Today we're going to do a practice on letting go.
I'd like to redefine that aspect of letting go and maybe talk about it like hold and release.
You know there's a term in yoga called Samadhi and a lot of people talk about this in kind of lofty sort of mystical terms connecting with the divine and higher levels of concentration and having magical powers but I'd like to be practical and to say it's like coming home to oneself and one of the qualities of Samadhi is letting go but not just dropping but letting go into the present moment and it's about letting go into your current immediate experience and sometimes our experience feels good and sometimes our experience feels a little bit uncomfortable or even painful so let's try and work with that.
So get yourself settled and you might be sitting on a cushion or you might be getting yourself comfortable in your chair and you can close your eyes here if you're very comfortable with your eyes open and you work that way in your meditation then just work with whatever is comfortable for you and just take a few long deep breaths in and out allow yourself to kind of arrive here I mean you're physically here but just allow the process of breathing to bring all the other layers of yourself to this moment.
So let's get settled and just making some small adjustments bringing a sense of vitality into your spine just lifting out of your lower back maybe checking in is the nose in line with the navel softening behind the back of the neck those really small neck muscles bringing your attention down into the seat of your pelvis slightly just bringing the weight evenly into both sit bones and even though we're not you know symmetrically balanced like this let's see if you can just find a little bit of a balance between the left sit bone and the right sit bone softening now into your jaw and your jawline and again into the sides of the neck and the back of the neck bringing your attention to the back of your skull and notice if your eyes tend to go there do you ever notice that maybe the eyes this is their function so even when we close our eyes sometimes the eyes are still visualizing see if you can soften that a little bit and more sense and feel the back of the neck and feel the sensation of the back of the skull slowly relaxing into that relaxing into the whole body down into the torso feeling stable creating a strong foundation relaxing into the spaces between our ribcage exploring and just investigate investigating the sensation at the back of the ribcage and at the front down into your diaphragm on your abdomen bring your attention a little lower and feel the hips the hip joints how are they today into your thighs and into your legs and your feet I want you to become a little aware of the sensation of bracing tightening and holding the places where we contract we hold a little bit in our muscles see if you can bring your attention there to see if you can release loosening a little bit on your exhale into these places sometimes we feel tight in our upper chest almost like there's a weight on the heart or in the shoulders and deep into your shoulder joints again notice the bracing and the contracting the gripping see if you can loosen just a little bit on your exhale muscularly on each exhale there's a softening almost like the body was dissolving outwards now we do this with patients so we cultivate patients because we don't force our body to soften and relax and intellectually we don't tell our body to relax we allow ourselves to pause and come back to the breathing and we start to let go into the breathing now so you stop and pause when you notice you're gone or you're lost or distracted you start to drop into your breath almost like the breathing was at the center of all things taking in the in breath and there's a slight pause and a holding and then there's a release there's a softening in the brain in the head maybe even a softening in your mental activity and in your thoughts everything begins with the inhale when the exhale ends everything ends too and just like that we start again beginning with the inhale and we release the exhale and of course we're not here to create a blank slate we're not robots some thoughts will come in some storylines an inner dialogue of your current problems and challenges maybe some old story that keeps playing over in your head can you breathe in those thoughts and storylines can you let go on your out breath can you let that thought go on the out breath so we drop into this present moment and this present moment is a little bit like a container all these sensations coming up thoughts strong emotions maybe distractions from outside of ourselves in our environment and yet this container has a sense of stillness and calmness to it and we don't have to engage with every thought every sensation you can just let go and the out breath just letting go into presence sometimes when we release something releases also with that mentally so maybe some discomfort or sadness or anger might come up and just label that and try not to identify with it just imagine that it's like a little visitor is just coming and then it's just leaving you dropping into this present moment coming home to ourselves allowing ourselves to come into the present moment bringing a sense of compassion and patience towards ourselves recognizing that we're on our way to samadhi coming home to ourselves you
