Hi,
This is Padma Gordon and today I want to speak with you about gentleness and how being gentle with ourselves and one another really qualitatively shifts our experience in life.
And I've been dialoguing with people about gentleness lately and it can be the simplest thing like how you put the lotion on your face at night.
We can do it and we can do it as a task,
Almost like a task to just get through.
And what if we bring gentleness to the moment and we take the time and the care to really gently and in a way that feels soothing and healing spread the lotion on our face or on our bodies.
If we really take our time,
Somehow gentleness also has a relationship with time and slowing down and savoring,
Savoring each moment and bringing quality of gentleness and care to ourselves and to one another.
So rather than being brusque or abrupt in a given moment,
What if we slow down a little bit and we feel the impulse to be brusque,
To be abrupt and we interrupt it in favor of choosing the gentle path.
And gentleness has flavors.
There's like a gentle firmness.
We can still be firm without being harsh.
I just wonder about our doing based,
Achievement based culture here in the United States and world that we live in and what we sacrifice,
What the cost is of being so goal oriented.
And sometimes the cost is we miss what's happening right now.
We miss a moment to be kind and gentle with ourselves.
And it can really,
As I said,
Be in the most nuanced of ways.
So I want to do a meditation on gentleness,
Gentleness and how it kind of bridges into loving kindness.
So if you're willing to take a little time out for yourself,
Make yourself comfortable,
Set down your tasks,
Close the door and really carve out this little window of time to cultivate gentleness,
The spirit of gentleness,
The essence of gentleness.
Because we all have some part of us that knows how to be gentle and how to be kind and still how to be direct and clear.
So taking this time and taking a few full breaths and perhaps noticing how you can take a gentle breath.
What is it like when breathing is not a task?
It's an invitation.
Taking a moment to notice the difference between taking a full breath or forcing the breath in any way.
Now noticing what it's like to take a gentle breath and how your body responds.
How does the body respond to gentle breathing?
Being curious and noticing if parts of you are starting to soften,
If something inside is letting go.
And how does it feel to gently receive the softening?
This might be a totally brand new approach to relating with yourself or it might be a well trodden path.
It doesn't really matter.
We're all beginning again,
Opening up to being gentle with ourselves.
Which means that if there's a voice of the inner critic or there's a harsh way that we have of being with ourselves,
Perhaps just the simplicity,
The gentle breath can encourage this part that is being hard with us,
Overly forceful,
Overly critical.
The part that insists that we must push through,
We must get it done.
So what if it's really okay to take a little more time to be gentle with ourselves and to sink into a more luscious flavor of life where we are the queens and kings of our own domain and there's kindness that flows.
So just notice if perhaps there is a stream of kindness that is moving through you and I don't know what that might feel like or look like,
What your sense of that is and whatever it is you can trust it,
Trusting yourself,
Trusting kindness,
Trusting the gentleness that is being cultivated right now because the more we turn our attention to gentleness,
The more it grows,
It unfolds.
We're actually laying the tracks for kindness right now by simply entertaining the thought of being kind by sensing a stream of kindness,
Somatically anchoring in kindness so that at the end of this guided meditation you'll gently get up taking your time and there'll be a new way of breathing,
Of moving,
Of being with yourself,
With yourself and it can feel so good to be gentle with yourself.
Gentle and loving,
So this is a practice of cultivating gentleness and self-love and every time you listen to it,
It will go in deeper and the pathways of kindness and gentleness will expand in you such that when you're walking around and taking care of things in your life you might just suddenly be enveloped by kindness,
Surprising yourself at the depth of kindness with which you are treating yourself and responding to others.
May you enjoy this practice,
May it serve you,
May it serve all beings,
Being gentle and kind with ourselves,
Gentle and kind with ourselves.
And so it is,
So it is,
So it is.
