Scan your body from head to toes.
Notice your forehead,
Eyebrows,
And eyes,
And let yourself be aware of thoughts in your mind as well.
So you might be thinking about something that happened five years ago.
There's all kinds of things that happen in the mind.
And during the practice,
To resolve that we'll stay with the practice as much as possible.
And that if we notice that we've wandered off into something else,
We'll just come back with some compassion and kindness.
Notice your mouth and jaw,
Let your jaw relax,
Your tongue soften,
Your throat soften.
Notice the sides of your neck,
Down through your shoulders and through your arms and hands,
And let wave after wave of softness come down through the sides of your neck and shoulders,
Down through your arms and hands,
Fingers,
Fingertips.
And if you're supported through your back,
Notice that you're supported through your back.
Let yourself settle into that support.
Notice the large muscles of the upper back,
From the neck through the upper back,
And behind your heart center,
Your mid and lower back,
Back of your arms and legs.
Let your body be supported.
Relax into that support.
And then come back to the top of your head,
Through your face,
Mouth and jaw,
Into the front of your chest,
Large muscles from the collarbones,
Over the front of the rib cage,
Down into the lower ribs as well.
Notice the rhythm of your breath,
How your body moves with your breath.
Notice if it's comfortable to focus on your breath for a moment.
Let your stomach area soften as you breathe out in particular.
And notice the front of your arms and hands,
The front of your legs and feet,
The soles of your feet up through your whole body to the crown of your head.
Be aware of your body from head to toes,
Toes to head.
So part of what we're doing in a practice like this is we're bringing our attention away from the surface layers and coming into the deeper layers of the mind,
The stillness.
So bringing your attention away from other times and places,
Become aware of your being.
Let your mind be aware of the being of your deeper layers.
And then bring your sankalpa forward,
Your intention.
Repeat that in your mind.
So let yourself be aware.
This is my intention,
My sankalpa.
Let yourself feel that.
And then bring your attention into your eyebrow center,
Your Ajna chakra,
Just in behind the forehead.
Sometimes we visualize a candleless flame,
Just the flame in the Ajna chakra,
The forehead,
The eyebrow center.
Let your attention rest there,
No thought,
Just that visual of the flame,
That small white flame in the eyebrow center.
You could be aware a little bit of your breath and let yourself become more aware of the stillness than the activity.
Use that flame as a focus of concentration.
And then bring your awareness to your throat center and visualize a brilliant white full moon at the throat center.
And breathe in and out through the Vashuddhi chakra,
The throat center,
Through the brilliant white light of the full moon.
Continue to let your mind go towards stillness.
If there's thoughts in the mind,
That's okay,
But let them be in the background.
Focus all of your attention on the throat center and breathing in and out through the light of that white full moon.
Let your mind be still.
And then bring your attention into your heart center.
Let your mind be still.
Let go of visual,
The candleless flame in the eyebrow center,
The full moon in the throat center.
And as you come into the heart chakra,
Anahata chakra,
Let your mind move into the deep layers of stillness.
No thoughts,
Not even awareness of the breath.
And sometimes our attention is drawn towards movement again,
And that's okay,
It's normal.
Notice the layers and layers and layers.
We have the thought layer,
The layer of the physical body,
Sensations.
And that's a surface layer compared to the stillness.
And without arguing with anything,
Withdraw your attention from all of the other layers.
Rest in the stillness in your heart.
No thoughts,
Nothing to figure out.
And as we move our attention away from thoughts,
Become aware of the consciousness,
Become aware of awareness itself of your being.
And not to think about it,
Bring it into your awareness.
The world is happening in me in consciousness.
Resting in stillness in the heart center.
Keep bringing your awareness into the deeper layers into the stillness.
You're distracted,
Relax your body,
Come back to your breath.
Back to the eyebrow center,
Throat center,
And heart center.
Quickly establishing yourself back in the awareness of stillness.
Notice the brain doesn't have to figure anything out.
We're simply resting,
Letting the brain become still.
As we're preparing to come out of the practice,
We're coming back into awareness of these other layers without losing awareness of the stillness in the heart center,
Of the stillness in the deep layers of the mind.
Bring your awareness back to your throat center and that bright full moon.
Bring your breath awareness back.
You're breathing in and out through that full moon in the Vishuddhi chakra.
And bring your awareness to your Ajna chakra,
The eyebrow center and behind the forehead.
That small candleless flame.
Awareness of breath in the eyebrow center.
And then begin to let your awareness flow from the eyebrow center through the throat center to the heart center and back.
Notice the flow of breath in your nostrils.
Let your awareness flow from your eyebrow center to the base of the nose and back.
Even as you're bringing in that movement of the breath,
Maintain awareness of the stillness.
And then let all of that dissolve again and bring back your sankalpa,
Your intention,
Your resolve.
We don't have to do anything with the resolve just to bring it back to mind.
