Hello everyone,
Welcome to the practice.
I invite you to find a comfortable seat.
Take a couple of deep breaths,
Settle in and give yourself permission to not rush to be here for the next few minutes.
There is a saying,
A quote that sounds like if you want to understand your mind,
Sit down and observe it.
And in essence this is what we are doing.
And this week specifically we will be observing our mind,
We will be practicing or exploring mindfulness of thoughts.
Every meditator at the beginning of his training,
His practice,
Becomes really discouraged.
At the end of his meditation he opens,
She opens her eyes and I say like there's so many thoughts,
I cannot do it,
It's too many,
I keep thinking about stuff.
If I had a chance to speak to all of them I would say congratulations.
I'm sure you are familiar with this feeling of just being overwhelmed with thoughts and the whole idea of being silent and watch your breath and just too hard,
Too difficult.
The first win,
The first step in mindfulness is learning to see how many thoughts there are.
For many of us thoughts just you know happen unconsciously.
They just run the thing,
Run the show.
They're happening,
We're thinking,
Evaluating,
Judging,
Remembering,
Planning.
And in our practice we learn to slow down and really observe what are the thoughts,
What is it that's occupying my mental space,
My head space.
So the goal is not to stop thinking in our practice actually.
The intention is to not be lost in thoughts,
To recognize a thought,
To name it and then let it go.
Bring your attention back to feeling the body and the breath to something that's real and tangible and right here.
So close your eyes if they're open.
Recognize the posture,
Recognize the weight of your body,
Connection with the chair,
With the feet,
Connection of the feet with the ground.
See how your body feels this morning.
What does it have to say?
There's no judgment.
You're simply acknowledging or maybe it's sleepy,
Maybe it's restless,
Maybe there's a lot of energy or maybe you feel heavy,
Maybe there is some discomfort or ultimate comfort.
See if you can soften your shoulders,
Face muscles.
And as your body comes into stillness you notice the breath,
Something your body has been doing for many years already.
Your body,
Your breath is like your safe zone,
Your harbor.
Somewhere you will come back over and over again.
Exploring it with kindness,
Curiosity,
Training your attention to stay where you want it to stay.
And of course by this moment already many of you have acknowledged there's lots of thoughts.
You'll be thinking.
This is normal.
See if every time you notice that you're distracted,
You're thinking.
See if you can give it a thought,
A name.
You may whisper,
Think something along the lines of,
Oh this is me planning,
Oh this is me rejuvenating,
This is me criticizing.
And then you let go of it and come back,
Come back to the sensing,
Experiencing and really being here in this chair,
In this space.
You do it over and over again.
This is your practice.
You can dream on a 1999 you also notice that so many thoughts are just random.
It's difficult to give them names or labels so it can be just acknowledging ah this is me thinking and then you let it go or sometimes you may notice this is me thinking about the movie last night about my neighbor about the meeting.
It doesn't have to be a complex sophisticated name for the thought.
It's more like this little note of thinking and then if the name comes you sort of gift it to it and if not you're just it's enough thinking.
Now I'm coming back to what's here what's real and it's your body your breath the weight of your body the connection of your body to the chair and floor so so and for a couple more seconds for a couple more moments you keep sort of catching those thoughts that want to distract you they want to make you lost in them they want to take over and it's like you're bowing to them like I see you it's a thought you create distance between this very real what sometimes it feels like very real thought and something very important very important and the intention of this moment and you acknowledge that this is a thought it's there and you let it fly by while you're coming back coming back to feeling your body your breath your feet so in your own time you may open your eyes not rushing noticing if there are thoughts now about I didn't do well or I could have been better I should meditate more I should be more something just notice those that may accompany your practice so many thoughts are useless or they repeat themselves we learn to see those and we learn to have freedom from them some of the thoughts are important and some of them do require our attention and our brain power to explore and investigate and plan the majority of them are just there to fill up the headspace the radio wave that just keeps running so we want to understand our mind see what's there what's the contents see what's there what's the contents and once we understand our mind we may make choices and in order to understand our mind we're doing what we're doing we're sitting down we're observing it patiently now judgmentally this is your practice thank you for being here hope to see you next time
