Settling into a comfortable,
Clear seat for meditation,
Inviting a full breath and a full release of breath.
Eyes can be open and soft,
Resting,
Or closed and soft,
Resting.
Feeling the rise and fall of the breath,
And inviting attention to wash down through the body,
Filling the arms and hands,
Awake to the vibrations and sensations in the arms and hands,
Allowing attention to wash down through the neck and shoulders into the ribs,
Diaphragm and belly,
Low belly.
Feel the rise and fall of the breath through the chest and belly.
And as the breath rises and falls in the torso,
Awareness in the arms picks up the wave of breath,
And the whole upper body breathes.
Arms feel the soft pulse of the breath,
Just by being included in awareness.
Breathing,
Inviting awareness to fill the bowl of the hips,
The pelvis,
Down into the legs,
Maybe one leg at a time,
All the way down to the foot,
Or down through both legs,
Inviting the sensations of vibration,
Pressure,
Tingling,
Presence in the legs to join the arms and the torso,
And then to join the feeling of breath rising and falling,
Relaxing through the root of the body,
Through the bowl of the pelvis,
Through the low belly,
Through the musculature of the belly and low back,
Radiating out through the whole body,
Soft,
Receptive breath.
In this style of meditation,
Working with the full body breath,
Breath is the anchor for attention.
So when the mind wanders into story,
Image,
Past or future,
Any kind of words or image,
And we notice that it has done so right away,
The whole body comes back into focus,
Into a gentle,
Unforced,
Sensate presence.
And it's a subtler anchor than feeling the breath in a smaller place,
Like at the tip of the nose or in the musculature of the belly rising and falling.
The whole body breath becomes like when we have the eyes open,
But slightly unfocused and we get a wide peripheral vision.
It's like a peripheral sensation field,
Where you feel the whole body all at once,
Not focusing on any one part.
Hold the whole field of the body in loving awareness,
And then feeling the wave of the breath through the whole body.
A beautiful practice of integrating concentration on the breath with a sense of an integrated,
Embodied presence.
Awake to the shape of the whole body,
The subtle movements through the whole body.
Continue to remember or reconnect with the sense of the whole body breathing.
Remember the legs and the feet,
The arms and hands,
The full length of the torso.
And even without any effort,
Quite subtly,
The feeling of breath through the head all the way to the crown.
And if you can feel the whole body breathing quite easily,
You might soften the peripheral gaze even more and feel the field around your body.
The sense of the body as a whole pulsing,
Sensate field of presence,
Breathing,
And allowing attention to stabilize with this sweet,
Potentially very pleasurable way of being with the body.
We'll sit in this way.
If stabilizing attention with the whole body is difficult or in any way feels not right for you,
You could use a narrower focus like the nose tip or a more diffuse but less sensation-oriented focus like sounds.
A basic practice to stabilize attention,
Connecting and sustaining,
And breathing into the field of space that opens when discursive thought and story rest for a bit,
And the life of the body is allowed to become foreground and still awareness with its beauty.
