with ground or air or clothing just as it is.

Just as if your feet are calling your out breath to come all the way down the legs and out your feet just for fun.

Just once or twice.

And then maybe if the alarm system is high,

If you can feel your feet for a while.

And then what would you maybe know that you need?

Some movement or embrace or openness.

And perhaps without even getting up,

Without even waking up too much your head area,

Offering that quality to yourself with the next breath.

The feeling of embrace or being met,

Being seen,

Being okay anyway.

Not needing to get it right.

Maybe you haven't been getting it wrong after all.

Maybe it's just like this.

And resting back.

Perhaps feeling your hips.

Perhaps heaviness of body and allowing what's heavy in the mind to drop to the ground as well along with the heaviness of body.

Falling further and further and more and more into just here and just now.

And what is this,

This life?

And maybe we're allowed to feel okayness even though.

There's those thoughts and feelings that don't feel so good sometimes.

And maybe we can start to wake up a different magnetic pull,

Magnetic attraction towards that okayness anyway or towards the lower body or towards the here and the now,

Towards aliveness as it is.

Breathing back and allowing a sense of the body spreading out a little bit.

Perhaps even as if the back spreads to the horizon.

Or as if that wide mind that has room for sounds and sensations wherever they come from.

Where they are.

Maybe also has room for a sense of enoughness and okayness.

Even though there's so much going on.

Even though we might feel guilty if we feel well or at peace or blessed.

Even though we might feel difficult things.

Some other sense of gravity towards here and now and okayness.

Gratitude.

Even when things are hard.

Maybe a magnetic attraction towards a sense of what's important no matter what.

Just resting back and feeling what it's like.

Maybe a sense of relief to be allowed to be open to knowing what's important even when we can't describe it or put it into words.

May our practice and our lives be dedicated to what's important.

To sensing that and sensing our way along step by step.

Sensing what's important no matter what and following through.

For the benefit and awakening of all.

And the possibility today of playing with gratitude and maybe while feeling your feet.

Allowing the feeling of gratitude to come.

And maybe even letting gratitude infiltrate unknown territory like even the possibility of feeling grateful.

To be able to feel emotions that aren't so easy but are real.

And also to feel gratitude for things that we're not sure why.

We feel gratitude for that or in the presence of that flowering weed or that connection with someone that's even not so easy but we might still feel gratitude.

And just allow to feel gratitude in sensations.

And perhaps to voice gratitude to someone today.

In simple words but specific words.

And how does that feel in your body?

To voice gratitude.

And maybe even more extreme would be to express gratitude to oneself with some gesture or word.

Thank you so much for being here.