The Zoom Sessions No 15: Saturday Meditation Drop In 4th July 2020

This is a live field recording of our drop-in meditation session hosted on Saturday 4th July 2020. Due to the Coronavirus, I decided to host a free Saturday night meditation sessions via Zoom whilst we are all locked down. This recording was made to enable group members to return to the session if they would like to.

The full session contains a body scan, an observation meditation practice, and a review of our day as it was. The audio is recorded on a laptop and there is some background.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Matt Albury.

The following record is a live recording using a laptop of a Zoom meditation session that took place on the 4th of July 2020.

During the corona lockdown we were unable to meet in person so we would meet on a Saturday night and undertake 45 minutes of meditation together via Zoom.

The following session consists of a body scan to help settle us into our practice and the main practice consisted of an observation meditation.

So observation meditations are where we would take our time to look at our breath,

The sensation of the breath,

Bodily sensations,

Thoughts and our mind and the movement of our mind.

And the quality that you bring to an observation meditation is that of an observer,

Of a witness.

So basically we seek to separate ourselves away from the actual experience as if we were observing,

Witnessing the actual activity going on in the breath and the body.

And if we get really badly distracted we would just come back without any effort to what we're doing.

And then the session ends with a simple remembrance of the day practice.

So as you settle in now just take your awareness to your feet on the floor.

So we'll do our grounding technique to help us settle.

So notice the physical sensation of the feet on the floor.

And then take your awareness then up to the sensation of the chair or the bed or the cushion that's supporting your body.

So just allowing your awareness to settle there.

Noticing the physical sensation against your body.

And then take your awareness out to the sounds you can hear around you.

So firstly noticing the sounds you can hear outside of the room.

And then bringing your awareness to the sounds you can hear inside of the room.

And then we'll take two breaths.

So take a lovely deep breath in through the nose and sigh out through the mouth.

And we'll do that again.

Lovely deep breath in again.

And just take a moment then just to be aware of what it feels like to be in the space that you're in,

In your body.

And also there's the option to set an intention for what you want this practice to be for you.

So maybe it's a time of stillness,

A time of healing,

A time of relaxing.

But just set an intention what you need this to be for you now.

And then when you hear the bell,

Start to guide us in our body scan.

So return your awareness then back to the feet on the floor.

Flowing the awareness then up onto the toes,

The tops of the feet,

The ankles.

Flowing the awareness up onto the lower legs,

The knees,

The thighs,

The backside and the hips.

And just notice the physical sensations present in your legs.

And then allow your awareness to flow up through from the hips up onto the lower belly,

The lower back.

Taking the awareness to the upper back and the chest.

And just notice the physical sensations present there.

And then flow your awareness across then up onto the shoulders and the shoulder joints.

Taking the awareness then down through the upper arms and the elbows and the forearms,

The wrists,

The backs of the hands and the palms of the hands.

And then allow your awareness then to flow out to your thumbs,

Your first fingers,

Second fingers,

Third fingers and fourth.

And then flow all the way from the tips of the fingers all the way back up through the arms up to the shoulder joints.

Just noticing the physical sensations in your arms.

And then take your awareness up onto your throat,

The back of the neck.

Taking the awareness around onto the jaw,

Your mouth.

Noticing your lips,

Your teeth,

Your gums,

The insides of the cheeks,

The roof of the mouth,

The tongue and the space underneath your tongue.

And then just take a moment just to notice the tastes and the physical sensations present in your mouth.

And then take your awareness then up to the nose and the nostrils.

Flowing your awareness around onto the ears.

Taking that awareness across onto our eyelids and our eyelashes and the eyeballs themselves.

And then allow the awareness to flow up onto the forehead,

The back of the head and then up onto the crown.

And then when you're ready as if someone's just opened a tap on the bottom of your toe,

Just allow yourself to be emptied out as if you're draining out through the bottom of the feet into the ground.

And as you scan all the way through the body just let go of anything you want to let go of at this time.

Anything that's been bothering you or frustrating you.

Just allow it to flow out through the bottom of the feet into the ground below you.

Just scanning all the way down to the bottom of the feet.

And then when you've got to the bottom of the feet in your own time scan all the way back to the body as if you're being filled afresh.

So if someone's filling you with fresh liquid all the way up through the body from the tips of the toes,

Tips of the fingers right up to the crown of the head.

Just noting what's present in your body as you flow.

Then when you reach the crown of the head again take a moment just to notice what it feels like to be in your presence.

Just the uniqueness of you in your body in this space now.

And then as we prepare then to do our observation meditation we just say the mindfulness mantra quietly in our minds.

So say the words just allow these words just to wash over you.

So in this moment I've got nowhere to go nothing to do no one to be.

Nowhere to go nothing to do no one to be.

Nowhere to go nothing to do no one to be.

So to start our observation meditation then just bring your awareness then to your breath.

