Good morning.
Thank you for joining me today.
Mornings have always been my favorite time of day.
I love the gentleness,
The opportunity of a fresh start,
The peace and the quiet.
Even though when I first wake up,
My thoughts can be a bit frenzied and I can find myself flooded with worries about yesterday,
About the future,
Sometimes even about things that don't exist and never will.
When I became aware of this,
It got me increasingly bothered by my morning state of mind.
Perhaps you too experienced this and perhaps that led you to this meditation today.
Let us start a practice of helping our thoughts settle so that we can build a foundation of gratitude for the rest of this beautiful day.
Today,
Let us start with some awareness of our bodies.
Let's begin with our breath.
I want you to continue to breathe in your own natural way and simply notice the gentle rise and fall of your belly.
Feel the breeze of the air as it enters and leaves your nose or your mouth.
Let your ears focus on the soothing and familiar sound of breath filling up your lungs.
Maybe you decide to rest your hands on your abdomen and allow them to float up and down with your body's own rhythm.
No matter what we have going on in our lives,
We can always wake up grateful for the breath that gives us life.
Now I want you to imagine that that life breath you're breathing has a color.
It can be any color,
Whatever you see in your mind's eye.
For the next few minutes as you breathe in,
I want you to visualize breathing in that color.
The color does not leave your body when you exhale.
Instead,
It slowly fills the space inside of you like water filling up a pitcher.
As you breathe in,
The color fills the space starting at your toes.
Now see it filling up to your ankles.
A gentle inhale fills the color up your calves.
Now up to your knees.
Steadily rising up your thighs.
And maybe that color has now reached your pelvis.
With each inhale,
The color becomes so much more rich and deep in you.
See it now climbing your lower back,
Filling up your back,
The center of your back,
Your shoulder blades.
And as it reaches your shoulders,
Watch it flow down the space of your arms,
Your forearms,
Your wrists,
All the way to the ends of your fingertips.
Now back up to your shoulders.
Gently rising up the nape of your neck,
Your jawline,
Your cheekbones,
Your ears,
Your eyebrows,
The very back of your head,
Your forehead.
You feel this color and life filling your body and you have a gentle buzz of awareness.
This color has reached the very top of your head.
And you might imagine feeling the resistance of your thoughts that currently occupy this space.
What thoughts exist there for you right now?
Acknowledge what is currently occupying that space in your mind.
As you take another soft inhale,
Imagine the color surrounding that thought.
Like a gentle puff of smoke,
You can see your thought seep out of your body through the very top of your head while your color fills every bit of space inside of you.
This smoke of thought simply hovers like a cloud above you,
Outside of you.
Maybe now another thought has begun to emerge to occupy that space at the top of your head.
Let's observe as you take another breath and watch the colors around your thought and gently push your thought to rise out and float above you.
Focus again now on your breath and your breathing.
I want you to breathe with me.
Breathe in and out.
Let's do that again.
Breathing in and out.
Your breath occupies a space inside of you,
But it is not you.
Your thoughts also occupy a space inside of you,
But they are not you.
Breath and thoughts are the visitors of our respiratory and nervous systems and they are invited in by the very nature of our bodies and how they work.
Your thoughts fill your mind as easily as your breath fills your lungs and just as we cannot control the quality of air that we breathe in each moment,
We also cannot control our thoughts.
We are not the air we breathe and we are not responsible for the thoughts that visit our bodies.
What we are are grateful observers.
Whatever the quality of air we are breathing,
It is keeping us alive.
I want you to repeat after me.
Thank you beautiful air.
Our thoughts are often the result of our brains working out problems to protect us,
To keep us safe,
To keep us alive.
Whatever the quality of thoughts we have,
The intention is protection and safety.
Again,
I want you to repeat after me.
Thank you beautiful mind for intending to keep me safe.
Let us start this day with our own intention of making conscious contact with our mind.
Let us have a conversation grounded in right now.
You can say these words either aloud or just in your head.
Thank you mind for your protection.
This morning I am safe.
I am warm.
I am cozy.
I have everything that I need.
I am grateful for how hard you work mind.
How hard you work to keep me safe.
Right now it is okay for you to rest.
Right now your rest is what will keep me the safest.
Let's focus again on the color inside of your body.
Allow the color to delight your mind.
When a thought returns to that space at the top of your head,
I want you to think of it like a small child whose turn it is to ride the wave of colorful smoke.
Allow yourself to smile as the color gently poofs this thought outside of you and floats it away on a beautiful ride.
Each new breath allows us to fill back up with a joyful color.
Let us take a minute to breathe.
Let us take a minute to be grateful.
Let us take one minute as we smile observing this beautiful process of gentleness that we have invited within us.
Let us take a minute to be grateful.
Let us take a minute to be grateful.
Today remember that you are not responsible for your thoughts.
They are but visitors and you have a choice in how you handle unexpected guests.
Today let us greet them with a smile before we send them on their way.
I hope this practice has brought a little love and light into your day and I thank you so much for joining me this morning.
Be well.
