Welcome to this session,
Effort and Ease by Kirsten Dossel,
Still Potential.
The intention through this session is to notice how both effort and ease are sensed in your body and your mind so that during your daily activities you can be increasingly aware of your state and perhaps be able to choose wisely for each situation.
Through this dialogue a variety of techniques and practices are offered with the overarching thread of effort and ease awareness.
This can be performed in sitting or lying and as always a supported symmetrical position of comfort is advised.
Begin with confirming your intention to remain awake and alert throughout.
It is here we first encounter the concept of effort versus ease.
Too much ease and you may fall asleep.
Too much effort and the session becomes stressful.
Rather than efforting to remain alert I invite you to gather curiosity to hold your attention.
A feeling of interest in your moment-to-moment body and mind experience.
A noticing of the different state between effort and ease.
Focus as a result of desire to inquire further is quite different to focus held with effort.
Check that you sense ease in your body as you tweak your chosen position.
We begin this session with eyes open.
Notice if your mind is busy with distracting activity and if you can imagine easily catching those thoughts that are juggling in your mind and put them to the side just for now.
Contemplate a sense of openness and anticipation for what is to follow.
To further anchor into this moment we check in with the sensory experience.
This helps to leave the thinking mind to rest with ease.
Take your attention to your sense of sight.
Without moving your head search your visual field for tiny details as if you have to remember this image in front of you.
Notice efforting.
Now soften your gaze.
Sense a widening of your visual field.
Perhaps even releasing muscles around the eyes and allow images and colours just to come to your awareness.
Sense that you are looking from deep within.
Notice perhaps even the breath lets go.
Now narrow your attention to an item that has caught your interest and investigate it with childlike wonder.
No efforting,
Pure interested curiosity.
Notice the difference.
Now let that go and allow your eyelids to drop gently closed.
Begin to notice the sounds in your environment.
No efforting here.
You are not trying to hear anything at this moment.
Just allow the sounds to come to you.
No need to place them in a story or to try to recognise them.
Just let them waft around you.
Now listen for a sound with searching intention.
Notice that difference.
Let that go and adopt a sense of simply roving around the auditory field and if there arises a sound be curious.
Focus here momentarily.
Perhaps noticing the tones,
Other aspects of the sound.
Let that go.
Efforting,
Ease or curious focus.
Now let your attention move easily to your sense of taste.
Ensure your tongue is in a position of ease.
That is the tip of the tongue behind the top teeth and the rest of your tongue fat and soft in the bottom of your mouth.
Luxuriously take note of taste or flavour.
Notice the soft moisture inside your mouth.
There is generally a sense of ease as we notice the sense of taste.
Let your interest move to your sense of smell.
Draw in a little deeper breath and notice any scent.
Simply becoming aware of what is present.
No effort or searching.
Check in now with your mental activity,
The busyness of your mind.
Allow it to be as it is.
Is there a tendency to want to effort more,
To move faster from one aspect of this dialogue to the next?
Notice the speed of your mental activity and give it free rein.
No need to feel you have to be slowing thoughts or resisting thoughts.
Loosen the expectations into ease and allowing.
Register your mood or attitude and again no judgment.
Allow it to be.
We have a full range of emotions and moods.
Happy to sad,
Bored to agitated.
Acknowledge and be easy in the knowledge that moods come and go.
Right now give yourself permission to reduce effort around how you feel right now.
No need to adopt a particular socially expected mask for your emotional mood.
As you do this you may recall a time or perhaps many times that you have efforted your real emotions away.
You may recall just how much effort that takes.
Here and now allow your emotion and mood to be as it is.
Sense the ease in that allowing.
With a sense of wide expansion open to all that you are aware of in this moment.
Release the boundaries and notice your senses your mental activity,
Your emotions.
Noticing just how it is for you right now.
All is welcome.
No holding back,
No resistance.
Take your attention now to your physical body and as we move through each muscle group we'll call up a small amount of muscular effort and then release into ease.
Begin by noticing your forehead.
Gently tighten into a small frown and then soften and smooth the muscles of the forehead.
Take your awareness to your scalp and imagine tightening a little as if you had a tight headband or hat.
Then loosen and soften releasing almost around every hair follicle.
Trickle your awareness to the muscles at the back of your neck.
Tighten a little there.
You may recognize this area of tension and then release and melt.
Head feels heavy if you're lying down or perhaps light if you're sitting.
Trickle your awareness now to your eyes.
Increase the tension closing a little more and then soften and release.
Allow your eyeballs to sink deep into the sockets.
Notice the muscles of facial expression now and tighten a little into a frown around your mouth.
Soften and let go into ease.
Let your jaw unlock and drop back tongue in the bottom of the mouth.
Notice your shoulders now.
Drop them slightly down and away from your ears and let go and let them go again.
Imagine a load being dropped from the shoulders.
Sense ease and melting in the head and neck area.
Just as ice melts to water allow the muscle tension to melt away.
Take your awareness down your arms left and right.
Very gently in the position that your arms are in.
Add a little tightening,
A little effort and then drop into ease.
Imagine switching off powering down the muscles of the arms.
Notice your hands and stretch out fingers and thumbs.
