So starting this meditation,
Just relaxing and taking a few deep breaths,
Taking a few moments to arrive in the meditation and get grounded in the body.
And now for the first couple of minutes,
Just settling attention on the sensations of the breath wherever you find them easiest to follow and holding the sensations with gentle curiosity.
You never know exactly how the breath will feel in the next moment until the sensations arise and never exactly the same.
See if you can follow the sensations all the way through the in-breath and all the way through the out-breath and then letting attention continue without break into the next breath cycle.
And you don't have to stop thoughts,
So just seeing if you can allow them to come and go while you stay with the breath.
However,
Sometimes you will get carried away by a thought and you'll forget the breath.
And when this happens,
Which it will and it's not a sign that you're doing anything wrong,
You can apply the Aha Moment technique that you've already learned.
So as a reminder,
This involves positively reinforcing that moment of introspective awareness,
That Aha Moment,
By savoring any pleasant aspects of the experience of meditating in that moment.
However,
An additional step that is useful to introduce is labeling.
So labeling is mentally applying a simple label to whatever distractions are present.
So for instance,
If you're thinking about a work problem,
You might note,
Thinking about work or even just work.
If you were getting frustrated with the dog barking outside,
You might note dog or maybe sound.
The label you pick doesn't matter too much,
You can just choose whatever feels right to you in the moment.
So if there was a distraction present or if there is a distraction present,
You can label it now and then let's settle attention back on the breath again.
So again,
If you find yourself distracted,
Just labeling that distraction with a gentle curiosity.
And try to label the specific content of the distraction.
It's easy to go straight back to the breath without recollecting what it actually was that had been acting as a distraction.
So for instance,
If you noticed that you were thinking about something,
Try to label specifically what you were thinking about.
So for instance,
You might label work problems if that's what was on your mind.
However,
If you know that you were distracted but you can't remember what the distraction was,
That's okay too and don't spend too much time trying to remember.
So moving attention back to the breath again.
Labeling gradually trains awareness to be more sensitive to common distractions that are arising.
It's kind of a way of telling awareness that you'd like to notice this distraction and similar distractions when they arise in the future before they cause you to forget the breath.
And if you notice that you've been mind-wandering for a period of time,
You don't need to trace your train of thoughts a long way back.
You can just label the most recent thought and then move attention back to the breath.
So over time,
Doing this practice,
You'll recognize distractions that arise as distractions more quickly.
So as Chhula Dasa puts it in TMI,
You learn to recognize the faces of your abductors,
Frequent distractions that come up for you.
So you can continue this meditation for as long as you want or in your own time,
Bringing the practice to a close.
