Resting In Our Stillpoint

Join us for an hour of guided meditation, "Resting in Your Stillpoint," where we explore deep relaxation and somatic mindfulness to reconnect with the natural stillness within us. We all have glimpses and know this experience. Our nervous system settles, and our thoughts become focused on enjoying this moment.

Our body eases into feeling safe enough to relax and soften. Our heart opens, and we connect with ourselves with kindness. Our breath deepens and nourishes. As these layers come into harmony, what arises in awareness is stillness, light, and joy. We rest in our Stillpoint, our Being.

Transcript

Resting in your still point.

It's a recognition that we all have a nervous system that often gets in the way of rest and stillness.

Movement helps us to come back into our body.

And somatic mindfulness really helps us to be aware of what is going on in my body right now.

Am I in a survival response of fight,

Flight,

Freeze?

What does it feel like to be me?

One of the instructions from my meditation teacher was to bring your attention into this moment in time and become aware of your being.

Let go of the past and let go of the future.

And if we've been tracking our thoughts and doing somatic mindfulness of our thoughts,

There's a lot of ruminating about the past,

A lot of anxiety about the future.

And that interferes with the knowing of the stillness.

As we're moving through the practice,

Give yourself permission to have the experience that's the most nourishing possible for you.

If you fall asleep,

You might just enjoy having a rest.

We try during the practice to focus and build our power of concentration.

And we also really try to build our power of kind,

Compassion,

Connection within.

And as our nervous system starts to settle and we experience that we're safe enough to do a practice,

Safe enough to maybe let go of some of the ruminating and the catastrophic thinking,

The worry,

Then we discover there's this beautiful stillness.

And that's where we rest.

Let's start just by noticing,

Looking around the room,

Is there anything to be alarmed about?

If not,

The nervous system driven thoughts are often active.

If there's nothing concerning,

Then that's good to just let your nervous system be aware of that.

There's nothing of concern here.

We anchor ourselves in,

We might use our sense of touch too.

Put your hand on your heart or touch your face,

Do something to bring your awareness into your body.

Wiggle your toes,

Feel your feet,

Your seat.

Let's start with some witnessing of thoughts.

We're gonna move around a little bit.

There's gonna be periods of silence as well as periods of guided practice.

And if you're deep into stillness,

You're really welcome to let my voice go way into the background.

What is your sense right now of stillness?

So if we start with stillness in the thought stream,

It's one of the things we can quite easily do is just watch what's going on in my thoughts right now.

One of the things that's helpful for stilling the mind is to give it a focus.

Watching to see what's going on.

We might be focusing on the feeling of the breath in the nostrils or softening our forehead,

Our shoulders.

If you have a part of your body that's generally where you hold tension,

You might bring your attention there.

We're multitasking a little bit of your attention on the tight spots,

Letting it soften.

Also paying attention,

Watching and seeing what's happening in your mind.

And notice if the thoughts that are in your mind are kind of compelling.

Are they getting your attention or are they just kind of drifting through?

One type of thought is direct perception.

I can feel the coolness of the breeze on my skin or something like that.

I can hear the birds.

Another type of thought is commenting on what we're observing.

I'm so happy to see you.

Maybe it's summer,

The birds are here,

Whatever that might be.

And the more compelling thoughts or the ones with more juice tend to be something that also might have a sensation or an energy in your body connected with it.

So if you were to bring your attention to a beautiful experience you've had recently,

Maybe in nature or with a person,

Another being,

Let that come to mind,

Bring a memory of that and also bring it into your heart.

What does it feel like in your heart and what are the thoughts in your mind right now?

So we're directing traffic,

So to speak.

Keeping a little tendril of awareness of this beautiful experience in your heart,

In your mind,

Watching thoughts again,

Noticing that thoughts and sensations are transitory.

In order to keep that feeling alive,

We'd have to keep coming back and intensifying it or giving it some more air,

Getting a little bit less intense over several seconds or a minute or two.

At some point,

We usually notice that we're thinking about something else or maybe the mind is still.

And bring your attention into your body and notice if your body is still.

Let's do a leisurely relaxation through the body and just see what's happening in your body.

So one of the things that we often do to help bring our awareness into our body is we notice our breath.

We can notice sensation of air flowing in our nostrils.

If we're familiar with alternate nostril breathing,

We might notice,

Hmm,

My right nostril or my left nostril has more airflow right now.

We could soften our forehead,

Our eyebrows,

Our eyes.

It's very helpful to have something to focus on.

Otherwise,

The mind tends to drift off into its regular pattern of thinking.

And some of that might be not really disturbing.

You can really just let that go into the background.

But as we're doing these practices and we're relaxing our body,

Sometimes the mind becomes more still and sometimes it's like,

Oh,

Finally I have some silence.

