Welcome to Meditation Rocks!
I'm Lucy.
Today's meditation we are going to be talking about controlling the controllables.
So go and find somewhere comfortable and I'll be right back.
So without wanting to name-drop,
One of my friends is the Olympian Amy Williams and she told me that her mantra all the way through her Olympic career was to control the controllables and even so much on the morning of her winning her gold medal everything was going wrong it was foggy she couldn't find her normal breakfast that she had and all she kept saying to herself was control the controllables.
So if it's good enough for Amy it's good enough for us sometimes we just need to go with the flow and only control what we're able to control.
So it's gonna be very much mantra led meditation today.
We will bring in the element of mudra as well so as we're doing it we will bring in the fingers to the thumbs but if you don't want to do that just do the mantra and stay in a comfortable position.
So let's get ourselves ready.
Popping the feet down onto the floor,
Drawing up for the spine finding the sit bones getting yourself nice and comfortable but also staying nice and alert and awake.
Give the shoulders a little roll around and draw the shoulders down away from the ears.
Take a moment with the neck just to release any tension that might be here and then if you want to you can close your eyes and just take some time to take some nice deep breaths in and out just settling the body and the mind.
So just beginning to lengthen the breath a little more perhaps taking the breath from a fairly shallow place which is our automatic breath to maybe a little deeper more mindful manual breath that we are controlling and let's take three deep breaths together breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and two more and then close your mouth and start to breathe in and out through the nose our usually breath trying to find some balance between the inhale and the exhale.
Remembering it the first instance our breath is certainly something we can try and control.
It's also a nice way to feel like we're in control when we do manage our breath.
So just find a nice rhythm and flow of your breath for your practice today.
So in meditation it's about trying to find equanimity which means to do things with ease having an acceptance of where we are.
Doesn't mean we can't change but knowing that there's some things we can't change can't control.
So in this first instance however you're feeling today just have an acceptance this is where we are and perhaps it's exactly where we need to be.
So we're going to use Amy's mantra our mantra of control the controllables and we can align this with our breath so as we breathe in we can say control feeling that sense of control as we breathe in on the catch or the top of the breath that moment of pause we can say to ourselves the and as we breathe out we can align that with the word controllables.
So breathing in control the and breathing out controllables.
So I'm going to give you a minute just to purely and simply repeat the mantra almost like a chant aligning it with our breath and feeling that sense of control that you have within control the controllables.
Control the controllables so acceptance with ease acceptance of the fact we cannot and should not want to control everything.
Allowing flow allowing spontaneity allowing surprise just allowing.
So if you'd like to bring in an element of movement with your mudra you can turn your hands over and bring your first finger to your thumb for the original mudra you can still go control the controllables aligning with your breath also bringing in an additional point of focus between your finger and your thumb so every now and again you might like to bring in your other fingers so we would go to the middle finger and say control we'd go to the ring finger for the we'd go to the little finger for controllables reset with the first finger and then go again control the controllables with the remaining three fingers take a minute here aligning the breath aligning the mantra aligning your mudra if you choose to your whole point of focus is within control the controllables you so just taking these last few moments just really feeling the mantra there are things we just cannot control they are beyond our control you can only control that within our means those controllables around us and having that kind and loving acceptance of where we are take these last few moments just to let everything soak in and then just dropping the mudra and mantra returning back to a nice comfortable rhythm and flow and noticing how you feel and we can take three deep breaths together breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth and two more nice long and deep breaths and then just let your breath return to a nice comfortable rhythm and flow finding any tiny movements that you want to make and bringing the hands up and giving them a little rub when you're ready create some warmth in the palms and then hovering the hands over the eyes taking one more moment here before opening the eyes and bringing the hands down away from your face and I'm here I hope you enjoyed that little mantra and mudra led meditation remember control the controllables have a lovely rest of your day and I will see you again very soon bye for now
