Day 3 - Just See - Unified Mindfulness 30-Day Challenge

This short meditation with lots of guidance is part of a 30-day Unified Mindfulness challenge I offered at CarMax, and am now happy to share it with the Insight Timer community. The 30 sessions are designed to be done in order, however you can jump around if you wish, just keep in mind I may refer to a previous recording. There's a short introduction followed by a 5 minute practice.
This session is focused on what you can see - including external sights or mental imagery.

Transcript

Today we're focusing on visual sensations.

So we'll keep our eyes open to explore physical sights,

And we'll also include in our focus range any mental imagery that arises.

Mental images are pictures or visual forms in your mind.

They often appear in the space in front of or directly behind your eyes,

And they may be vague impressions or detailed pictures.

So we'll let anything we can hear or feel be in the background today and focus on what we see.

We'll call this technique Just See.

Lengthen your spine and relax your jaw,

Your shoulders,

Relax your hands.

Keep the eyes open,

Or at least partially open.

Bring your attention to what you can see.

Let your attention float until it settles on a particular sight.

Acknowledge that you're seeing that.

Label it as see with that calm neutral tone and focus intently on it.

If it disappears,

Just move on to the next sensation.

Stay with each one for a few moments if it sticks around.

Bring as much clarity as you can to each sensation,

Detecting all the minute details you can.

Gather all your attention onto each visual sensation,

One at a time.

You can zoom in by focusing on very small spatial areas,

Or zoom out,

Taking in wider areas of vision as a single scene.

You could even bring your attention to the entire field of vision all at once,

Perhaps exploring the borders of where your peripheral vision ends.

If you lose track,

Just gently return to exploring visual sensations.

Remember to use your labels to help stay focused.

Use stronger labels if you need more help concentrating.

That could mean mouthing them instead of just saying them mentally,

Or it could mean speaking them out loud.

Continue focusing on what you see.

If anything else comes up,

There's no need to push it away or get rid of it.

Just redirect your attention.

Get used to keeping your attention in one area and allowing other sensations to be there in the background.

This will help you train to stay concentrated even with distractions present,

And it will help you to build background equanimity by allowing sensations to arise and pass in the background without you needing to do anything about them.

When our bell rings marking five minutes,

Feel free to continue on your own or end your practice here.

Take your time and allow this mindful awareness to stay with you as you move on with your day.