Just breathe normally.
Namaste and welcome to the first of five sessions of awareness.
My name is Leslie and I am simply a facilitator on this beautiful journey.
These sessions are targeted towards all those who are interested in starting a meditation routine or getting into present moment awareness.
They are targeted towards people who are not able to find the appropriate time or the place to get into the experience of awareness.
Meditation is a personalized journey and the aim of these sessions is to introduce you to some basic ways to meditate with the aim of increasing your awareness.
Let's now take a deep breath.
It doesn't matter if you are sitting,
Standing or walking.
You can do this anywhere.
So breathe in through your nostrils as deep as you can and then release the air slowly through your nostrils.
This is the single breath of consciousness and while you have taken this breath you are deeply connected to the present moment.
Take another deep breath in through your nostrils as deep a breath as you can and then release the air slowly through your nostrils.
This breath is your shortcut to consciousness.
Use this singular deep breath when you feel yourself stressed,
When you feel confronted,
When you are feeling anxious and when you want to release attention or just when you want to get a feeling of peace.
A single focused breath like this one enables you to create space,
To ground yourself,
To create focus and in turn clear your mind in order to deal with whatever issue presents itself to you in the current situation.
Use this as many times as you feel necessary and with that we move on to a short five minute meditation.
I call this the five minutes of connection and this will be two minutes of breath awareness and three minutes of thought awareness.
In this session I will keep guiding you but you can practice this awareness meditation whenever you have a few minutes available.
For the first two minutes we will just breathe normally and be aware of our breath as it passes in and out of our nostrils.
Then we move on to three minutes of thought awareness where we will simply sit and breathe normally with our eyes closed and just observe our thoughts.
We will start and stop the meditation at the sound of the bell.
So let's take a breath in and start.
Breathe in and out comfortably and feel the air passing in and out of the airway.
If you lose focus at any point come back to your breathing.
Just relax and breathe in and out.
Simply feel the air passing in and out of the airway.
Just breathe.
And now we will move on to three minutes of thought awareness.
We breathe normally the same as before.
When you catch yourself thinking,
Acknowledge the thought and come back to your breathing.
If you hear a sound,
Simply acknowledge the sound as sound.
The thoughts will come.
Don't dwell on the thought.
Just acknowledge it and let it pass.
If you feel an itch,
Acknowledge the itch.
Don't try to fight it.
If you get distracted with anything around you,
Acknowledge the distraction and the turn back to your breathing.
Thoughts will keep coming and the mind will keep drifting.
As you begin aware that your mind is drifted,
Simply acknowledge this and the turn back to your breathing.
Just breathe and be the observer.
Just observe yourself as you are and let the thoughts pass.
That brings us to the end of the meditation.
Keep breathing normally and stay in this feeling that we are experiencing at the moment.
Our thoughts are meaningless.
They are either about something that happened in the past or about something that may or may not happen in the future.
Don't spend your energies worrying about the future.
No one has seen the future.
You may make the necessary plans for the future but worrying about something that may probably not happen in the future will only drain your mind.
In the same way,
Don't dwell on past thoughts.
Thoughts,
Hourly thoughts,
We don't really know why they occur but when we dwell on thoughts long enough,
We give them energy and this energy empowers the thought and changes it into an emotion.
Staying with the emotion long enough creates feelings and these feelings when held on to tend to manifest in the physical body as pain and is calmly experienced in the lower back,
In the neck,
In the shoulders and in the base of the head.
Don't dwell on your thoughts and with practice you can stop dwelling on your thoughts and when you do that you stop giving thoughts they are undeserved power.
You will then be completely available to experience the present moment.
So let's take another deep breath.
Breathe in as deep and long as you can and then release this breath slowly.
Practice the short meditation when you feel the need.
This is the beginning of your journey.
Namaste.
