So starting this meditation with a few deep breaths and allowing the body to relax fully on the out-breath.
A relaxed body makes for a relaxed mind,
So really see if you can relax deeply,
Noticing any areas of tension or tightness and seeing if you can just let them go.
Feeling that sense of relaxation spreading through the body and settling attention on the breath wherever you find it easiest to follow the breath sensations.
So just getting curious in what the sensations of the breath actually feel like in this place and moment to moment and you can use any method of supporting attention on the breath like counting.
If the mind starts to wander,
Just congratulating yourself and noticing that,
Gently bringing the attention back to the sensations of the breath.
See if you can notice,
See if you can show your mind the ways in which it just feels better to be meditating than to be mind-wandering.
And see if you can follow the breath sensations all the way through the in-breath and all the way through the out-breath,
Settling the mind,
Settling the attention on the breath sensations,
On the flow of breathing.
So in this meditation we're going to be focusing on developing and maintaining extraspective awareness.
So this is awareness of things like sounds around you,
Body sensations,
If you have your eyes open,
Your visual experience.
So to start,
Just allow attention to drop the breath temporarily and check in on how the body is feeling.
So for example,
Noticing the position of the body,
Posture,
How you're sitting,
Position of your hands and feet.
And notice what sensations are arising from the body,
The points of contact with the ground underneath you,
Feeling of your clothes against your skin,
And just getting a general overall sense of how the body is feeling right now.
So once you've done that for a few seconds,
Moving attention back to the breath sensations just as you were doing before,
And again,
Getting curious in the details there.
And as you do this,
You may notice that even as attention is back on the sensations of the breath,
There's an increased sense of the body in the background,
In awareness.
So for example,
You may be less likely to start slumping without noticing because you have this awareness of your posture.
If some tension starts to develop,
For example,
If your brow starts to furrow,
You start tensing your shoulders,
Again,
You may be more likely to notice this start to happen with this increased extraspective awareness of the body,
So see if you can notice this increased bodily awareness as you continue following the breath.
It may feel like there's a little space around the breath,
You're paying attention to the breath within the context of knowing your body more clearly.
And don't worry if this background body awareness isn't super clear,
Very distinct,
It doesn't need to be,
Awareness is less detailed than attention.
So now just as an experiment,
Try to really ramp up the level of detail you're getting from the breath sensations.
So paying attention as closely as you can to the sensations of the breath,
Trying to pay such close attention that you exclude everything else from conscious experience,
Just for a few seconds,
Just trying to notice as much detail as you possibly can,
Every moment,
Moment by moment,
Really zooming in on the breath sensations with your attention.
And you may notice that when you do this,
When you really ramp up the amount of effort you're putting into attention,
That the sense of the body drops away a little bit,
You start losing that extraspective awareness.
So now just pull back a little bit from the breath sensations,
Go back to an easy,
Relaxed noticing the breath sensations,
And you may notice that there's more space in consciousness for awareness.
So perhaps this sense of the body in the background starts to come back a little bit more.
And you could even check in again on the body,
So again noticing the position of the body,
Sensations coming from the body,
Any tension arising,
And then moving attention back to the breath sensations again,
And again just noticing whether there's some increased awareness of the body that continues in the background.
And as you continue paying attention to the breath,
You might notice some of the advantages of having this extraspective awareness present.
There may be some more energy in the mind,
Less dullness,
You may notice that having this awareness of the body in the background gives you an extra sense of stability,
Groundedness,
Which is very supportive of stable attention.
And lastly if dullness arises,
Or distraction arises,
These will tend to express themselves in the body.
For instance,
Your posture may start to slump,
There may be some tension that develops somewhere in the body when the mind starts getting distracted.
So extraspective awareness makes it easier to notice these things,
Which means that you can correct for them more quickly.
There's a greater awareness of what the mind is doing,
And indeed this practice of developing extraspective awareness will lead very smoothly into developing introspective awareness,
Which we'll get into in a future practice.
So for the last minute or so of this practice,
Just continuing to attend to the breath sensations with this bodily awareness in the background.
And if you notice at any time doing this practice that the awareness of the body has faded,
Which it naturally will,
Just refreshing it by checking in on the body with your attention,
And then returning attention back to the breath.
So you can continue this practice for as long as you'd like,
Or gently bringing it to a close.