Feel the tightening,
Let go and release.
Fingers probably come into a curled position of comfort.
Sense a softening in your palms.
Take your attention to the muscles down either side of your spine.
Ropey muscles tightening them now,
Sensing effort.
Then dropping into release and ease.
Surrendering to the support.
Notice your belly drawing a little.
Feel the effort let go into softening.
Notice the belly perhaps moving with breath.
Tighten the buttocks,
Efforting.
Let go into ease and release again.
Take your attention to the large thigh muscles left and right and just in the position that you're in tighten the muscles around the bone.
Then let go.
Allow those big muscles simply to hang off the bones.
Take your awareness down to the lower legs and by bringing your feet up towards your face sense activity in the front muscles,
Stretch in the calf muscles.
Then drop,
Let go.
Feel the ease.
Now slightly tighten your toes,
The muscles in your feet.
Feel the building of efforting.
Now drop,
Release and soften into ease.
Sense your whole body in ease.
Draw your noticing to your breath now.
Observe the natural pattern.
If it is comfortable for you and if you have healthy and normal lung function,
Now add a little effort to your next out breath.
Make sure you breathe all the air out completely from your lungs and you can add abdominal muscle tightening to help empty the lungs.
Then release all effort,
Let go and feel the ease with which your body refills the lungs and breathes itself.
Repeat this.
Follow your out breath as if you were blowing out the last candles on the cake.
Feel the tightness in the belly muscles helping you to empty the breath completely.
Let go the effort.
Feel the ease of the breath in.
Now come back to your normal pattern of breathing.
No effort,
All ease.
Now we swap this exercise.
Let the breath fall away in its own time and then purposefully draw in belly,
Mid-chest,
Upper-chest and let the air pour away and do this again.
Ease with the breath out,
Effort and purpose to your in-breath.
And now let your body come to its own rate and pattern.
Total ease.
Follow the easy rhythm and tide of your breath.
Now let the body focus go.
The breath looks after itself,
No effort required.
Your heart continues to beat,
Your organs continue to function.
No effort.
Now move to watching your mental activity.
Your thoughts may arise as an image or dialogue or both and as you become the audience to the film and soundtrack of your thoughts,
Let them be free.
Your observing self is alert and noticing.
You may wish to label as you observe the free fluid run of your thoughts.
Perhaps you receive a thought or a sensation from your internal body,
Hunger,
Recognition of temperature,
Perhaps a physical sensation like an itch or discomfort.
Perhaps a memory pops up which may lead on to an emotion.
Perhaps you recall you have something to do in the future.
You may have silly thoughts,
The flying pig style.
Simply watch the ebb and flow of your thoughts with ease.
No grabbing,
No pushing away.
Constantly changing and entertaining and you simply observing and allowing.
It's likely there will be helpful and not so helpful thoughts.
If you find yourself carried into a thought,
Notice when you step out of it,
Feel that deliberate action that you can exert to step out of a thought.
How does it feel to disentangle again and become the audience?
Notice that this is the training and here there is some effort.
And now let that go.
We move to loving-kindness.
Begin by bringing to mind someone or perhaps an animal who you enjoy showing kindness toward.
It's probably fairly easy to bring an image of them to mind and notice the emotions as you do so.
You may feel a sense of openness,
Kindness,
Joy,
Interest.
And as you contemplate this person,
Send them the wish.
May you be filled with loving-kindness.
May you be well.
May you be peaceful and calm and may you be happy.
And notice the ease with which you do that.
Let the image of that person fade and bring to mind someone who is neutral to you,
Perhaps a work colleague or someone that you come across in your daily lives.
Imagine this neutral person in your mind's eye.
Notice perhaps the emotions that they evoke in you and if you can offer them that same wish.
May you be filled with loving-kindness.
May you be well.
May you be peaceful and calm and may you be happy.
And with kindness to yourself,
Notice whether there was more efforting in that offer.
Let the image of your neutral person fade and bring to mind someone with whom you're having difficulty at present.
This may be someone who is close to you.
Sense how bringing that image to mind makes you feel in your body and then again offering those words.
May you be filled with loving-kindness.
May you be peaceful and calm.
May you be well and may you be happy.
And notice ease or effort.
No judgment here,
Just noticing.
Let the image of that person fade and now come back to yourself.
Can you offer yourself loving-kindness?
For some this is easy and for others there is a sense of effort.
You may wish to put your hands on your heart or your belly and offer yourself those words now.
May I be filled with loving-kindness.
May I be well.
May I be peaceful and calm and may I be happy.
You can allow your hands to stay in that position or return to the symmetrical position.
And just imagining now as you rest there,
Sensing your body at ease,
Noticing your soft breath.
What if there was nothing to chase after?
How would it feel?
There's nothing to resist,
Nothing to look for.
How would it be in this moment to be completely at ease?
Sense this in your body and imagine your mental activity,
Your mind like a snow dome where the glitter has come to settle.
Rest in to this sense of ease.
As you begin to transition now,
Draw in a little deeper breath.
Sense the effort.
Begin to stretch and move and take with you more awareness of effort and ease into your day.
Thank you.
