And let's begin by bringing awareness into your breath.
Start to deepen your inhalations and lengthen the exhalations.
Taking a few full breaths in and a few full breaths out.
And starting to allow the body to relax and settle into this moment.
Giving yourself this time to be present and to be with whatever is here at this moment.
And letting the breath return to a natural rhythm as you bring your awareness into your posture.
Feeling supported and grounded.
And finding a sense of elongation or lift through the spine.
Maybe imagining a string pulling up through the center of your head to the crown of your head up to the sky.
So you have a sense of buoyancy in the neck and head and through the spine.
And allow for any areas of obvious tension to let go.
Softening the face and the jaw.
Allowing the neck and shoulders to relax,
To soften.
And allowing the abdominals and the belly to relax.
And starting to have a sense of the whole body sitting here.
Noticing any areas of contact with the surface that you're sitting on.
Maybe being aware of the clothing on your skin or the air temperature.
Feeling the weight of your hands as they rest.
Letting your awareness start to settle into the sensations of the body.
Sitting and knowing that you're sitting.
Feeling the breath as it naturally moves in and out of the body.
Having a sense of that natural expansion on the inhale.
And the smooth relaxation on the exhale.
Just taking a few moments to rest your awareness in the breath,
In the body.
No need to control the breath or make anything happen.
Just experiencing what is here now.
And now opening your awareness to the sounds in the room.
For the more distant sounds outside.
And again not needing to search out the sounds.
Being receptive,
Noticing when the sound arises.
And noticing maybe the texture of the sound,
Volume.
Noticing when it passes or fades away.
Feeling in your awareness of the sound.
And now let's turn the awareness to our thoughts.
And just as receptive and relaxing as listening to the sounds,
Can you rest in the awareness of the thoughts?
As if you're just sitting on a curb watching these cars full of different thoughts go by.
Can you observe the thoughts just as they are and just as they come up and then they fade away?
Or you could even notice when a thought begins.
Or you'll notice it right in the middle of the thought.
Or even after the thought has gone you notice that you were thinking.
And as you're watching the cars go by it might help to label them,
To note what type of thought it is that's arising or passing by.
Maybe it's a planning thought,
Making a to-do list.
Maybe it's a memory or a conversation that just happened.
Might help that as that thought arises just to label it for what it is and continue sitting on the curb and watching the cars go by.
And you might find yourself getting caught up in one of those thoughts and traveling a lot farther from the distance that you were.
And at any moment that you find yourself and are aware that you were caught up in thought,
Just return again.
And if you start to feel overwhelmed with a lot of chatter or a lot of thought,
You can always bring your awareness back to the breath or to the body.
Feeling the sensations of the body sitting here.
A way of grounding and becoming present.
And then as you feel more relaxed and settled,
Return to allowing yourself to be aware of the thoughts themselves.
You might notice what happens to a thought when you bring awareness to the thought.
And again,
If you find that you've traveled off into thought,
Into a story,
At any moment recognizing or becoming aware,
Releasing that thought and returning again.
We always can return again and again to the present moment resting in this awareness.
And now allow your awareness to return to your body.
Feeling any contact your body has with the surface that you're sitting on.
Feeling grounded in both the body and the breath.
And just noticing this quality of awareness,
Of presence,
And allowing that quality to continue as you move on to the rest of the day.
Thank you.