And as we do this we bring in our awareness to the complete journey of the breath.

So this is where we will come back to throughout the practice.

So we're just watching the movement of the breath coming in with the inhale.

Flooding our body with this breath.

Noticing the little still point in the breath cycle where you have a little pause before you start to breathe out again.

And there's a little pause again before you start to breathe in.

So this is where we're going to be coming back to regularly just to still our awareness to the observation of the breath.

Gently moving the body all the subtle movements.

And as I was saying at the start if you get distracted at all just come back without any effort don't worry about it just say okay I've been off and I just come back to here.

So when you're ready now just allow your awareness then to move away from the breath for a moment to bring observation to the mind.

So with this what we do we just watch the mind doing its thing.

So again it's that quality of just watching what goes on so we don't bring any criticism into it or any judgment into what's going on.

Just watch the nature of thought as they calm and go.

Just watching the transient nature of the you know the thoughts just pass by like traffic.

So at this stage we're just watching that phenomena of the mind as it just does its thing.

And then when you're ready allow your awareness to come away from the thoughts back to the breath.

So we're dropping that observation back to the sensation of the breath moving the body.

So we're allowing that to be our place of focus.

So again notice that quality of watching the breath moving subtle movements with the breath.

Just allow yourself just to settle there again for a bit now.

And then allow your awareness then just to open out completely just taking in whatever comes up.

So it's a bit like a Tsar Zen style Zen meditation now where we just observe whatever comes up.

So we just sit keeping a quality in our posture of sitting.

We notice the breath when a thought catches our attention we observe it for a little bit and then come away from it.

Or for bodily sensations there we've watched the bodily sensation for a bit.

But the quality here is the Suzuki Roshi's technique of where we observe just what is there.

We're just sitting just accepting what comes along.

Just keeping that quality in our posture and our observation.

So we don't push anything away just let everything just roll through.

Just allow yourself just to settle there now and I'll keep an eye on the time for us.

You you you you you you you you you you you you you There's the option just to stay as you are just to stay with just observing anything as it rises and falls away.

Or if you like you can drop back to watching the movement of the breath.

Just settling with the rising floor of the breath moving the chest and the ribs.

But just take your awareness to wherever helps you to have that quality of that sitting and being present.

And as you do this take your observation to the softness of your hands in your lap.

Softness in your arms.

Softness in the belly.

And then just return just back to the breath or just watching all the different things rolling through.

You just bring that quality of sitting and observing.

You you you you you you you you you you And then for a moment then we'll just remove our observation away from the breath or the different things that are rising.

Just take a moment just to think through your day as it was.

So with this practice what we do is just think of how the day has been from the moment we woke up until this moment now.

So we just run through the day from the first moment we woke up until this moment just thinking of what were good things,

Perhaps frustrating things.

But we just think through the day all the different stages that we've been through today up until this present moment.

And as we do this we just keep it with a real lovely natural rhythm just thinking through the day as it opened out.

Not bringing any judgments into anything where we beat ourselves up the things we did perhaps or should have done didn't get around to doing.

It's actually just awareness of the day just looking at how the day unfolded.

And then when we get to the moment of now when we come to now we take this time to think of any intentions we'd like to set for tomorrow or sankalpas.

So this is how we'd like to be tomorrow so these can be qualities we'd like to see in our day tomorrow.

So we allow the day as it's been to inform what we would like to bring into tomorrow.

So it can be things like being kinder to ourselves or being more patient or accepting.

But these qualities are personal to us and right for us.

So just take a moment just to think through any qualities you would like to bring into your day tomorrow.

And then when you have those qualities ready just allow them to come in with your breath.

Picture them coming into your body flowing down into your heart centre.

Just letting them settle there.

Trusting that it will come up as and when needed tomorrow.

And then when you've done that just come back to where we started the practice in the evening just allowing your awareness to settle back with your breath.

And just remain there watching the movement of the breath again until you hear the bell chiming.

And then we'll do our grounding technique and open our eyes together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So allow your awareness then to go out to the sounds around you.

Notice in the sounds outside of the room where you are and the sounds you can hear inside of the room.

And then allow your awareness then to drop down to the sensations in your body.

Maybe you noticed parts of your body that have softened and others that might have got a bit tense because they've been sat for some while.

So just gently allow your body to move a bit if you like roll your shoulders.

Allow some gentle movement to come in.

And then take your awareness to the sensation of the chair or the cushion or the bed that supported your body as you've practiced.

Just noticing the contact there.

And then take your awareness to the feet on the floor.

So just notice that lovely firm floor under your feet.

If you like give it a push away just to notice that firmness that floor supported your body.

And then we'll take two breaths breathing in through the nose and sign out through the mouth and then open our eyes together.

Let's take a lovely deep breath in.

Do that again.

Lovely deep breath in.

And then gently open your eyes when you're ready and allow yourself to move gently.