Sitting in a comfortable seat,
If you're sitting on a chair,
Your feet firmly on the ground,
Your hands can be on your knees or in your lap.
If you're sitting on a cushion on the floor,
That's great.
Your legs can be crossed or folded.
And making sure your back is a little bit straight,
So give your lungs an opportunity to breathe.
You can drop the chin slightly and you can just drop your eyelids down,
Either closing your eyes or leaving them slightly open.
And this is a disruptive time.
It's a challenging time.
But in this time,
We can disrupt our normal way of being.
Perhaps this whole mindfulness thing is new to you,
And that's this disruption.
There's an opportunity out of all this sort of craziness for something beautiful to grow.
Out of all the mud,
A beautiful flower can grow.
And maybe there's something that we can do to cultivate.
So now we're going to take three deep breaths,
Just letting go of whatever it is today that you need to let go of on the out breath.
We're going to breathe in through the nose and out through the nose.
We're going to do two deep breaths first,
And then the final one in through the nose,
Out through the mouth.
So starting,
Breathing in.
And release slowly out the nose.
Once again,
Breathing in.
And release slowly.
Another deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Breathing in.
And release slowly out the mouth.
And breathing normally now,
Just observing any difference in how you feel from doing that.
We use the analogy of a tiger as your mind.
We realize that our minds are quite wild and untamed,
But there is a potential to tame our mind.
We want our minds to stay out of trouble,
Out of negative or crazy thought patterns.
We can develop the power and the resilience to stay dry,
Sitting with your good intention and your values on the banks of the river.
It's how we make up our mind every day,
And we make it up through mindfulness.
So just imagine that there's a river flowing in front of you,
And this is the stream of your consciousness.
It's the undercurrent,
Always flowing.
You can't stop it.
And in this river are so many ideas,
Fears,
Hopes,
Dreams.
And we can choose at will which ones we would like to involve or engage with.
But for now,
Let us just watch that flow.
And if you don't have a visual mind,
That's fine.
But just observe the flow of your thoughts just sitting and breathing,
And what flows into the mind,
What flows into your awareness.
And are we able to just watch it come and go,
Or do we try and dive in?
And this is a habit,
This diving in,
Being distracted.
But we can take back that control,
And that lies our freedom and our happiness.
If the tiger jumps in,
Then don't feel upset.
But gently,
Gently,
With loving kindness,
Encourage this tiger to come back.
Come back.
There's no need to get lost in that.
We can stay here dry in our special space,
Just watching.
And as we do this,
We build a part of our brain that is responsible for introspection.
And introspection is one of the most incredible superpowers we have as human beings.
We build this now.
Settling your mind on being in your space.
How does your space feel like sitting with your tiger?
We encourage us to stay here.
We encourage the tiger to stay by just settling in the now,
In this moment,
Your breath.
Synchronized breathing,
You and your tiger.
Synchronized breathing.
You you Where is the mind?
As it jumped into the stream again as it always does Gently we call it back As if it was that naughty tiger come on come back Stay with me And we do this again and again and again and again and again and again,
But every time we do it we get stronger and The tiger stays drier Because there's a part in our brain that gets that grows.
It's called the prefrontal cortex our ability to self regulate Our ability to stay where we want to stay that's very powerful you you you Coming out to the end of this practice I Thank you tiger for all the work that you were both doing today and Then dropping your chin down.
Let's do another three breaths as we did before this boosts our immune system by calming our Nervous system the two are beautifully linked breathing in fill those lungs pause and slowly release Good breathing in hold and release you Great let's take one more deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth breathing in oh and slowly release Observe how you feel now compared to when you're logged on is there a difference I'm sure there is slowly opening your eyes lifting your chin well done
