A Light Touch Of Awareness Is Often Enough

Our body will naturally soften when we bring our attention inside and notice our muscles are tight. If we're holding our breath, we might do a practice of longer exhales, or we might find that as we notice, our breath naturally smooths out and has more ease. We can offer ourselves a light touch and that's often all we need to let ourselves relax and be nourished.

Transcript

Notice what's here.

And as we do that,

We could notice all the elements of that.

We could look around,

Notice that we're here in this moment in whatever location we're in.

Take a few deeper breaths.

We have this somatic mindfulness that we practice all the time,

Present in our moment,

Wherever we are in our environment.

And we're also really present in our body.

Through these ongoing practices,

We become very familiar with the sensations.

Our nervous system starts to expect a certain thing.

Oftentimes when we come in,

We have something similar.

You know,

When I check into my body,

I'm going to have tension somewhere.

I'll have it in my neck and shoulders,

Upper back.

All of us have those habits in our body that carry forward from one moment to the next,

And one year to the next.

Bringing our awareness in,

It probably feels fairly familiar.

And then there's variations on the theme.

Some days we're pretty relaxed and we have a deeper breath.

Our body's soft.

Our mind is kind of quiet.

We all really love those times.

And other days we're worried about something,

Or we're angry,

Or we're disturbed in some way.

Our equilibrium is off.

We're off kilter.

And those are the days when we really need to do the stronger practices to reset.

We don't want to spend the whole following trains of catastrophic thinking.

A big part of the practice is to be aware and then go,

Okay,

There that goes again.

I'm off in that stream of thought.

And then I come back and I notice,

Oh,

Just when I was thinking that my shoulders got a bit tight again,

I could move or stretch or let them soften.

Maybe I was off in a wonderful train of thought and I noticed that I was feeling really relaxed.

The job in our practice is to pay attention to what's happening inside.

We get to know ourselves so intimately when we do this.

What used to be a mystery to us,

We get a lot more details.

So instead of saying,

Well,

You know,

I feel really stressed.

We may be able to go into more of a nuanced knowing.

I have this particular thought stream.

I noticed that I'm holding my breath or my breath is a bit shorter than usual.

I noticed that my gut is in a turmoil,

Whatever that might be.

So as we come in,

We bring our attention into our body,

Not just our physical body,

Our whole mind,

Body,

Sensations,

Energy,

Thoughts in the mind.

Thoughts in the mind.

You notice what's here.

The act of noticing helps us quite a lot.

So if we notice that our shoulders are tight,

We're probably going to soften them or move or bring our attention to those muscles.

Just doing that is enough to let them soften.

And if we notice that we're caught in a train of thought,

We might do something to interrupt that.

We might just notice that we're caught,

Though,

And that's enough to bring us back.

Sometimes a light touch is all we need,

Just the light touch of our own awareness.

And then we work with,

Can I be okay with what's here?

So if we're noticing a lot of compulsive thinking or we're kind of caught up in something,

We're not really okay with that.

We would really prefer that there's something different happening.

And sometimes what we're feeling is so much grief or so much anger or so much something,

So much emotion,

That it feels like we're kind of jumping out of our skin or we're really heavy.

Generally speaking,

If we can bring our awareness into those and let them be here,

They can move through.

When we try to avoid them and they go underground,

That's not actually all that helpful.

So it's not like we need to shame ourselves for that either.

We all do that.

It's just that we know the consequences of suppressing our emotions.

So we come into kind of an open invitation as soon as we're able to.

And then we come into that a bit,

And then we come back out and we go back in.

And over time,

These things release out of our body.

We felt the emotion.

It's passed through.

We come back to the breath.

If your breath is already smooth,

Continuous,

Diaphragmatic,

You could just continue to watch that and let that be.

Let your stomach area soften as you breathe out.

And if it's something that you feel like,

Oh,

I could probably work with my breath a bit,

You might do something big with your breath.

Maybe it's just the noticing that light touch of our awareness is enough.

When we're holding our breath,

It's a response to something that we're dealing with.

It's a nervous system response.

There's usually some fear.

We hold our breath when we're afraid.

Noticing that we're holding our breath,

We might not have to do a practice with the breath.

We could just notice that.

I don't actually need to hold my breath.

I know what that is,

And I'm just going to let it go for a bit.

That light touch of awareness is enough that we come back into softening our belly as we breathe out,

Taking a deeper inhale.

And we can also do a stronger practice if that would help.

We could take in a deep inhale through the nose,

And then a longer exhale,

Either through the nose or out through the mouth,

Like you're breathing out through a thin straw.

We notice what that feels like in that detailed way.

What does it feel like exactly?

When we breathe in deeply,

We have some resistance from the muscles around the rib cage,

The chest,

The stomach area maybe.

And then as we breathe out,

We could allow that whole system of muscles to soften and relax.

Those longer exhales are very helpful to get the relaxation response active in our body.

You could let out a sigh.

You could use the syllable as you breathe out.

