Hello,
And welcome to today's meditation.
Today's meditation is awareness in three parts,
Thoughts,
Senses,
And the whole body.
I am your host,
Katie Surma.
I encourage you to find an area where you're nice and comfortable,
A place where there are zero distractions,
A place where you can find comfort and ease and just relax.
We begin with our breath,
Breathing in,
Two,
Three,
Four,
And exhale,
Two,
Three,
Four.
Inhale,
And exhale.
As you continue this breath,
I want you to analyze your body,
Seeing if there's any areas of tension,
Soreness,
Stiffness,
Aches,
Pains,
Fears,
Anything that's holding you back,
Anything that isn't serving you.
I encourage you to release it with each exhale,
Melting deeper and deeper into the space beneath you,
Feeling both light and heavy at the same time.
Let's begin today's meditation.
This meditation has two main benefits.
First,
It will help you diffuse the negative states of the mind before they can gather unstoppable momentum.
If left to themselves,
They may spiral out of control and enhance your suffering.
Second,
In an emergency,
Meditation that you can carry out in times of acute crisis or pain to soothe your suffering.
Meditation is composed of three stages with roughly one minute each.
It condenses to the main elements of the whole mindfulness program into three minutes.
A good way of viewing it is to imagine yourself and your awareness moving through an hourglass shape as the meditation progresses.
First,
I'll ask you to become aware of your thoughts.
Aware of your thoughts flowing through your mind and the sensations in your body in a broad sense.
I'll ask you to gather up your focus and focus that awareness on the sensations of the breath as it flows into and out of your body.
Finally,
I'll ask you to expand your awareness outward again to encompass your whole body and to what you find with warmth and compassion and expand your awareness out even further within the world.
The beauty of breathing and having a breathing space meditation is that it can be performed virtually anywhere.
It works equally and well at work,
Home,
And lines on the train,
Subway,
Or buses.
Wherever you feel overwhelmed,
The breathing space is awaiting for you.
Let's begin.
Step one,
Arriving.
Becoming still wherever you are,
Either lying,
Sitting,
Standing,
Choosing a posture to be as comfortable as possible,
Giving you some space to wiggle around if you need to.
And when you're ready and if you feel comfortable,
Lightly close your eyes and bring your awareness to whatever is going on for you right now.
Giving your weight up of your body to gravity and allow your weight to sink into points of contact between your body and the floor,
Chair,
Bed,
Or space beneath you.
Whether it's just your feet or your buttocks or your back or all three.
What sensations are there right now?
Are you noticing any tension or resistance to painful or unpleasant sensations?
If you are,
Gently turn towards them and accept them the best you can.
If you begin to tense around the breath,
Then let go just a little bit with each out breath and soften into gravity.
As you soften,
Noticing any thoughts that arise and pass away through in the mind,
See if you can let them come and let them go without becoming too identified with their content.
Looking at your thoughts,
Not from them,
Just observing them as if they were clouds in the sky.
Relate to them as they flow of mental events and remembering that thoughts are not facts.
Noticing any feelings and emotions as they arise.
Can you let them come and go without pushing them away?
Those that you don't like or jumping on those onto those that you do like?
Including everything within your awareness with a kindly perspective.
We migrate to step two,
Gathering.
Allowing your awareness to gather around the experience of breath in the body.
Drop your awareness inside the breath and feel the different sensations in the front,
Back,
Sides of the torso,
Inside the torso and on the surface of the torso.
Seeing all the different sensations of all the breath as it flows into and out of your body.
Can you rest within the flow of this breath?
Setting and allowing everything to change moment by moment using your breath as an anchor.
Your awareness in the present moment in the body.
Each time you notice your mind has wandered,
Remember that you are having a magic moment of your awareness.
You've woken up but gently bring the mind back to a breath deep within the body.
And we move to step three,
Expanding.
Gently broaden and expand your awareness to include the whole body.
Feeling the weight and the shape of your body as it sits,
Stands or lies.
Feel the breath in the whole body and imagine you are breathing in and out in all directions.
Three hundred and sixty degree breathing.
If you have any pain or discomfort,
Make sure your awareness stays open to include this with a sense of compassion.
Soften that tension and resistance with each breath.
Cultivating acceptance for all of your experience and befriend it.
Broadening your awareness even further to become aware of the sounds both inside and outside of the room.
Being aware of the people around you.
Imagine expanding all of your awareness outward to include all humanity.
Imagining the whole world breathing.
Now you gently open your eyes and move the body.
As you rearrange and move with the activities of your day,
See if you can carry the awareness that you have cultivated within you.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Remembering that the warrior inside of me sees and honors the warriors inside of you.
Namaste.
Again I am your host Katie Sarma and I thank you for attending this meditation today.
