So if you've got a candle that you want to light,
Go ahead and grab it and I'm gonna light my candle.
You can use my candle as a visual placeholder or you can find another placeholder for your attention to remind yourself that you are in this moment and this one and this moment right now.
And so in order to help our brains and our nervous systems remember that we're in this literal moment where we have solid ground and a very likely safe space,
We let our attention anchor into this moment in some practical way.
So it could be holding a candle,
It could be looking at a candle,
It could be feeling your feet on the ground,
Could be watching the wind,
Could be hearing a sound,
Could be smelling a smell,
Could be wrestling with a cat who's taking over your computer screen.
Something of this moment and ideally it's something that we're not trying to argue with our manager fix although Pearl's making that a little challenging right now.
But we want our attention to anchor in something of this moment that just is very simple because our brains and our nervous systems really appreciate simple and our culture does not help us often to be in this moment.
So we're gonna help ourselves by bringing our attention in some way to this moment that has some simplicity or what we call actual factualness to it.
So letting you letting one of your sense mechanisms choose for you whether it's a sense of sight that you anchor into a site that's very actual factual it doesn't need managing or fixing or you anchor into a sensation and you're sitting breathing body or into a smell that just anchors your attention that you don't need to figure out or manage or a taste could be a taste I think I got all the senses maybe I missed one but letting your attention really just find its place in this moment simply and just letting attention rest here for a little bit nothing to do about what your attention is identified just letting attention stay with what's been discovered it's simple what doesn't need to be managed or fixed and then we're letting our attention just kind of hang out there and that might be easy or it might be challenging because there's a lot of data from thoughts or images or other sense mechanisms so if you notice thoughts or the busyness of this moment just that's very understandable just gently recognize your attention is going toward not simple or past or future or managing and then gently bring your attention back to that which your attention had discovered was simple back to that anchor really inviting your attention to be to be just resting with that anchor for me for some reason it's my left hand on my desk probably because I'm holding my computer from Pearl but that's become a very simple anchoring space an experiential happening of this moment that doesn't need to be managed or figured out and I can feel that hand making contact in a very simple way in the desk and computer making contact with my hand in a very simple way I think to manage or figure out and then I can just rest with that I can breathe feel my breath that's here with that as well and then other simple things start to show up in this moment for me my sit bones show up my other hand starts to show up again it doesn't mean that there's not distraction you may have heard my cats running through the room so there's things happening whether it's in our in our thought process or in our environment and we're not denying that we're just gently bringing that attention back to what is simply or what is simple what we can anchor our attention with again and again returning to something simple in our experience so witnessing or noticing the experience of simplicity of anchoredness witnessing breath breathing our bodies witnessing the experience of being breathed by this cold breathing function that we that we have that we're born with and feeling how that breath breathes us it breathes us full of air and our bodies slightly rise up or fill up and it breathes us in a release back to the chair filling up and emptying out and again we're not trying to fight for simplicity there's gonna be and both likely whether it's distractions outside of you and your environment or distractions in your thought processes there's gonna be and bothing happening we're not trying to push any of that away we're simply trying to include some of what is simple to anchor with to experience and we can even ask ourselves the question to help point our attention towards simplicity and what what is so mundanely simple in this moment oh what does not require managing or figuring out and might be something so simple like the air on the skin or the the big toe the right big toe doesn't need to be managed or how the chair is holding your body or the bed is holding your body maybe that doesn't need to be managed because the the beds doing it the chairs doing it chairs holding us feel like gravity's got us maybe there's some part of our sitting or laying or standing even breathing body that can let gravity do gravity's job or the floor or the chair or the bed do its job and we get to soften a little bit into that experience don't have to manage it it's gonna be quiet for a few breath cycles and as we slowly start to prepare anyway for coming out of the rest I want you to really invite your attention to stay with what it had been discovered as simple and maybe that's changed for you over the course of our rest today it certainly has for me it's no longer my left hand it's now into my sit bones and I'm just as I start to let my body move a little bit and maybe let the eyes open a little bit I keep some of that attention with the anchor with the anchor of what's simple and maybe for the next bit of time as you engage more or engage differently with life to invite your attention to remember that there's something of this moment that's really simple and that can be anchored with and to return to that anchor to help your brain and your nervous system recalibrate even if it's just for five seconds or 30 seconds your brain or your nervous system will appreciate that and then when you're ready slowly making your way back to the camera here or you can just keep the eyes closed and rest a little bit longer