You could simply breathe in and out through your nostrils and notice your breath.

One of the ways that we often arrive in a practice and also in our relationship with ways that we often arrive in a practice and also in our relationship with ourselves is that we can be pretty aggressive.

It's like,

Well,

If I'm doing something wrong with the breath,

I need to fix that.

And so we get a little bit stronger perhaps than we need to.

Often,

We just need to tune in.

And when we do,

Our body's natural way of breathing will reestablish itself.

Our body's not trying to hurt us by holding the breath.

It's just responding to a threat.

A threat is very likely long ago,

And it's not helpful right now.

So when we notice that,

Our body knows,

Oh,

I can take a deeper breath.

I can do a longer exhale.

I can let my whole body soften.

And as we scan our body from head to toes,

Again,

We notice that there's some predictability to that.

We very often find similar patterns when we scan our body.

We bring that into awareness.

Back of your head,

Neck,

Shoulders,

Your upper back.

And as you notice that part of your body,

Most likely it will soften a bit.

And with the neck and shoulders,

You could bring your shoulders up a little,

Bring a bit of micro-movement into your body.

Exhale,

Let them soften and move away from the ears.

Or you could simply bring your awareness to your neck and shoulders,

Down through your arms and hands,

Fingers and fingertips.

We could notice the rest of our back body from the head,

Neck and shoulders,

Upper back.

What's happening behind the heart center in the mid-back area?

And then through our lower back,

The buttocks,

The back of the legs,

Down through to the heels,

The soles of our feet.

And notice if you're allowing your body to be fully supported.

We can't make our body do that,

But we could notice,

And oftentimes that's enough.

Oh,

Okay.

I could release a little of this readiness to move.

I could release some of that.

Either through moving and stretching or through wiggling around a little,

Settling in,

Or maybe getting a blanket if you're cold.

Just allowing ourselves to really settle into awareness.

Am I letting my body be supported?

Again,

We could breathe,

Let a wave of softness come down through the back of our body as we breathe out and bring your attention to the front of your body as well.

And notice too,

Where your mind went during that little pause.

Oftentimes our mind will go into worry again.

We could bring it back and be kind,

Patient.

We could cultivate that friendliness instead of the pushiness that's often there.

Our culture is very aggressive.

And during our own practice and in our relationship with ourselves,

It's a wonderful time to move that in a different direction,

To notice if we're being pushy and to let ourselves have some space.

And as you inhale and exhale,

Let the front of your body be in awareness and soften through the forehead,

Eyebrows,

And eyes.

And as you're doing that,

Let go of worries,

Concerns,

See if you could allow the mind to soften and settle a bit.

Notice your mouth,

Your jaw,

Your tongue,

Vocal cords.

You can move your lower jaw around a bit.

You can move your head around a little bit.

Notice the sides of your neck.

And if we knew that we didn't have to speak right now for the next few minutes,

We could allow our speech mechanisms,

The mouth,

The jaw,

The vocal cords to have a rest.

And notice the front of your throat down into your collarbones,

The large muscles of the chest.

If you could soften those muscles.

And if those muscles aren't really in your awareness,

You could do a bit of a squeeze,

A tightening up a bit,

And then release.

It's always an option if we're bringing our attention to a part of the body and it's not really in our awareness,

We could do a bit of a tense release.

And as we release,

We allow it to soften a little bit more.

And as we release,

We allow it to soften a little bit more.

And in the chest and in the heart area,

We also notice sensations,

Energy,

Emotion.

That might be a time to touch in with our emotional experience right now.

And we notice that that might come along with thoughts.

Maybe our mind went somewhere else.

We bring ourselves back.

In this part of the body,

We're noticing how our body moves as we breathe.

We might not need to do anything other than notice.

And noticing that I'm a little bit skimpy on the breath,

I could breathe with a bit more volume.

Or I could allow my stomach area to really soften as I finish my exhale.

Let my belly move back towards the spine and then have that deeper inhale.

We don't need to make it a big deal.

You could just notice and allow it to happen.

And as you bring your attention down into your legs,

Notice if your legs are starting to move.

If your legs are settled,

If they're ready for action,

Notice what's going on.

Let yourself be in awareness.

Let yourself notice what's happening in your legs.

All the way down to your toes,

The energy of your feet.

Our feet are often where we feel that sense of groundedness.

You can feel the earth.

And just like our whole body can be supported by the floor or the furniture,

We can also feel our feet,

Aware of our feet on the ground,

Or maybe we have a memory instead if we're lying down.

We might have just a memory we could bring in of standing on the earth,

Noticing that we're supported in that way.

And as we breathe in and we breathe out,

We just bring our awareness to our whole experience again,

This light touch of awareness.

Nothing to do with just looking.

We might open our eyes and look around or take a few breaths,

Move our body a bit.

Notice that we're on the finishing end of the practice now.

Instead of at the beginning.

Reviews

Insightful understanding after listening to this. Thank-you!

This was such a tender and sweet practice. Thank you 💚💚💚