I am Pooja Mamadipalli.
Before we begin.
I want you to know that nothing needs to be fixed.
This is simply a space to become curious about your own experience.
Take a moment.
To notice where you are.
Notice the surface beneath your body.
The temperature of the room.
The sounds around you.
You don't need to change anything.
Just notice.
I've been wondering about anxiety lately.
Not as something to get rid of.
But as something to understand.
Perhaps.
You have noticed this too.
Your body is here.
But your mind has already traveled somewhere else.
Maybe into tomorrow's conversation.
Into next week's uncertainty.
Into an answer that hasn't arrived yet.
It's interesting.
How often anxiety asks us to live in the future.
That doesn't yet exist.
From a psychological perspective,
This makes sense.
Our brains are remarkably good at anticipating uncertainty.
They imagine possibilities.
Not because they want us to suffer.
Because.
That's their way of protecting us.
Sometime.
This protection becomes exhausting.
Specially.
When the future remains unknown.
Yoga.
Offers another way of looking at this.
In the Yoga Sutras.
The fluctuations of the mind are called vrittis.
They are the movements that pull our awareness away from what is here.
And into memories,
Stories,
Fears,
And imagined futures.
Neither psychology nor yoga.
Asks us.
To shame the mind for wandering.
Instead.
Both invite us to know this.
This with kindness.
So for the next few moments,
I invite you to become a gentle observer of your own mind.
Bringing your attention to your breath.
Not to control it.
Only to accompany it.
Feel the inhale.
Notice the pause.
And feel the exhale.
If your mind begins planning.
Simply notice.
If it begins worrying.
Notice.
Worrying.
If it begins searching for satanity.
Notice.
Searching.
Without any judgments.
Without trying to stop it.
You're learning to recognize the movement of the mind.
Without becoming the movement itself.
Allow your awareness to widen.
Notice the feeling of your feet.
The weight of your legs.
The rise and fall of your chest.
The sounds that continue around you.
Notice that wild thoughts come and go.
This moment.
Continues to unfold.
The surface beneath you.
Continue supporting you.
The ground continues holding you.
Your breath.
Continues arriving on its own.
Perhaps presence has been here all along.
It was simply waiting for your attention.
I would like to leave you with a question today.
If your mind no longer had to solve tomorrow.
What might become possible today.
There's no need to answer.
Simply carry the question with you.
Thank you for allowing yourself this moment of reflection.
May you remember that presence is in the absence of uncertainty.
It's the willingness to return to this moment again.
And again.
