So once you've taken your comfortable seat,
Bring your hands somewhere where they can rest without dragging your shoulders forward so it feels like your hands are supported and your arms are just hanging loosely off your body.
And then from there,
Allowing your eyelids to get heavy and your eyes to close down.
And take a moment to feel any warmth,
Heat or coolness within the body.
And noticing any sensation of movement within the body,
Maybe feeling blood flowing,
Maybe feeling your heart or a sense of tingling.
And then at the same time,
Noticing any sensation of stillness within the body,
Connecting to the physical sensations within the body and using these sensations to start to draw your awareness out of your thinking mind and into the physical body,
Into the present moment.
Adding a very general sense of how the body feels.
And then checking in with the state of the thinking mind.
Notice if it is busy,
Maybe slightly slower,
Agitated or lethargic,
Without getting caught up in the labels or the thinking around the thinking.
Just noticing.
And then drawing your awareness now to the tip of your nose and start to feel the air that is flowing in and out through your nostrils.
Without needing to change anything.
Simply feeling the flow of air.
Noticing maybe the subtle differences between each breath.
And maybe noticing that the air that flows in is slightly cooler than the air that flows out.
And starting to follow the whole breath now.
So following the breath as it comes into the nostrils.
And notice what parts of the chest and the belly rise with that inhale.
And then allowing the exhale to flow out naturally.
Notice what parts of the chest and belly fall and soften.
And sooner or later we notice that the mind is engaged by something other than the breath.
A sound or thought or a whole web of thoughts.
Whatever it may be that the mind becomes engaged by,
Simply be as gentle as you can and gently guide your awareness back to the feeling of your breath in your body.
And as we sit in this way and we start to notice the different directions that the mind takes us on.
You may start to notice that there are generally two kinds of reaction to a pattern of thinking.
We either find we are attracted towards a thought or a feeling.
Or we find we are resisting.
We have an aversion to a thought or a feeling.
And this is very natural.
It is in fact the mind's way of trying to draw us towards what it believes to be safe.
And to draw us away from what it believes to be dangerous.
And these assumptions having been drawn from past experiences we've had.
So there is this tendency to label thoughts and different parts of ourselves.
This happens as well with parts of ourselves that we want to change.
There is a tendency to thinking that some parts of ourselves are not good enough just yet.
Maybe we want to be kinder,
More honest,
Less self-critical,
More motivated.
And in response to wanting to change,
Which in itself is a very well-intentioned wish.
But it leads to us rejecting the parts in ourselves that we think are not yet good enough.
And this creates an internal conflict.
There is a non-acceptance of the world,
Of ourselves,
Of our lives,
Of the people around us.
Because we think that these things are what is causing the suffering.
But in fact,
It is this non-acceptance which actually becomes the very seed of our suffering.
We turn these parts of ourselves into the enemy and we reject them.
And your meditation practice allows you an opportunity to start to notice what parts of yourself you think are the enemy that need to be changed.
The parts that you are really good at.
The parts that you are really good at.
And you can start to notice what parts of yourself you think are the enemy that need to be changed.
The parts that you are resisting.
If by realizing that in fact these parts are doing their very best based on the experiences that you've been through,
You can start to accept and integrate these parts into yourself.
Starting to let go of the need to change,
The need to resist.
And each time you notice your mind being drawn to your own thoughts,
And each time you notice your mind being drawn to a thought,
Notice if you feel an attraction towards the thought or an aversion away from it.
And see if you can simply accept whatever it is,
Whatever thought or feeling that arises.
And notice how by just accepting whatever it is will naturally dissolve away in its own time.
And slowly start to draw some awareness back into the feeling of heaviness in your body.
Feeling how it is just to be sitting right here,
Right now,
In this space.
Opening up to any sounds around you.
And then in your own time,
Whenever you're ready,
Without losing this internal awareness,
Gently allowing your eyes to open.
