Find yourself a comfortable seat and close your eyes.
Bring your awareness to your physical body,
Becoming more settled in the seat of your choice.
Allow your seat to become heavy,
Anchored.
Invite a slight lift through the center of the spine.
Your arms and shoulders relaxed.
The hands rest where they feel most at rest for you.
Begin to guide your awareness towards your inner body breathing.
As you do,
Feel as though you are simply watching the breath,
Not adding to it or controlling it,
Just letting the breath be.
Watch yourself inhale and exhale.
This is your body breathing.
Feel as though you can follow the flow of your breath all the way in and all the way out,
Following the trail of the breath as it enters and as it exits.
You may notice that as you inhale,
The air is cool as it touches the nostrils.
And as you exhale,
The air is warm.
Take a few more cycles of this easy natural breath flowing through the nose.
Slowly begin to shape the breath.
As you continue to notice your body breathing,
Begin to smooth out any bumps in your breathing,
Like you're ironing out the breath,
Smoothing out the quality of the breath.
Continue.
Allow your awareness and attention to move to the base of the spine and feel as though you are connected to the earth element.
Take a moment to offer gratitude to the earth element,
Both from inside and outside your body.
For the soil,
For the food that grows and nourishes you,
For the support of the earth,
Her firm,
Solid hold,
And her magnetic pull.
Offer gratitude for the earth element,
Both inside and outside of your body.
Draw your awareness up now,
Traveling along the spine,
Arriving at the sacrum area or pelvic center.
Bring your awareness to the element of water.
Take a moment to give thanks for the element of water that nourishes you,
That purifies you,
That hydrates you.
Offering gratitude to the water element,
Both inside and outside of your body.
Slowly bring your awareness now to the navel center.
Bring awareness to the element of fire.
Give thanks here to the element of fire,
Both inside and outside of your body.
The power of digestion,
Processing,
Transformation,
The fire that cooks your food,
The fire warmth of the sun.
Give thanks and gratitude to the element of fire.
Allow awareness now to move up to the heart center,
Traveling along the spine.
Give thanks to the element of air,
The breath that you breathe,
The air both inside and outside of the body,
Blowing through the trees,
The air dancing along your skin.
Feel gratitude for the element of air.
Bring your awareness from the heart center,
Traveling up the spine,
To reach the throat center.
Awareness now goes to the element of space or ether.
You can think of ether as the quality of moonlight,
The nurturing,
Soothing element of moonlight.
Feel gratitude for the space both inside and outside of your body,
And all of the life force that is permeating the space around your body.
Slowly bring your awareness back to your heart center.
Let it rest there at your heart,
Deep inside,
Far beneath the sternum,
Deep inside the heart.
Take a moment to be grateful for whoever and whatever you have in your life to be grateful for.
Begin to hear the mantra,
Sohum,
Echoing from deep within your heart.
On inhale,
Sense the heart expanding and hear the sound,
Sohum.
On exhale,
Sense the heart concentrating at its center and hear Hum.
Sohum.
On inhale,
Hum.
On exhale,
Expansion and contraction is the natural rhythm of the heart.
Expansion and contraction is the natural breath,
And the mantra sound fills the space of the heart.
Now feel yourself filled with gratitude from the tip of your toes to the top of your head.
Feel as though the frequency and vibration of gratitude is moving beyond your body to the space around your body,
And that you can share this frequency with everyone you meet today,
So they can also be reminded to be grateful.
You can begin to deepen your breath,
Bring slight movement back into your fingers and toes,
And when you feel ready,
Begin to slowly open your eyes.
Namaste.
