MIDL 03/12: Mindfulness of Breathing: Mindful Presence.

In this meditation, Stephen Procter will guide you in the third of 12 Steps for successful Mindfulness of Breathing in daily life. Your third step is learning how to access the pleasure of relaxation in meditation 01-02 to develop a feeling of presence within your body. Becoming mindfully present within your body occurs as a natural progression of relaxing/letting go. As you become more present within your body, restlessness will fall away and thinking will settle down within your mind, creating a foundation for deeper concentration in mindfulness of breathing. Support articles and instructions for this guided meditation can be found in the Free Online MIDL Insight Meditation Course by checking Stephens Procter's teacher profile.

Transcript

During this meditation you will learn how to establish mindfulness by keeping one simple object within your mind.

This is done by resting your hands in your lap with thumbs lightly touching and placing gentle effort towards keeping that touch within your mind,

Continuously remembering it.

It's time to begin our meditation.

Just taking your meditation posture and resting one palm in the other,

Hands resting in your lap,

Thumbs lightly touching in the middle,

Just making sure that touch is light and gentle.

And now we're going to create a little game.

For the next five minutes I'd like you to keep this point of touch in mind,

The touch of your thumbs.

Be curious in regards to effort.

Whenever you notice any strain just gently soften that strain,

Relax and see what it means to keep that touch within your short-term memory.

So let's begin,

Bring your awareness to that one point of touch,

The touch of your thumbs,

Remembering that touch.

Now keeping it in mind for the next five minutes.

Hobby.

Now coming back into your body.

Notice there was a gentle effort in remembering that point of touch.

While we're training our attention in this way we have to be careful of strain and struggle.

What I'd like you to do this time is anytime you notice any strain or struggle within your mind.

Take some slow gentle softening breaths,

Soften relax that strain,

Soften relax that effort.

Now bringing your awareness back to that one point of touch,

The touch of your thumbs.

Remembering it and keeping that point of touch within your mind for the next five minutes.

Notice any tension within your mind,

Any strain,

Any struggle and using gentle softening breaths,

Soften relax back into that point of touch.

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Reviews

Very good! The current structuring of MIDL is, to me, the clearest one yet.

A meditation offering precision, patience and perseverance within a kind, encouraging attitude. This can generating a greater awareness of subtlety within practice. Thank you again for such gems of teaching.

Great to revisit this meditation skill. Highly recommend the MIDL system to meditation students. Very grateful for Stephens guidance.

Great Stephen, thank you

A real practice. I appreciate how it built on the last few sessions, and how we are trusted enough to have longer and longer silences

Thank you so much for this training!

The wheel turns. Thank you.

Great thanks

Thank you for this wonderful practice 🙏

I found that extremely difficult, I don't know why. Much easier to focus on breathing or doing a body scan. Will come back and try again. Thank you 🙏

Extremely wonderful to meditate with you again. Grateful you are on IT

Delightful! What a great way to keep focused and even making a little game of feeling your thumbs touch. Interesting note..My thumbs started positively tingling and that also moved to my fingers. Thank you Stephen! ☮️💖🙏🖖

A very interesting and useful technique. A practice I will be repeating. 🙏