This guided meditation was recorded at a live event.
I hope that you'll find it useful and supportive of your meditation practice.
Please take a posture that is comfortable to sit in,
Where the body can be upright and relaxed,
Where your breath can move easily and freely.
Let the attention drop into the body and settle into the present moment as you listen to the instructions that follow and let them guide or inspire or inform your meditation practice.
Allow your attention to settle into the experience of sitting.
Feel the body sitting.
Feel the sensations of contact where your body touches the floor.
Is it hard or soft,
Rough or smooth,
Heavy,
Light,
Hot or cold?
Feel the sensations where the buttocks touches the seat.
Let your attention settle deeply in this awareness of bodily sensations as they appear in the present moment.
Feel the sensations of the hands touching.
Let them be relaxed and comfortable.
There's no special arrangement you need to put your hands in.
But feel the sensations,
Warmth,
Coolness,
Pressure,
Tightness,
Vibration.
By observing these various touch points,
These points of sensation,
We can direct our attention to the body and experience embodied mindfulness.
You might notice the touch of the tongue to some part of your mouth.
The touch of the lips closed.
The touch of the eyelids closed.
Or perhaps even the touch of some clothes on your body.
Grounding the attention and the experience of sitting by observing these touch sensations.
You might also broaden your experience of the body to include an awareness of the whole body sitting.
Mindfulness of the whole body.
As you observe the experience of the body,
As you become more mindful and aware of bodily sensation,
You might at times notice that thoughts have become strong that are taking you away from this experience of the present moment sitting.
How did you notice that thoughts arose?
Were there some kinds of cues or clues that told you that you were lost in thought?
How did you go from being mindful of the body to being lost in thought to now becoming aware that you were lost in thought?
Notice what it was you noticed.
When you were involved in the thought,
Was it the content that pulled you in?
Or was it the content that made you aware that you were thinking?
Were there some sensations in the body that you felt in conjunction with that thought?
Do certain thoughts make you feel heavy or light,
Buoyant and bright,
Or dull and slow?
Do you feel any pressure or changes of sensation in the body?
Changes of the rate of your breath or the rate of your pulse?
Different moods,
Different emotions,
Different thoughts can have a different effect on the body.
In this practice session,
I want to encourage you to direct your attention primarily to the experience of the body as it is right now.
But when your mind gets involved in thoughts,
To notice what happened,
Just be curious.
You don't have to do any specific kind of systematic investigation,
But be curious.
What happened that pulled you into those thoughts?
And even more importantly,
What happened that allowed you to become mindful again?
Was there a shift in energy?
Was there a shift in interest?
Was it another thought?
Was there a sensation that you noticed?
Just observe.
Observe how you get seduced into thinking and how you come back to mindfulness of the here and now,
Mindfulness of the body sitting.
We make this movement many,
Many,
Many times in meditation,
Getting lost in thought and then starting fresh once again with the next moment.
Getting lost in thought again and then waking up and beginning again.
So let's observe how this happens.
How do we move from bodily sensations to lost in thought and then back to mindfulness again and reconnect with bodily sensations?
We're observing the meditative process.
We're observing the process of conditioning and unraveling conditioning.
We're observing the extent to which we can make a choice and we can train the mind and perhaps the times and conditions when we can't.
So settle the attention in the body sitting,
Aware of changing sensations.
At times,
Move your attention to various touch points to experience the changing sensations in specific locations.
And then at other times,
Widen your field to include the whole body sitting.
Whenever thoughts pull you away,
Notice that you're thinking and reflect what happened.
What happened to get lost in the thought and what happened to now become mindful of thinking and return the attention again to the body sitting.
Enjoy this practice of mindfulness of the body with an exploration of thought.
