And we'll be out of here by 12.
Okay.
Find a position of stability and poise,
Your upper body balanced over your hips and shoulders in a comfortable but alert posture.
Your hands can be on your lap or on your knee,
Or they could hang by your side like heavy curtains,
Stable and relaxed.
Try to sense your body feeling your feet,
Your legs,
Your hips,
The lower and upper body,
Your arms,
Your shoulders,
Your neck and your head.
And when you're ready,
Begin to bring your awareness to your breath,
The actual physical sensation,
Feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out,
Letting the breath be just as it is without trying to change or regulate it in any way.
Allow it to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace,
Knowing you're breathing perfectly well right now,
Nothing for you to do.
Allow your body to be still and sit with a sense of dignity,
A sense of resolve,
A sense of being complete,
Whole in this very moment.
As you sit here,
Let an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen or can imagine.
Let it gradually come into greater focus,
And even if it doesn't come as a visual image,
Allow the sense of the mountain and feeling its overall shape,
Its lofty peak high in the sky,
The large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust,
Its steep or gentle sloping sides.
Notice how massive it is,
How solid,
How unmoving,
How beautiful,
Whether from afar or up close.
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top and trees reaching down to the base or rugged granite sides.
There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.
There may be one peak or a series of peaks or with meadows and high lakes,
Observe it,
Noting its qualities,
And when you feel ready,
See if you can bring the mountain into your own body,
Sitting here so that your body and the mountain in your mind's eye become one,
So that as you are here,
You share in the massiveness and the stillness and majesty of the mountain.
You become the mountain.
Grounding in the sitting posture,
Your head becomes the lofty peak,
Supported by the rest of your body and affording a panoramic view,
Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain,
Your butt and your legs the solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair,
Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.
With each breath,
As you continue sitting,
Become a little more a breathing mountain,
Alive and vital,
Yet unwavering in your inner stillness,
Completely what you are beyond words and thoughts,
A centered,
Grounded,
Unmoving presence.
As you sit here,
Become aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The light and the shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment in the mountain's stillness and the surface teams with life and activity,
Streams,
Melting snow,
Waterfalls,
Plants and wildlife,
As the mountain sits,
Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night,
The bright warming sun followed by the cool night sky,
Studded with stars and the gradual dawning of a new day.
Through it all,
The mountain just sits,
Experiencing change in each moment,
Constantly changing,
Yet always just being itself.
It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day,
Calmness abiding all change.
For the next couple of moments,
Sit with this image of the mountain,
Embodying its rootedness,
Its stillness and its majesty.
We're going to move into meta now,
So please,
Imagine yourself picking up a picture of yourself as a small child and looking at this picture.
Say these words to yourself as I say them out loud.
May I be free from inner and outer harm and danger.
May I be safe and protected.
May I be free of mental suffering or distress.
May I be happy.
May I be free of physical pain and suffering.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be able to live in this world happily,
Peacefully,
Joyfully and with ease.
And I'd like for you to just focus on your breath for a few moments and when you're ready,
You can open your eyes and stretch and we're finished.
So we have a couple quick things we're going to do.
One is on the back of our card we put the words so that you can just take one of those and pass them on.
And then we'll be able to take a copy of what today's lesson was and it also has the link to our website so you can go on there and if you want recordings or anything we talked about,
It's all on there for you as well.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