I'm gonna bring forward this worry.

We have a lot of different experiences in the mind.

Notice your breath,

Notice your forehead,

And then bring your awareness down into your cheeks,

The sides of your face,

From your temples around your ears,

Around the jaw.

Move your lower jaw around if you have tension in your jaw.

And then bring your lower jaw.

Notice your tongue and your throat.

The one thing that really helps to settle our thoughts is if we're still in our vocal cords.

Sometimes we will sub-vocalize thoughts.

We're not whispering them even,

But we have a little bit of activity in the vocal cords.

Over the next several breaths,

Notice your whole face,

Your mouth and jaw,

Your tongue,

The back of your tongue,

And your vocal cords.

See if you could allow them to be still.

And as we're witnessing thoughts,

Begin to focus a little bit more on the space between the thoughts.

As a thought comes up and we notice it and then it diminishes or it falls away,

What is the quality of the stillness that's there?

If we bring our attention back to that instruction,

That go of the focus on the past and the future,

And bring yourself into this moment,

Become aware of your being.

Being.

And there might be some thoughts about being.

What are some of the words we use to describe that?

Awareness,

Consciousness,

Being,

Self.

The finger pointing at the moon,

They're not the moon itself.

Let's let the words go back into the background a bit.

Just in your experience,

Attune with your being.

And then notice where your mind has gone.

Perhaps you're resting in stillness.

Perhaps your mind is quiet and still.

Or perhaps there's thoughts coming through.

We could tune into the qualities of the stillness.

Sometimes if we're tired,

There's not much going on in our mind or if we're in freeze,

We probably all experienced that.

There's a sluggishness or a dullness there.

So notice when your thoughts move to the background,

What is the quality of the stillness that's there?

Attuning to our being,

Our consciousness.

In yoga meditation,

We describe the layers of the mind and the nature of the mind.

One layer of the mind generates thoughts.

A lot of those thoughts are generated by the nervous system with its negativity bias,

Its commitment to keeping us alive and safe.

When we're witnessing thoughts,

A lot of the thoughts are on that layer.

It's compelling.

We want to pay attention.

We often find ourselves involved in a train of thought without really realizing that we were.

And then the nature of the deeper layers of the mind is stillness.

It's light.

Peace,

Joy.

The higher levels of the mind or the deeper levels of the mind.

And that's something that's always already here.

As we're moving our attention away from the distractions,

A lot of which are thoughts,

We focus in on the deeper stillness.

And when you bring your attention back into your body,

You might notice there's something in your body that's distracting.

Sensations,

Energies,

Tightness.

Let's go back to the face and the mouth and jaw and the neck and shoulders now.

Just with this quiet mind,

With the quiet attention,

Let your awareness be in your neck,

Your shoulders,

Your upper back.

Notice if your body is comfortable with being still.

If you want to move,

Of course you could.

Then come back to stillness in your body.

What we're really looking to explore and experience is the natural stillness.

When our nervous system is less alarmed and it becomes quieter,

Our shoulders release,

Our body gets softer.

And as our body begins to rest,

Thoughts in the mind get less,

But also less compelling.

Focus on that for a moment,

Letting your shoulders and muscles of your upper back soften and release.

But being aware of your whole body from head to heels through the back,

Head to toes through the front.

And with two things that we're focusing on,

One is witnessing thoughts in the mind,

Letting the mind focus on the practice.

And as thoughts come in that take our attention away from that,

As soon as we notice,

We just bring ourselves back.

That's right,

What I'm looking at right now or what I'm wanting to focus on is the experience of stillness in the deeper layers of the mind.

I'm not gonna follow the thoughts that are in the mind,

I'm just gonna rest and explore the stillness.

Notice the specific qualities of the stillness.

Is it a very quiet experience?

Is it alive?

How are you experiencing the stillness right now?

This is a practice,

So we just keep bringing ourselves back to the practice.

We might not have perfect stillness,

Or it might not last for more than a few seconds or a minute,

And then we notice there's some thoughts.

Well,

That's okay,

That's the nature of the mind.

Then we come back.

Bring your awareness to your being.

Bring it.

You might use breath awareness as a bit of an anchor.

Notice your experience again.

If you're deep into the stillness,

Stay there.

Continue to explore what is the experience of that?

What are the qualities of this stillness?

And if your mind had wandered off into a train of thoughts or maybe to sleep,

Nighttime for many of us,

One of the descriptions of our being,

Of our deeper level of the mind is ever pure,

Ever wise,

Ever free.

What comes up for you as you consider that?

So I wouldn't say that describes the lower level of the mind,

The nervous system-generated thoughts,

Maybe anger or jealousy or worry.

