A single employee A five to ten employee A small employee So let's begin by just taking a moment to sit quietly.
Let's begin by just giving our mind and our body opportunity to slow down just a little.
And as we begin to slow down and as we begin to settle,
Let's turn our attention toward the matter of posture.
To begin,
Just connect with the sense of the Earth underneath.
Feel and sense and know that presence underfoot,
Under seat,
Underneath.
And let your spine lift and elongate out of this like a blade of grass emerging from the darkness of the Earth.
Let your spine gently reach upward,
Through the torso,
Through the neck,
Through the head,
Through the crown of the head.
And then very gently move your torso from left to right,
A very subtle motion.
Move from left to right until you feel your body very naturally release and sink in.
And as you do this,
Just notice it's like your pores open,
Your cells open slightly,
And the downward flow of gravity has an opportunity to simply flow down into the Earth.
And then do something similar from front to back,
Gentle movements,
Gentle motions,
Sense of release and settling,
And gravity flows down through us.
And now let's give ourselves a little bit of time to turn our attention toward,
To touch on and rest with each of all of the three aspects of embodiment.
First,
Let your attention turn toward your experience of the apparently bounded body,
That apparently skin-bound experience of body that most of us associate with the term embodiment.
Turn your attention in this direction again and again and again,
And let your attention very slowly begin to settle into this.
Begin to settle into whatever it is that you find waiting when your attention orients in this way.
Turn your attention toward the aspect of embodiment known as the apparently bounded body and let your attention begin to touch and begin to rest with whatever it is you find waiting.
And then let's allow our attention to open up slightly and become more inclusive.
So we're not leaving behind this first aspect of embodiment.
Our attention continues to orient in this direction and at the same time it opens up to include the sense perception body,
The body of the senses that joins us with the world as a whole.
So let your attention turn toward what the ears know and what the eyes know and what the nose and the mouth and the tongue knows.
Let your attention turn toward what the skin and the flesh knows,
What the heart and the gut knows.
And again,
We're not looking for anything in particular here.
We're simply turning our attention in this direction and developing a conscious relationship with whatever's there for us in this moment.
Whatever's there for us in this experience of embodiment that presently is inclusive of the apparently bounded body and inclusive of the sense perception body.
And as always,
When attention wanders as it will,
Just gently bring it back to this open and inclusive sense of embodied experience,
This open and inclusive sense that we're now going to open even further,
Allow to become even more inclusive by welcoming our experience of the body of the Earth.
This is something we may feel as pressure under our seat,
Where we are in contact with the seat,
The chair,
The cushion,
The bench we're sitting on.
We might experience this as our sense of the floor underneath or the ground beneath that or the vast expanse of soil and rock that that's part of,
Or the Earth as a whole.
Let your attention turn toward and be inclusive of your experience of the body of the Earth.
And let your attention rest in this sense of the fullness of embodied experience,
The inclusiveness,
The openness of embodied experience.
And in doing this,
If you find your attention resting quite readily,
Maybe while you wander away from time to time,
But it's fairly infrequent and it's fairly easy to bring your attention back,
If this is the case for you,
Just continue on as you have been.
And if you find your attention wandering a little bit more frequently and a little bit more difficult to bring back within this open and inclusive experience of embodiment,
You can put a little bit of your attention,
Anchor a little bit of your attention on the breath coming into the lower belly.
Just gives you a slightly more focused,
A slightly more tangible reference point to help your attention settle,
Whilst still having this open and inclusive sense of the apparently bounded body,
The sense perception body,
And the body of the Earth.
And as we move toward the end of this short practice,
Just let any sense of efforting that you might notice in your experience,
Let any sense of efforting relax,
Soften,
Dissolve.
Let your attention begin to settle in what remains when this efforting loosens slightly,
As this efforting fades to the background,
To whatever extent,
In whatever way is appropriate right now.
So let the efforting dissolve,
Let yourself settle into what remains,
And just return to the beginning of the practice for a moment,
To this simple act of sitting quietly,
And to the concluding aspiration that whatever we have done here might in some way,
Some shape,
Some form,
Be of benefit to the world of which we are part.
