Welcome to your meditation.
I'm so glad that you're here.
I just want to start with a little reassurance.
Please know meditation is not about stopping your thoughts.
If your brain goes a million miles an hour,
Then congratulations!
You have a human brain.
That's what it's supposed to do.
All we're trying to do when we practice meditation is practice awareness.
We're noticing.
We're noticing when our thoughts have wandered away.
We're not getting mad about that,
Which is kind of a challenge because it would seem that beating ourselves up is a favorite activity of many of us.
But when your thoughts have wandered away,
Just bring them back with kindness,
Compassion,
Patience.
It kind of helps to think about your brain like it's an overactive puppy.
It doesn't do any good to get frustrated at the puppy.
Just bring that attention back to the present moment.
Keep bringing that puppy back and start over again.
And do that over and over and over.
That's the practice.
Okay,
Here we go.
Get comfortable.
Whatever that means to you,
You can lie down.
You can sit somewhere on your bed,
On the couch,
On a chair,
On the floor,
On your kitchen counter.
Really doesn't matter.
Get the spine long.
Tuck the chin a little bit so the neck is long.
Take a deep inhale through the nose and sigh it out through the mouth.
Good.
Now just breathe in and out through the nose.
And notice the sensation of your breath,
The temperature of your breath.
Where do you feel the breath most prominently?
It might be at the nostrils,
Maybe the throat,
The chest,
The belly.
Focus your attention there.
If you'd like,
You can bring a hand to the belly,
Maybe to the heart,
And feel the body expand on the inhale and contract on the exhale.
Maybe deepening the breath a little bit,
Slowing it down.
And if the mind wanders,
When the mind wanders,
It's okay.
When you notice that moment is the big win because you have brought your awareness to your thoughts.
Come back to the breath.
Don't think that you suck at meditating.
Don't give up.
Just keep coming back to the present moment with love and compassion.
Notice if there is anywhere that you are holding tension in the body.
I tend to tense up my jaw,
Sometimes my shoulders.
I notice they're up around my ears.
Drop the shoulders down.
Relax the body.
Sometimes we carry tension around in our body all day and don't notice it.
Breathe into anywhere that feels tense,
Sore,
Anywhere you're holding stress.
Breathe into it and release.
We tend to spend a lot of time either obsessing about the past,
Which can look like depression,
Or worrying about the future,
Which can look like anxiety.
So what's helpful for both of those states,
Depression and anxiety,
Is living in the present moment,
Being right here for whatever is in front of us.
So just keep coming back to the breath.
It will always be there for you.
In these last few moments,
See if there is any way you can relax a little bit more into the body.
If there is any way you can breathe a little bit more deeply.
Take one more deep breath in through the nose.
Sigh it out through the mouth.
Congratulations.
You did it.
You meditated.
There is all kinds of science behind why meditation works.
Even if you just spent the last nine minutes with your mind racing all over the place,
It's okay.
Because what we're doing is we are setting up a new habit.
The habit of coming back to the present moment over and over and over again.
So it doesn't really matter how it goes when you meditate.
Because what we're doing is we're training for the real world.
We are literally changing the structure of our brains through neuroplasticity.
We are creating more gray matter and we're shrinking the amygdala,
Which is the center of fight or flight.
So the more you do this,
The more you're going to see the results out in everyday life when you are encountering stressful situations.
So come back tomorrow.
Let's do this again.
Have a great day.
