Welcome to the Open Awareness Practice,
A mindfulness exercise to expand your awareness to start noticing whatever is arising in your inner and outer environment with clarity and ease.
An open awareness can help us see our reactive patterns and make more skillful choices.
If at any time during this practice you find the open awareness to be overwhelming knowing that you can always return to your breath or your body.
So starting out by sitting in a relaxed and dignified posture allowing the body to become still,
Bringing attention to the fact that you're breathing,
Becoming aware of the movement of your breath as it comes into your body and as it leaves the body,
Not trying to change it.
Giving full care and attention to each in breath,
To each out breath and the pauses in between.
And if your mind wanders off a hundred times,
Simply coming back a hundred times without giving yourself a hard time.
Simply escorting your attention back to the breath in and out,
Moment to moment.
Whenever you notice that you're moving out of the present,
Getting reactive or out of balance,
The breath can act as an anchor to a state of relaxed awareness.
Seeing if it's possible now to expand your field of awareness to your whole body.
So feeling your breath from your head to the toe,
Feeling the sensations of the breath moving in your body,
Maybe feeling the sensations of touch of your body making contact to the floor of the chair,
The contact of your feet on the floor.
Just noticing what does it feel like in the body to be sitting in an upright posture,
And if you notice that you're beginning to slouch or bend forward or backward,
Simply bringing yourself back to a dignified posture.
If you find discomfort in your body,
You have two alternatives.
You can mindfully shift to a more comfortable position to relieve the tension.
However,
Doing that with full awareness and intention.
And the other ways to deal with this intensity is to stay with it.
So going right into the sensation,
Breathing into it,
Breathing out,
Softening as much as possible,
Listening to what your body might be saying,
Instead of racing and reacting,
Simply noticing the changing quality of sensations,
Maybe the arising and dissolving of the sensations or the movement of sensations,
The change in quality or intensity.
So exploring what happens when you closely observe the sensations with kindness and not reactivity.
Now choosing to stay with your breath or body sensations or expanding your awareness to sounds in the environment and even within your body.
Simply receiving the sounds,
Not making a special effort to go out and find sounds.
And noticing the tendency to label sounds,
To like them or judge them and exploring the possibility of simply receiving the sounds moment to moment,
Pure listening.
Now you can choose to stay with your breath,
The body or sounds or dropping any effort to focus on any single object of attention and opening your awareness to whatever is arising in your consciousness.
So if it's a sound,
Simply listening to the sound.
If your attention is drawn to a body sensation,
Just giving your full attention to that.
You can notice a thought arising in your consciousness,
Simply noticing the thought,
Noticing the arising of the thought,
The passing and the dissolution without getting caught up in the context or story of the thought.
So dropping any effort to even meditate.
Being open to it all,
Present without needing to react in any way.
Using your breath to anchor and stabilize you.
Just being with whatever is arising for you at this moment without getting pulled into the stories or the thoughts or the sounds.
Just for a moment noticing what it feels like to be completely okay with who you are as you are in this moment.
Not making any effort to change or have any expectations other than what is true for you in this moment.
And as you conclude this practice,
Knowing that you've spent this time intentionally to nourish yourself by being yourself as you are and allowing this sense of awareness,
Equanimity and kindness to extend into all aspects of your day.
