Welcome to Marshall's Meditation.
I'm Marshall,
And today we're going to meditate.
Here it is in the middle of winter.
We're in January,
Which is a good time to start,
I think chronologically,
But also everything seems to be in hibernation mode.
So things are quieter and have settled down energetically.
And that's a little bit of what we need when we meditate,
And also what we're kind of looking for,
Isn't it?
So let's begin.
So if you're comfortable,
You can close your eyes and tune inward.
Let's scan the body and from the top of the head down to the feet just to see what's going on.
You may notice tension in the body.
That's fine.
We're just going to notice,
Not try to relax or do anything special.
And if we can,
And this may be difficult to see what's going on in the mind,
Just observing.
Now let's bring our awareness back to the body.
Now let's bring our awareness to our breath.
We're just seeing how we're breathing.
There may be tension in the chest.
We may feel that we're breathing faster than we should.
Maybe we should have slower,
Smoother breathing.
But for now,
We're just going to observe and not try to change or manipulate the breath.
We're just going to watch.
And by watching,
I mean feeling into it.
The way the body rocks and expands and contracts as we breathe.
Just feeling into that.
Feeling into the body centered sensation of breath.
And we find we drift right on into our thoughts,
Don't we?
And images or maybe music or just turn our attention back to our breath when we notice that.
Very gently turn back to the breath.
We don't need to be focused and intense about our awareness on our breath.
We can hold it lightly.
Maybe so lightly the thoughts can be there too.
We can let them come and go like our in and out breath.
We can let them come and go like our in and out breath.
And as we continue to watch the breath,
It's also notice our awareness and the nature of it,
The quality of awareness,
The spaciousness of awareness.
We're noticing the breath.
We're also noticing that quality of awareness,
Noticing the breath.
And in that spaciousness,
We can allow for sounds to come and go if we hear them,
The thoughts to come and go.
Maybe sensations just relaxing into your natural state effortlessly.
Very good.
So let's bring our awareness back to the breath completely,
Back to the body.
Completely in the body.
And we can bring our awareness up to our eyes if they are closed,
But even if they're not.
And we'll open them if they're not already.
And we're back.
As we look in our visual field,
We can retain that sense of spaciousness within the meditation by noticing the space in and around all the objects in the room or outside.
You notice objects and the space as well as a reminder throughout the day of the spaciousness of awareness.
And it'll help us tune right back in.
So thank you for joining me and hopefully I will see you on the next meditation.
Thank you.