And it's also true that we have this deeper layer that is not hooked on thoughts,

It's not hooked on events,

On experiences,

We're free.

Maybe if you could touch into that,

See what happens when you consider that.

Ever pure,

Ever wise,

Ever free.

That's my true nature.

Notice what moves you closer to that and notice what distracts you and then come back.

The vast depths of my mind are not compulsive and caught up in thinking.

The true nature of my mind is joy and peace,

Light.

Ever pure,

Ever wise,

Ever free.

Notice if your mind gets bored,

That lower level of the mind.

See if you could keep focusing again.

Notice if there's anything going on in your body that's attracting your attention or that's distracting.

You might move a little or stretch.

Or maybe we're perfectly comfortable right now.

If you were to bring your attention into your heart center,

The muscles of the chest and the collarbones to the lower ribcage.

And then coming into the interior space,

Into the heart center.

And imagine that you're completely focused on the interior,

The energy of the heart chakra.

In this chakra,

There's no words,

There's no thoughts.

There's no nervous system responses.

There's just the energy of the anahata chakra,

The heart center.

If you have your attention in that physical location in your chest and then sense into the heart chakra,

Let's rest there for a bit.

Sometimes we do a meditation of the cave of the heart.

What is your experience in the actual heart center?

Why at the stillness?

Notice if your mind is off someplace else,

If you could bring it back.

Okay.

And as you're witnessing your body and your thoughts,

Where is the being?

Where is the being that's witnessing that?

Where is the being?

Is it in your heart center?

Where is it?

What is it?

Explore that for a moment if you're interested in that.

Otherwise stay with the stillness.

Age-old question of who am I?

Who is it that's aware of the sensation of my body,

Of the thoughts in my mind?

We've been working with these layers in the mind,

The thought layer,

The stillness,

The witnessing of what's happening in our body and in our thoughts.

Our being is more than just what we're witnessing.

So let's experiment with that a little.

I'm witnessing my experience that must be a higher level of my mind.

Is that being,

Consciousness?

Not to think about that so much,

It's just to let it hover there as an awareness question.

Keep bringing your mind back to stillness.

We might be noticing that there's an awareness,

A process of witnessing that's happening.

And we could let go even of that,

Touching into that deeper consciousness.

Let your consciousness expand so that everything is stillness.

Not to think about that really,

More just to notice,

Is there something else here?

An awareness,

A spaciousness,

Being.

Notice where your mind is,

Where your focus is.

What your experience is of being aware of being,

Of consciousness.

And of course,

There might be very little awareness of that or it might be coming in and out.

It's not really about our thoughts about it,

It's really the paying attention or attending to or allowing our awareness or attention to rest on something deeper than the thoughts in the mind,

Even deeper than the body.

And right into the energy of awareness,

Of being.

Let yourself be aware of the deepest stillness that's available at the moment.

Deep stillness of your mind,

Of awareness itself.

And as we're coming towards the end of the hour,

Bring yourself back into awareness of your body.

Notice the experience of awareness in your body right now.

To evaluate a little bit,

As you reflect on the experience of the last hour,

What was really supportive and helpful?

What were the deepest parts of the experience?

And sometimes we might notice there are things that distract us.

Might be something in our body,

We might've fallen asleep,

Might be worried about something.

And there's a lot that comes and goes that we're witnessing.

And to take a moment to savor the deepest experience of stillness of your being that you've had in this last little while here.

And maybe you're still in that and so you could stay centered in that.

Notice your body,

Let your body move a little.

If you've fallen asleep,

You might let yourself stay asleep.

Often we need a lot of rest.

Take in some deeper breaths.

Maybe even open your eyes,

Look around a little.

There's so much pleasure in a hour long stillness practice.

There's so much variation in the experience,

A lot of nuance.

Might feel really good to slow down.

You know,

There might be restlessness in your mind.

There's lots of things that could be going on.

And if you wanted to put your hand or hands on your heart,

Honor that you've been here doing a practice.

We're aware of our body,

Of our energy,

Our bones,

Our muscles,

Aware of the breath.

We're certainly aware of the lower level of the mind,

The monkey mind,

The thoughts that are generated by the nervous system.

We all had experiences of something deeper.

Maybe a stillness,

Maybe a quietness,

But that's alive.

Ever pure,

Ever wise,

Ever free.

Whatever that was inspiring in your experience.

This is a beautiful way to get to know ourselves on such a deep level.

And as we open our eyes and move our body and prepare to move around in the world,

I really appreciate that we're here doing this together.

And I hope that you had a good experience and also that you have a peaceful and wonderful rest of your day.

Reviews

Thank you for making this longer practice. It felt lovely to work with the stillpoint, coming back to it again and again. So much get to unfold when there is enough time, and your compassionated guidance was really helpful. ❤️