Hi,
And welcome to Pressing Pause.
I'm your host,
Rae Louise,
And today's session will focus on sensory orientation.
Together,
We will use our five senses to practice moving our attention away from anxious and unhelpful thought patterns and more towards the present moment.
So we'll begin our practice today first by trying to find a comfortable,
Steady seat.
No matter where you are right now,
Try to see if you could place some part of your body firmly on the ground,
If you can level your pelvis and elongate your spine just enough so that the body feels able to take some longer breaths in through the nose and out through the lips.
And see if you can just take two or three slightly longer breaths right now,
Feeling the body on the ground,
Feeling the pelvis steady,
Feeling the spine tall.
One more full exhale.
If it feels good to keep breathing deeply,
You can carry that on,
Or you can let that go and just let the body's natural breath take over.
And we'll start today by bringing our attention first to our visual field of awareness.
And I want you to begin by noticing something out ahead of you that is neutral or pleasant to look at,
And that you could describe to yourself briefly,
Maybe taking in the color of the object,
Its shape,
How close or far away it is from you.
And then see if you can try that again with an object that is above your eyeline,
So lifting your gaze and just noticing something that catches your eye,
Seeing if you can describe that object,
Its color,
Its shape,
How far or close it is from you.
And then taking your eye gaze over to the right and noticing something toward that side of you,
Again taking in its color,
Its shape,
Its distance or proximity to you,
And then floating the eye gaze over to the left and noticing something you can see there,
Again taking in its color,
Its shape,
Its distance or proximity to you.
And then just bringing your eye gaze back to the center,
Even closing your eyes now if you like,
See if you can bring your attention towards the sounds around you.
It might be that you notice things external to you,
Maybe there's the sound of traffic or other people talking and moving around,
Or maybe it's a more quiet space and you can hear your own breathing or the gentle sound of a clock ticking,
Just noticing for a moment three things you could hear right now.
Naming those things to yourself and taking a moment with each sound to take it in.
When you're ready,
Moving your attention towards what you can feel,
You might notice the temperature of your skin,
Feeling of clothing or fabric touching the body,
You might notice the weight of yourself against the ground or against your seat,
You might notice even just the feeling of your body breathing in and breathing out,
Just noticing three things that you can feel right now.
Noticing and taking in three things that you can feel.
And then we'll move our attention towards our nose,
Noticing if there's anything that we can smell right now.
It might be really subtle,
Might be very familiar smells or unfamiliar,
Just noticing three things that you could smell right now.
And if you can't find three,
That's okay.
See if you can even just notice one.
Just noticing the smell,
Taking it in.
And lastly,
Moving your attention towards the mouth to taste and just noticing if there's anything you can taste at the moment.
Be the last thing that you drank or ate.
Just noticing any taste in the mouth.
As you put all of these senses together,
Just noticing at the moment how the breathing is feeling,
How the body is doing,
And how your mind is.
Just after this brief activity of taking attention away from thinking and towards what is happening right here,
Right now.
And if you found this helpful,
Just knowing that you can turn this track back on or you can practice this on your own at any time,
Anywhere.
Just bringing your attention to the body,
To what you can see,
What you can hear,
What you can feel,
And perhaps even what you can smell or taste.
Thank you for joining me today,
And I look forward to practicing with you again soon.
