One of the things that's really wonderful about doing an awareness practice is that we get to be really in our bodies and part of that is being with our breath.
We get to come down out of that sometimes obsessive,
Compulsive thought process into just really being present with what's here right now in addition to the thoughts that might be here.
And I know I say this a lot,
But just to really validate that we have a lot of different conditions going on.
We're highly affected by our circumstances in life,
Our health,
Our health issues.
We have whatever is going on in our world kind of really close in through relationships as well as farther out,
Of course,
We're part of a bigger community and culture.
So it's really normal for the brain in particular to be quite alarmed and be hypervigilant.
And that generates a lot of the catastrophic thinking in the mind.
But even if it's not catastrophic thinking,
Even if it's just there's something going on that's kind of close to your heart,
It's really good to let ourselves be as we are and as much as we can to let reality be as it is.
There are some things in our reality that we have a lot of influence over and many,
Many things that we don't.
Bring your attention to your whole of your body and let yourself be nourished by your breath and let yourself be nourished by your breath and relax your whole body from head to toes.
There's so many different ways that we can do that and they all start with awareness of what is.
You have certain parts of the body that are more relaxed than others.
If you were to bring your attention to the most relaxed part of your body,
Let's do a body scan and see what comes forward as the softest part of your body.
Your forehead and eyebrows,
Mouth and jaw,
Neck and shoulders,
Your chest and your back.
And as we're doing breathing practices,
It might be that your belly is getting to be more and more soft.
That might be the softest place in your body right now.
Notice as well your arms and hands,
Your legs and feet.
And there's this amazing process that happens without our direction.
As we bring our attention to something that's maybe not the softest place,
Maybe it's the tightest place,
Then just our attention tends to soften that a little bit.
So if we have our shoulders up around our ears,
We might notice that they've released a bit of that tension.
Maybe there's no place in your body that feels 100% soft.
Maybe there are many places,
Which is softer.
My eyebrows or my calf muscles.
So notice to play with this a bit.
You notice sensations as they move in your body from head to toes.
Some of them are very persistent.
If you have a nerve pain,
For instance,
That might be very persistent.
And what does change is what our focus is and what our relationship is.
Just to notice as you're paying attention to the body and the sensations in your body.
The sensations of softness and relaxation are much more agreeable to us,
Of course.
But either way,
See if you can not follow trains of thoughts about sensations.
If you can't follow trains,
Continue to focus on what is the softest part of your body right now,
Meaning the least amount of tension.
Notice how that changes as we just tune in.
You might be working with softening your jaw even more and letting your throat be soft.
Your vocal cords be still.
As you're paying attention to your shoulders and upper back,
That reflexive kind of tightening and bracing is starting to release a bit.
Might not be 100% soft.
It's not likely that it would be.
It could be significantly softer.
And we could for a moment bring our attention into the opposite of soft,
Which would be hard,
More tight,
Contracted.
And see if you could bring some softness to that part.
Sometimes that's like a hard grip in our mind.
We could see about releasing some of that.
There's a natural releasing as we exhale.
It could be a hard heartedness.
Maybe you're angry about something or holding onto a grudge.
Let your heart soften.
Might be something physical.
Might be something emotional,
Mental.
Work with the breath for a few minutes.
Notice the softness of your belly as you finish your exhale.
And with this softness in our muscles,
There's more capacity to breathe in deeply.
As you're breathing out,
Just to notice and let your body soften.
Let your mind and heart and the rest of your body soften along with the belly.
And opening into this relaxed softness of the inhale.
And softer belly muscles that can expand and lengthen so easily.
Let yourself have a really deep,
Nourishing in-breath.
And long,
Slow exhales.
Keep your mind really focused on that for a minute.
Allowing this softness,
This ease,
Letting your body feel ease.
And keep your mind really focused.
You can go back to whatever it is you're doing now.
What else it has to think about later.
Just for the next couple of minutes,
To let your body,
Your breath,
Your heart,
Your thinking mind,
Let that all be at ease.
And then focus for a moment on your heart.
Your heart center.
And bring to mind someone who's struggling right now.
And that might be you,
It might be someone else.
It might be someone you really care about.
Think of personal,
Not universal at the moment,
Just personal.
Bring them into your heart center and send them or offer them compassion and ease.
Now the in-breath,
Notice any hardness or resistance and on the out-breath,
Let that soften.
Let your heart be full of kindness,
Light,
Softness.
And let that radiate out into the whole of your experience,
Your body,
Your energy,
Your subtle body,
Your mind.
Holding other people in this soft,
Open heartedness as well.
