Giving & Receiving Compassion

This is a 20-minute guided practice that will help you release tension throughout your body and bring healing to yourself and the world's suffering. It is inspired by Tibetan Buddhism's "tonglen" breathing practice.

Transcript

So I'm going to try to bring a sense of letting go to your experience.

Letting go of any rush or any need to do anything at all.

There's nowhere to go.

There's nowhere to be.

There's nothing to do.

All there is is your experience of the aliveness in this present moment.

Start to get in touch with and notice this aliveness.

Realizing any sound that you hear all around you,

360 degrees.

Is there air flowing from the vent in your room?

Is there any sound that you can hear outside the room?

Let the sound come to you.

As you continue to open to this aliveness,

Notice the movement of your breath.

The body is always breathing in and out.

It's always in movement.

Realizing the lungs and the chest growing with each in-breath and contracting with each out-breath.

Just watch that.

Witness that process.

And like you are a scientist studying something,

Studying a process,

Feel the air in your sinuses in your throat.

The air comes in and then the air leaves.

What does it feel like?

And then measure the distance.

Notice the temperature differential at your nostrils,

Your lips,

The air feels cool on the way in and warm on the way out.

And notice what it feels like around your eyes.

So as you bring this sense of letting go to those muscles around the eyes and the muscles behind the eyes that control them,

Soften,

Let go,

Relax.

What do you feel?

What comes alive?

What comes on board?

What comes online?

What are the sensations?

Do you feel tingling?

Do you feel warmth?

Do you feel coolness?

Soften the brow and have a smooth forehead.

Can you feel the air flowing across?

Notice what it feels like to let go of the muscles around your mouth,

The jaw,

The cheeks,

The lips.

You might even imagine the shape of a smile on your face or maybe even have a small smile.

What does it feel like?

What are the sensations?

What do you notice in your neck,

In your throat as you let go?

Letting go in all directions,

All the way around.

What does it feel like to allow the head,

The skull just to sit right on top of the torso,

Right in the middle?

Not leaning forward,

Not pulling back.

What does it feel like inside of your shoulders?

The cartilage,

The bones,

The muscles,

The shoulder blades.

What does it feel like to let the shoulders melt?

You might notice that as you make your way through the body,

The mind drifts away.

You might be planning the rest of your evening.

You might be remembering an email that you need to respond to.

The mind just continues to problem solve.

Check off the to-do list,

Plan,

Worry,

Remember.

The mind likes the future or the past.

It's difficult to stay in the present moment.

It's very difficult.

So whenever you notice that you're off in thought,

Whenever you wake up from that trance of thinking,

Let go of the thoughts and then come back to the shoulders.

So right now we're inside the shoulders.

There's always an anchor that you can come back to as soon as you notice that you drifted away.

So move the anchor now down through the arms,

Just letting go,

Noticing,

Feeling,

And then going inside of both the hands.

So right inside inhabiting the hands,

Really releasing the grip in the hands of holding on,

Trying to control your experience and how your day is going.

You can't control that.

So letting go in the hands and noticing what it feels like.

And noticing the center of the chest.

So side to side,

Right in the middle,

Back towards the spine.

Some people call this the heart center,

The heart.

It's where we carry a lot of our emotional resonance.

So just see what you find.

What are the raw sensations?

If the mind drifts away and tries to figure out what you're feeling,

If it starts to spin stories about why you're feeling something in particular,

Again,

Just let go of the thoughts.

Come back to the raw sensations in the chest.

What does it feel like?

Tenderness,

Warmth,

Pleasure,

Numbness.

What about your stomach,

Your ab muscles as you let go?

Allow each in-breath to be received by the softening stomach.

Just really let it hang out there.

There's no shame.

No one's looking at you.

Really take up space.

And then moving your mind's attention,

Your anchor down through the legs,

Relaxing,

Softening,

Noticing.

And really going inside of both of the feet at the same time.

So inhabiting the feet.

What does it feel like inside your toes as you let go?

And what does it feel like at the connection points between your feet,

Your socks,

The floor,

Whatever they're touching?

What does that contact feel like?

What about your seat in the chair or the cushion or whatever you're sitting on?

What does that contact feel like?

As you begin to expand your awareness away from particular parts of the body,

Start to notice the whole body.

It's not like you're juggling a bunch of balls in the air and trying to keep track of the whole body.

It's more like relaxing right in the center of your experience and just feeling it all.

Resting as this body.

You might notice the movement of the breath,

It's like a wave coming in and out.

And without losing sight of the body,

What it feels like,

And without losing sight of this breath,

So sort of taking a step back with your mind,

Taking a wider perspective,

Just relaxing in this moment,

I want you to bring to mind somebody that you know is suffering right now.

So this could be someone that's sick or someone that lost their job,

Someone that has to go into work,

Feels scared.

I want you to imagine them sitting across from you,

A few feet in front of you.

Imagine them in your mind.

And with each in-breath,

So each time that you breathe in,

Imagine that you're breathing in their suffering,

You're breathing in their pain,

Their difficult emotions.

And you can imagine that breath like you're breathing in smoke,

You're breathing in this really thick air,

Thick,

Dirty air,

And you're breathing it out of them into yourself.

Practice that with each in-breath.

It's almost as if your lungs are a purifier for the air,

So you're recycling the air.

And as you breathe out,

So each out-breath is pure,

Clean air,

Almost like it has ice crystals in it,

It's refreshing air.

You're breathing that back to that person.

So you're breathing out their suffering and breathing healing air back towards them.

So just practice that in your mind.

And now I invite you to just imagine all of the suffering in the world.

As hard as that is,

Just kind of out there in the distance.

And with each in-breath,

You're breathing in that pain and suffering,

And again it's like smoke,

Dirty air.

As you breathe that in,

Again you're recycling it in your body,

And then you're breathing out this cooling,

Healing air to everyone that's suffering.

Keep breathing in the suffering and then breathing out the healing.

And then finally,

I want you to imagine that with each in-breath,

You're actually breathing in healing energy.

And with each out-breath,

You're just releasing all that suffering that you collected.

It's just dissolving in the atmosphere,

Into space,

Just out in the distance.

So you're releasing all that suffering,

It's gone,

All that dirty air.

And with each breath,

You're taking in a clean,

Fresh breath of oxygen.

Just let it go.

And in these final moments before the bell,

Just feel in the body and see if there's anywhere that maybe you tensed up or you feel a clench.

You can do a little bit more softening,

A little bit more letting go.

Just stomach around the eyes,

The hands.

And with the sound of the bell,

Just open your eyes when you feel ready.