So let's find ourselves in a comfortable position of our choice,
Whether seated or reclining,
Allowing our eyes to soften,
Allowing our shoulders to drop and soften,
Allowing our torso and our back to soften and our belly to soften,
Allowing our sit bones to melt into the surfaces below and behind it,
Our legs and our knees to soften,
All the way down to our feet and our toes,
Allowing them to melt and soften fully into the support of the surfaces around us.
And we'll take three deep inhales and exhales together,
Breathing in through the nose and breathing out through the mouth.
We'll do our first deep breath now,
Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Two more times,
Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And last time at your own pace and allowing your breath to return to its natural rhythm.
And we'll notice that in today's practice,
What we'll do is bring our center of focus on to our mind and into our mental activities,
Our thoughts.
And just as we do with the rhythm and flow of our breath,
We'll do the same thing with the rhythm and flow of our thoughts,
Noticing when a thought arises,
Just like we notice when the breath rises,
Noticing when the breath passes the same.
We'll notice when a thought passes.
And also noticing the quality,
The content of the thoughts as they arise and pass.
So we're going to use this practice together to get intimate and more familiar with the content of our thoughts,
Just as much as the rhythm of our thoughts.
So just seeing if you can notice as we go into this and continue this practice,
Noticing the content and quality of the thoughts as they arise,
Noticing the path they tend to take,
Noticing when a thought passes.
And we may of course notice that when we bring our attention to thoughts,
They tend to sometimes vanish or disappear.
And that's also perfectly normal when that happens.
We can simply label that experience as being,
Like I am being in the present moment.
And again,
If thoughts pop up,
We can label those as seeing or planning or remembering,
Getting increasingly more familiar with the content of our thoughts.
And getting to know what are these little blobby things that pop up in my mind,
Seem not to have much of a shape at all,
But certainly occupy so much of my time and have such an effect on how I feel and what I do at a given day.
So really becoming familiar,
Giving ourselves space to get curious.
What are those little bubbly thoughts about?
As an example,
As I'm sitting here and practicing with you,
I just noticed a thought wondering what the time was.
That's a planning thought,
Making sure that this practice stays within a certain time.
We may notice that there's a thought about what we might have for lunch.
That's also about planning.
Or maybe there's a thought about something we're looking forward to.
You can label that as excitement,
Or you can simply just label it as thinking.
We may have a thought about a friend or a family member.
We could label that as wondering or rehearsing or remembering.
These are all examples for thoughts that may randomly pop up.
In a few moments,
We'll bring this beautiful practice to you.
And in a few moments,
We'll bring this beautiful practice to a close.
But before we do,
We can allow our focus to fade into the background,
Our focus on our thoughts,
And come back into the space that we're in,
Noticing the feeling of the surfaces below and behind us.
Noticing perhaps the sounds that are surrounding us in the space that we're in or outside of the space that we're in.
And giving ourselves just a moment of gratitude for showing up,
Which is so often the hardest part of the job is just being willing to show up and greet and meet whatever comes our way when we do show up.
So in a moment,
I'll invite the sound of the bell three times.
And when you can't hear the third sound of the chime,
You're welcome to blink your eyes back open to close the practice.
The
