Hello,
My dear friend.
Welcome to this guided meditation to help you balance an excess of screen time with a little bit of mindfulness.
All right,
As you're ready,
Let's begin today with our eyes open,
Looking straight ahead,
And without moving the head too,
Too much,
Just letting the eyes wander around the room where you are,
Looking up,
Down,
Left,
And right.
You can look near and far.
You can gaze out a window if you have one in your line of sight.
Sometimes when we're on our phones,
Which,
You know,
Are just the size of our hands,
It can feel nice to widen our field of vision from time to time.
And gradually,
As you finish soaking in your environment with your eyes,
You can start to come into stillness,
Closing the eyes,
And don't be intimidated by this practice.
We'll just take it moment by moment,
And I'll be here with you the entire time.
So let's begin today with just one single inhale followed by one exhale.
Good,
One more inhale for me.
Very nice,
And an exhale.
One more inhale,
And again,
Exhale through the nose or the mouth,
Starting to notice the cadence of your breath and how it feels as it makes its journey through the nostrils,
Tickling the back of the throat,
Filling the lungs,
Oxygen entering the bloodstream and the brain,
And as the exhale makes the reverse journey.
Observe how the chest and the belly contract as you release the breath.
And we'll also take a moment here to check in with the body.
When we spend too much time on our screens,
It can almost feel like we're disembodied,
Disconnected from the feeling of our feet,
Pressing against the floor,
Grounded,
And held by the earth.
The feeling of the legs crisscrossed or feet flat on the floor,
The seat,
The low back,
The spine,
The chest,
And belly rising and falling.
We have the hands in the lap,
Arms by your sides,
Shoulders rolled back in a neutral position,
And the neck and head neatly aligned and stacked over the spine.
Checking in as well with the muscles of the face.
Is your brow furrowed?
Is your jaw clenched?
If so,
Perhaps releasing any tension,
Because that was then and this is now.
One of my favorite teachers,
Tara Brock,
Describes mindfulness as being in an airplane flying through the clouds.
And when you become mindful,
Your awareness expands beyond the plane,
Beyond the cloud,
And remembering that there is a whole sky,
And the whole sky with the stars,
The moon,
And the sun.
For us,
There is the breath,
The body,
The symphony of sounds,
Which surrounds us at all times,
The heart and the mind.
And this is sometimes how I feel when I'm able to put my phone down and allow myself to open to the present moment.
And if it ever becomes too much,
Too uncomfortable,
Return to how we began.
Just one inhale,
Followed by just one exhale,
Focusing on the next breath and nothing more.
And as we come to the end of this meditation,
You might like to honor your body with a stretch,
Perhaps rolling out the neck,
The shoulders,
Rolling them forward and then back,
Raising the hands above the head,
Decompressing the spine in a big good morning stretch before allowing the eyes to open.
All right,
My dear one,
Thank you so much for practicing with me today.
I encourage you to take the next few moments slowly and one by one,
Bringing the awareness that you've cultivated here into whatever you do next,
Perhaps having a few sips of water before moving on to the rest of your day.
Take good care and I'll see you again very soon.
