This is the fourth meditation of the Move Your Mind Fundamentals training.
Besides concentration on the breath and being aware of our body and sounds,
We add awareness of thoughts.
And it is always good to remember to do this with an open and relaxed mindset.
As always we start with our posture,
When we are sitting,
Are we sitting well,
Upright,
But relaxed.
And then we start with the breathing exercise.
Slowly deeply breathing in through the nose and slowly deeply breathing out through the mouth.
Now you may come back to your natural breath.
Focus your attention on your breath in your belly,
Breast area or nose area.
And we are going to count while we focus on the in and out breath.
And now we only count on the out breath.
So breathing in we don't count,
Breathing out count one,
Breathing in only aware,
Breathing out count two.
Until the number you want to count and then you start all over again.
You may stop counting,
Shifting your attention to your body,
Being aware of your whole body,
Body sensation.
What body sensation do you experience now most predominantly?
Maybe it's an itch,
Maybe you feel some heaviness,
Tightness,
Maybe just lightness somewhere which is on the foreground.
Whatever you come across,
Maybe a pain,
Then you move your attention to this feeling,
To this body sensation.
You keep your attention there till something else pops up which gets your attention and is most predominant.
Then you keep your attention there till something else pops up again.
Now you may shift your attention to listening,
Listening to the sounds around you,
Maybe even inside you,
Pure listening without doing anything with the sound.
Maybe you hear the volume of the sound,
The tone of the sound,
Maybe you see even thoughts arising when you listen to sounds,
Good to notice and then going back purely to listening to the sounds.
Now you may stop with the listening,
Moving your attention towards your thought process,
Being an observer of your thoughts and seeing thoughts come and go.
Of course thoughts have context,
They are about something,
Maybe the planning of what you are going to do after this meditation.
We try not to involve with this context,
With the planning,
Only seeing that there is a thought and probably you also see that in a few moments the thought will go away,
Disappear again,
Maybe it triggers another thought,
Ok then you are aware of that and what happens with that thought,
You just see that,
Probably it will disappear again and that's the thing we do,
As an observer we watch the thoughts come and go,
That's it.
Sometimes thoughts are visual,
Sometimes it's more like a voice in our head,
Text also,
Good to be aware of that.
After a while you might notice that you were absorbed in the context of a thought or a line of thoughts,
At the moment that you are aware of that,
Notice that you were drawn away and then gently bring your attention back in the observing mode again,
Observing the coming and going of your thoughts.
It could be the case that you don't experience any thought,
When that's for a while then you can just bring your attention back to your breath,
Following the breath for a while till thoughts arise again and then you bring your attention back to the process of observing your thoughts.
Now you may stop observing your thoughts,
Bring your attention back to your body,
What do you come across there at this moment?
Then bringing your attention to your mind,
How is it there?
Is it busy or calm?
Just being aware of it.
Note that you took the time again to work on your awareness,
Step by step we are growing on this path and let's see where it will bring us.
Have a nice day!
