Welcome.
So to begin,
I invite you to find a comfortable position for yourself right now.
That might be seated or lying down.
Whatever allows your body to settle a little.
And you don't need to be relaxed to begin this practice.
You don't need to arrive here feeling okay.
You can come exactly as you are.
Gently closing down the eyes if that feels okay for you.
Take a breath in and let it go.
And again breathing in and release.
Now let's start by simply noticing where your body makes contact with whatever is beneath you.
Notice the weight of your legs,
Your back.
Notice your hands resting somewhere.
And feel that contact and let it be real.
The ground or the chair or the floor is holding you right now.
It was holding you before you noticed it and it will continue holding you.
You don't have to earn that support.
You don't have to do anything for it.
It's just there.
And let that land for a moment.
And now bring your attention to your feet.
If you're sitting,
Feel them on the floor.
If you're lying down,
Feel the backs of your heels,
Your ankles,
The weight of your legs extending downward.
And there's a kind of intelligence in this.
The body always has a bottom,
Always has a ground.
Even when life feels like it doesn't.
And now gently,
Without needing to fix anything,
Can you notice if there's any unsteadiness present in you right now?
Not looking for it,
Just noticing if it's there.
Maybe it's tightness in the chest or a restlessness in the belly.
Maybe a quality of alertness that won't quite switch off.
A sense of not knowing what comes next.
Whatever form it takes in you,
Just let it be acknowledged.
Yes,
I feel this.
You don't have to make it go away.
You don't have to understand why it's here.
Just let it be named.
Uncertainty is one of the most uncomfortable experiences a human being can have.
We're wired,
Deeply evolutionarily wired,
To want to know what's coming.
To have a plan to feel solid ground underneath our feet.
And sometimes life doesn't offer us that.
Sometimes we're in a chapter where we genuinely don't know how things will unfold.
And that not knowing lives in the body.
It has a texture,
A temperature,
A location.
So let's get curious about it rather than fight it.
Bring your awareness to where you feel the unsteadiness in your body.
Maybe it's obvious,
A tight throat,
A churning stomach,
A constricted chest.
Maybe it's more diffuse,
A general home of activation across your whole system.
Just locate it as best you can.
And now instead of trying to breathe it away or think your way through it,
Just move a little closer to it with your attention.
Almost like you're approaching something in a dark room,
Slowly,
Without needing to turn on all the lights at once.
What's the quality of the sensation?
Is it sharp or dull?
Moving or still?
Does it have a shape,
A density,
An edge?
And you're not trying to transform it,
You're just getting to know it.
Because there's something that tends to be true and that's that the sensations we run from get louder.
The ones we turn toward with genuine curiosity and without demand,
They begin to change on their own.
Not always quickly,
But they do change.
Now let your breath become a little more conscious.
Not controlled,
Just conscious and aware.
Feel the inhale arrive and notice where it lands in the body.
Feel the natural pause at the top of the inhale and then the exhale,
Long,
Easy,
Releasing.
And the breath is always in the present moment.
It can only happen now,
Not in the future that you're worried about.
Not in the situation that you're trying to solve.
Right here,
Right now,
This breath.
Let the exhale be a little longer than the inhale,
If that feels natural.
Like the body's setting something down on each out-breath.
And you don't have to figure anything out on the exhale,
You just have to let go.
Breathe in and release.
Breathe in and release.
And here's something worth sitting with.
The unsteadiness you feel,
It's on the surface of you.
It's there.
It's real.
It matters.
But it's not all of you.
Beneath the anxiety,
Beneath the uncertainty,
Beneath the not knowing,
There's something in you that's watching all of this.
Something that notices the tight chest,
Notices the racing thoughts,
Notices the fear.
And that noticing,
That awareness itself is steady.
It doesn't panic.
It doesn't contract.
It simply witnesses.
See if you can find that place in yourself right now.
The part that is watching.
Not caught in the story.
Not tangled in the feeling,
Just present.
Just aware.
This is your inner ground.
It's not something you have to build or earn or arrive at.
It's already here.
It's always already here.
It's the part of you that's been here your whole life,
Watching each chapter unfold.
Begin to bring your awareness back to the room around you now.
Feel the weight of your body.
Notice any sounds.
And let your eyes gently open if they were closed.
And whatever brought you here today.
The uncertainty,
The anxiety,
The unnamed unease that you met.
You didn't run.
That matters.
And carry this with you.
The ground within you is steady.
The ground within you is steady,
Even when the ground around you is not.
And thank you for being here.
Thank you for practicing with me today.
