Ascertain I I Today we're going to do a grounding meditation.
First I'd like you to start by just connecting with your breath.
Take a moment to just settle into your breath.
Starting to just notice its rhythm.
Perhaps noticing the coolness of the air as it passes by your nostrils,
Through your mouth and into your body.
The warmth of the air as it exits your body on the exhale.
Perhaps just take note where your breath is stopping in your body today.
Maybe it's stopping at your throat or your chest.
Maybe it's getting all the way down into your belly.
Wherever it stops just take a moment to notice the rise and fall of your body,
Each breath.
Now shift your attention to your posture.
Ideally you're sitting in a chair,
Your most meditative stance,
With your feet on the floor.
Checking with your spine,
Make sure it's straight but that you're not straining.
And same with your neck.
Relax your shoulders,
Perhaps just bringing them to your ears,
Rolling them back and dropping them back down again.
To help them relax if necessary.
Next check in with your jaw,
Make sure that it's not tight,
Restraining.
Make sure your tongue is just resting in the floor of your mouth.
Perhaps just touching the backs of your teeth.
Your eyes can be closed or just slightly open,
Looking down at about a 45 degree angle with your gaze soft.
Notice the position of your hands,
Either palms down resting on your knees,
Or perhaps you have one hand inside the other with your thumbs touching.
Finally I'd like you to really start to pay attention to the feeling of your seat in the chair.
Notice the steadiness,
The support that your sit bones feel resting on the chair.
Just the weight of the contact between your bottom and the seat beneath it.
Now take a moment to move your attention down to your feet.
Particularly focus on the soles of your feet and the connection of your feet to the ground.
Just notice the feeling at the soles of your feet.
Perhaps it's cool,
Maybe it's warm,
Perhaps you can even feel some of the energy that exists at the bottom of your feet where it connects with the floor.
Now that you feel connected with the feeling of your feet against the floor,
You can just start to imagine what's underneath the floor.
Imagine the floorboards or carpet beneath you.
Imagine the layers of concrete and steel that make up the flooring that's holding you up.
Imagine all that goes into the foundation of the building.
Imagine the thickness of that concrete and metal providing support for you and where you sit.
Imagine the ground beneath the foundations of the building.
Imagine the layers of soil and clay,
Stone and rock deep into the bedrock.
Layer upon layer of rock providing steadiness to the building within which you sit.
All those layers supporting you,
Steadying you,
The chair that you sit in and your feet on the floor.
Now start to imagine yourself as a mountain.
Perhaps your head is the peak of the mountain,
Your arms and your shoulders and your torso forming the width of the mountain,
Slopes of the mountain and the lower half of your body from your seat down to your feet forming the wide base of the mountain.
Start to imagine the heaviness of yourself as the mountain.
Go still and sturdy,
Be that wide base of the mountain providing unrelenting stability.
One with the ground beneath it,
Beneath you.
Wide base moving into the ground,
Rooted all the way down through that rock,
Bedrock.
From the tip of your head down through your base continuing into the ground.
Like any mountain,
Imagine all the changes that happen around it in any given day.
Perhaps first you start to imagine the sun rising,
The front of your body,
The front part of your slope catching the sun rays.
Still cool from the night being warmed by that sun.
Purifying light starting to be cast over the whole front part of your body,
Front part of that front slope.
The sun continues to move overhead spreading its light directly above you,
Even warmer the higher it rises in the sky.
Moving behind you,
Creeping into the shadows that may have existed there before,
Allowing you to release any of the negativity or darkness that exists within those shadows.
Replacing it with the pure white light of the sun as it moves down your back,
That back slope of the mountain.
If your mind wanders on your next inhale,
Just notice it and label it whatever you like.
Be it thinking or planning,
Worrying,
Frustration,
Whatever it is for you.
Just give it a label and then come back to the exercise wherever you're at.
Perhaps just take a moment to notice how still you are as the mountain,
How strong and unwavering you feel.
As storms may come as they will,
There may be turbulent around you,
There may be sleet or rain or hail,
There may be snow or gale force winds just pounding the surface of that mountain.
Yet the mountain doesn't change,
The mountain is nothing more than a mountain.
You remain steady,
You remain still,
No matter how turbulent storms of life may feel.
Even through the changing seasons,
The mountain remains still and steady,
Always true to itself being nothing more and nothing less than a great mountain.
In the summer,
It's warmed by the sun,
The heat beating down on it.
In the winter,
It's covered in a blanket of snow.
In the fall,
Winds start to blow.
In the spring brings rains,
Feeds streams and waterfalls that channel their way down your body and into the ground.
Yet no matter what the season,
No matter the changes that the mountain sees,
It remains still.
It remains steady and just remains true to itself.
The mountain is unfazed by these changes and the turbulence around it and it continues to just be,
Observing the changes,
The timeless stillness,
Allowing any of life's chaos to just roll down its slopes and off into the distance.
Perhaps you begin to notice that you are a mountain amongst a range of mountains.
Expand your view to notice the other mountain peaks that stand with you.
Perhaps these are the peaks of the people that you love,
People that support you and show you love in return.
Notice their steadiness,
Their stillness around you as you stand strong as a range of mountains.
Finally,
Take one last moment to really connect that sense of stillness and steadiness and deep grounding of that mountain.
Imagine when you begin to open your eyes and go back to regular life,
You'll be able to hold on to that feeling of steadiness,
To ground yourself in that sense of being a mountain.
Bring that stillness and just sit in observance of all the changes and turbulence that have happened around you,
Not feeling waivered by them,
Feeling confident that you will just be who you are throughout.
With that,
I'd like you to ponder the question,
What do I now know?
What will I take away from this experience?
And continue to contemplate the answer to the question,
What do I now know?
As you hear the meditation bells,
On the third bell,
You can open your eyes,
Come back to the room.
The first bell is to the right,
The second bell is to the left,
The third bell is to your left,
And the third bell is to your right.
