When you hear the bell ring,
I want you to reflect on what brings you to This practice like what what brings you to mindful Monday?
You know,
What's your what's your aspiration?
What's your heart's intention here?
Okay,
So we're just arriving here in the present just bring your awareness down into your body and let's just touch down with our feet and notice the contact Your feet are making with the floor or ground Are you feeling the weight of gravity?
Moving now and just feeling the weight of gravity in your body holding you wherever you're sitting and This felt sense of gravity or the weight of the body On your chair cushion on the floor Through your feet through your torso lower half your pelvis I'm even feeling though the weight of your head resting on your neck and shoulders Just open to that felt sensation Letting go of any tension in the shoulders Slightly tuck the chin put a smile a slight smile on the lips turning the corners of the lips up Now imagine a smile across your forehead And smoothing out the face around the eye the skin around the eyes We give ourselves a little meditation facelift this morning And lowering the jaw relaxing releasing the tension may be moving the lower jaw side to side Let's take a big conscious Breath together breathing in through the nose filling the lungs Filling the belly all the way holding for a couple seconds at the top and then just letting it all go And now just allowing your breath to return to Whatever it wants to do But continuing to breathe in and out through your nose if you're able The mouth can sort of rest.
However,
It feels natural,
You know And close the lips,
Maybe there's there's a slight opening You don't want that jaw clenched.
It's the big thing And then then you can put your tongue if you if you need a place to put your tongue You can just rest the tip at the rough in the front of the roof of the mouth behind your front teeth Or maybe kind of just like let it go if you can And Now we rest our attention on the breath on the physical sensations of the breath I'm gonna say that again Whatever these words mean to you Just like the body rests on the cushion The instruction is to rest Your attention the mind on the physical sensations the breath either at the nostrils or The tummy your choice The nostrils to stay awake if you suffer from drowsiness This is the place of concentration And if you're sort of wound up and anxious and you're hoping to relax and de-stress then you go with the tummy Breathing in or where we're breathing in if you're at the nostrils you're Attending to the tingling the cool air as it enters and all the sensations moment by moment That are present around the nose If you're down in your belly or your tummy you're attending to the movement that rhythm As you breathe in the belly rises chest And each breath has a unique cadence or rhythm like the ocean breaking on the shore Breathing in or where we're breathing in Breathing out.
We know we're breathing now And as you breathe out you might notice how the air the temperature the air changes If you're attending to your nose And if you're attending to the tummy Again there's a different rhythm of the exhale So we bring a curious attention Sorry,
We bring just curiosity as we attend to these physical sensations Try not to editorialize There's no way it's supposed to be And so it's natural to have thoughts And when there's silence and you're practicing in silence The torrent or waterfall of thoughts can be Frustrating we come to meditation thinking there should be no such thing But it's just the way of the mind be Really sort of weird if there wasn't any thinking You wake up,
And you're just kind of like lost in planning or working or fantasizing or remembering or rehearsing or whatever It is your mind wants to do Just come back to the breath begin again Bring that slight smile We allow the breath To soothe and calm the body And we can do that as we attend to these sensations of the breath can without seeking Just open up to any subtle Pleasant sensations You're just real subtle one of the things the miracles of mindfulness is as we We develop these practice we open to The sort of natural state of contentment that I Really believe is always there in stillness It's always available to us Okay,
I'm gonna bring us in for a landing here because I want to leave a few minutes for mindful journaling Try not to anticipate You know the bow Allow the bell Come to you And just sort of resting in awareness Awareness of the body Awareness of the breath and if you got something going on That's distracting or frustrating.
You know,
You can be aware of that too.
Just bring that into awareness and try to drop the Adversarial You know posture with it accepting at this pain or this thought or Just part of this Which is part of this sit Okay
