Good morning and welcome,
Lovely to see you and invite you to take your time to get super comfortable.
However that looks for you.
Allow the body to move as much as it needs to move so that you can become a little more spacious.
It might be interesting to notice any kind of expectation of yourself that's already here of how you expect yourself to sit or breathe.
What expectation is here for your practice?
And then we can just perhaps put that down.
Let's put it to one side and maybe find a kinder place or a place of curiosity.
We've got half an hour together.
We don't know how that's gonna look.
We can just be with this moment and turning our awareness inwards.
Noticing what sensations are here.
Accidental pockets of tension.
Maybe in the hands or the jaw or the feet.
Maybe the legs or the arms.
By softening this expectation on yourself can you find a more present way of being with what's here.
And you notice your inner world.
Do you notice how it is to be held by the outer world?
The floor,
Your seat,
The space between you and the walls,
The furniture.
As you make conscious contact with the outer world holding you.
Do you notice how that changes?
The inner world,
Their relationship with each other,
To each other.
Notice your breath and as you take your awareness to your breath perhaps a new expectation creeps in of how your breathing needs to be.
We can lay that down at the side.
Pick it up again later if we want to but for now.
Let the breath breathe you without expectation,
Determination.
They're not needed in this moment.
How is it to let your breath breathe you?
Maybe as you practice the expectations start to creep back in.
They're so used to being here,
Where they belong.
We can say hello to them.
Hello,
Hello expectation.
And just invite them to sit beside you.
And then come back to this present moment and what is here.
Come back to the outer world and the inner world,
Holding one another.
Come back to being breathed,
The breath,
Its own intelligence.
Doesn't need our managing.
Noticing how nothing is static.
The muscles,
They contract and they release.
Tension comes and it goes.
Awareness moves.
Sometimes present,
Sometimes elsewhere.
The space around you,
Noises,
Nothing,
None of it static.
Perhaps noticing these old ways of expecting of yourself.
A kind that you notice that.
Welcome the expectation kindly and invite it to just sit down beside you forever.
Pick it back up again at the end of the practice if you want to.
Just for now.
Of being here without your own expectations on yourself.
Noticing what kindness feels like in the body.
An invitation for loving kindness and feeling into the ground,
Deepening the breath.
As we offer the fruits of our practice to ourselves,
To each other and to all beings.
Namaste.
