Short Guided Practice: Right Here & Now, Everything Is Fine

A brief meditation to connect to the truth that this moment is good. 30-second version at the end.
I created it while teaching people with a thankless job: legal guardians. They shared how they give so much to care for their clients, yet much anger and blaming is sent their way. Family members and professionals had so many expectations of them and expressed little appreciation. My students deeply appreciated this practice, then everything is ok meditation.
Track contains ambient sounds

Transcript

First,

Just notice your body.

Connect to sensations in the body,

Whatever they are.

Maybe the points of contact between the body and the chair.

Maybe the touch of the air on your skin or the touch of the clothes on your skin.

Even any discomfort that there is,

Just bring a gentle curiosity to those sensations as well.

Just noticing them.

And then bringing the attention to the breath.

Noticing that there's an in-breath and an out-breath.

And this is just the miracle of breath that's always with us every second of our lives.

And the beauty of the breath is that it's always changing.

With the flow of the breath,

The sensations always change.

So the breath is a wonderful connection to here and now.

Because there's always some sensation to follow that's changing.

So noticing the rise and fall of the belly.

The brush of the air against the nostrils.

Maybe noticing that it's cooler when it goes in and when it goes out.

Or whatever you notice about the breath.

And then the last step is to look up,

Look around,

And notice the breath.

The last step is to look up,

Look around,

Notice whatever's in front of you or around you.

Right now,

I'm actually sitting in my car,

And right opposite the car window is this hedge.

With a lot of green,

Thin leaves.

It looks like it's not really intended to be a hedge.

Or else it hasn't been groomed as a hedge.

So there's all these kind of arcs of leaves,

Of thin branches and leaves sticking out.

Some of them are dead,

And some of them are green,

Some of them are brown.

And there's white little petals and purple little petals.

And if I didn't right now have this intention of looking around me,

I never would have noticed.

All this just color and different interesting shapes and the wind blowing through it right in front of me.

And with that,

Noticing that right now,

In this time,

In this place,

Everything's okay.

There are good and neutral things happening around me,

And if this moment is like 99.

9% of your moments,

Nothing harmful is happening to you right at this moment in this place.

So just noticing that.

So here we've taken about three or four minutes to go through this meditation,

But it's really very simple,

And you can do it in a very short form of just noticing the body,

Taking a moment for sensations in the body,

Noticing the breath,

Taking a moment to notice the air coming into and then exiting the body.

Looking up with attention,

Noticing colors and shapes in front of you or around you,

And then connecting to the truth that right now,

In this moment,

In this place,

Everything's fine.