Welcome to this 20-minute sitting meditation practice as part of the Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy program.
I am your instructor,
Jen Churchill.
To begin with,
Find your seat.
This can be in a chair or on the floor,
Perhaps on a cushion.
Finding a space where you can remain alert and undisturbed for this period of time.
When you are ready to begin,
I invite you to close your eyes or find a soft gaze out in front of you.
Begin to bring your awareness to the bodily sensations of sitting.
Finding contact points between your body and the surfaces beneath you.
What does it feel like to sit here?
To allow gravity to take over?
Dropping into these sensations of the body.
Beginning to inhabit your moment-to-moment experience.
Using these sensations of the body as a doorway into this moment.
And now shifting your awareness to the bodily sensations of breathing.
Seeing where those sensations are most apparent for you.
And narrowing the focus of this body breathing,
The sensations of movement in the lower part of the abdomen.
The belly or abdominal wall expanding as you breathe in.
And the abdominal wall contracting as you breathe out.
Making space for the breath.
Following the breath here as it moves in and out through the belly.
You can shift your awareness of the breath to other places in the body.
Other sensations created by the body breathing.
Perhaps air moving in and out through the nostrils.
The gentle sensation of air passing.
The recognizing of the sounds of the breath.
The shifting temperatures as the breath passes in and out of the body.
Allowing the body to breathe itself.
Allowing the breath to enter and exit at its own pace.
No need to control the breath here,
But instead letting the breath do what the breath does.
Letting the body do what the body does.
Letting the body breathe by itself.
Allowing yourself to get curious about the spaces between the breath as well.
The pauses,
The stillness that resides here.
Inhabiting this experience as well.
Bringing this attitude of allowing to your entire experience.
No particular state to be achieved or created.
Simply showing up in each moment as you are.
Now you likely have noticed that your mind has moved away from the breath.
Maybe quite far away from the breath.
Recognizing that is what the mind does.
Perhaps there's planning,
Drifting thoughts,
Or some fixation on a particular thought or topic.
Using this as an opportunity to make note of what is happening.
Being with the thoughts and labeling them as such.
This is thinking,
Thinking.
Or rehashing,
Rehashing.
Or worrying,
Worrying.
Pulling the thoughts into our awareness.
Bringing that quality of curiosity,
Of acceptance to the thoughts.
Just as we do with the breath and bodily sensations.
Dropping in to see what the breath is doing now.
Has anything changed,
Shifted?
Knowing that mind-wandering is just what minds do.
Taking an opportunity of noticing mind-wandering to shift back to the anchor of this breath.
Seeing clearly whatever is here when you return.
Returning to the simple act of breathing.
And the sensations in the body that let us know that we are breathing.
Knowing that mind-wandering thinking is absolutely not a failure or a mistake.
Instead,
It is an opportunity to congratulate ourselves for recognizing what is happening.
Recognizing the patterns of the mind.
And then taking this gentle stance of bringing ourselves back into the body,
Into the breath.
Again and again.
Continuing to show up for ourselves in this way.
This practice,
This quality of cultivating attention is an opportunity for building patience.
For bringing compassion to our experience.
Starting in this very simple way.
So that we can bring these qualities out into our lives in a broader sense.
This practice of showing up with ourselves as we are.
Of building curiosity.
Of building acceptance.
Acceptance of the mind and the body doing what it does.
Showing up for all of it.
Through this practice we learn how this might serve us out in the real world.
And we strengthen these muscles of attention,
Of compassion.
Of allowing breath by breath.
No matter how far your attention may have wandered.
Gathering it back.
Back into the breath.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere to be but here.
And taking these last few moments of the practice to broaden your attention.
Let your attention move untethered.
Allowing your eyes to begin to open.
Your body to shift.
As you ease back into your day.
Thank you for practicing with me and I look forward to practicing with you again soon.
