Welcome to this practice which I call the hourglass.
And what the hourglass addresses is the fundamental nature of your presence in your body.
What I mean by that is being is inherently spacious.
It's just the nature of being.
You know,
If you were a physicist looking into the structure of your coffee mug,
You would see tiny points of energy surrounded by vast spaciousness,
Similar to the spaciousness of intergalactic space with a star here and then so much space and another star over there.
Your being is inherently spacious.
And what happens in the course of the day is we feel pressured,
We get congested,
We hold on to emotions that we're not ready to process.
This spaciousness of your being becomes more and more congested or coagulated.
And what happens when your body is dense and thick in that way is you lose the capacity to be present because the present isn't something that's out there and I'm in here.
The present lives through you and the more tension you carry in the body,
The more consolidated it feels,
The less available you are to feeling the present course through you.
Tension desensitizes us.
So there's an Eastern concept of emptiness that gives emptiness value.
You know,
If a teacup weren't empty,
It couldn't hold tea.
And so there is a value to recovering the spaciousness of your being and we're going to explore that with this practice.
I would invite you to stand for this practice if you're comfortable doing that.
And just take a moment to feel the breath open through the body and release out and feel the sensitivity of the body to the breath wave.
Feel it soften to the breath wave.
And then I'd like you to imagine just for a moment that your body is like an hourglass.
So it's not a breakable,
Dangerous glass.
It's a friendly,
Transparent,
Soft container.
And the body is full of sand inside that glass container.
And you feel the sand,
You feel the weight of it in your feet and your calves.
You feel the sand up through your knees and your thighs.
You feel the inert mass of it resting there.
And up into the pelvic bowl,
The sand fills you and it fills up through the chest.
You feel the whole mass of it and it spills down through the arms and fills them to the fingertips.
And if you take your fingertips and just gently touch your thighs with them,
You'll find the sand in your hands conjoined the sand in your legs.
And the sand fills up through the neck,
Up through the head so that the whole of your inner world is one of inert sand sitting there at rest.
And in the bottom of each foot,
There's a little plug and that plug falls away from each foot and the sand begins to course out.
It runs out through those holes in the bottoms of your feet.
And you feel that happening.
You feel it leaving the body and that whole mass of sand within you shifts in response and settles and shifts and settles.
And you feel it bit by bit dropping down through the head as it shifts and settles in response to this coursing sand rushing out through the bottoms of your feet.
And it settles eventually down through the neck.
And still you're aware of that sand shifting and settling inside and above that level of the dropping sand,
There is just empty space.
And still the sand is coursing out through the bottoms of your feet and the level of the sand drops down through the chest down into the abdomen area.
And there is just this emptiness above and this shifting settling mass below coursing out through the bottoms of your feet.
And it settles down through the realm of a pelvic bowl and you feel it settling and shifting down through the legs and the level of the sand bit by bit drops into the thighs and lowers and lowers as the sand empties out through the bottoms of your feet.
And the level of the sand drops down through your knees and drops down as it courses through the bottoms of your feet.
And it drops down through the calves and settles and settles still pouring out through your feet and it drops down into the ankles and eventually down to the feet and the last little grain of sand eventually falls away.
And just feel that spaciousness in the body and notice if there are any little granularities of sand still stuck.
And if you feel them there just give them permission to let go and drop down through that emptiness and out through the bottoms of your feet.
And notice for yourself how it feels to stand in the world with this much spaciousness in your being.
And you may be aware of how much room there is for the breath in the body.
There's nothing in the way of it.
The breath comes into the body and it just gently fills it and releases.
And just play with that for a moment and enjoy the pure experience of the breath effortlessly filling the body and gently releasing out.
And bring your awareness to the sounds of the room or the world around you and notice how much spaciousness there is within the body for those sounds to enter and live through and pass through.
The body is like a bell and the sounds of the world pass through it and it resonates and those sounds are heard within the body,
Felt within the body in a very different way from what it means to be listening with the ears only.
And finally,
If you wish,
Allow your eyes to open if they've been closed and discover what it is to feel the sights of the world around you through that spaciousness,
To feel the colors,
The shapes,
The textures,
The movements,
To just receive them into that emptiness as a teacup receives tea.
And they pass into that spaciousness and move through it and as they do you feel the world in a different way.
And as you make room for the sights and sounds and presence of the world around you,
You find yourself more fully present,
More deeply attuned to this unique transient moment.
And play with that on your own time.
I will finish the formal practice here but that doesn't mean you need to step away from it or leave it,
Linger there if you wish,
Enjoy it,
See what it takes you.
