So,
Just to begin our practice today,
Perhaps if you have your eyes closed or your gaze just lowered,
We'll begin by just gathering our attention.
Almost certainly you've been doing a lot of things before you've got to this point.
So,
An opportunity to step from that and into an invitation to slow down and stop for the duration of this practice.
So,
Perhaps beginning by gathering your awareness around the sense of sound.
And just seeing if you can guide your attention to only become aware of what you can hear.
And it doesn't matter if that feels difficult.
And perhaps it may help rather than to think of tuning everything else out and only being aware of sound.
I wonder if you could imagine bringing sound to the forefront of your awareness and just allowing everything else to fade to the back.
Almost as if you could turn up the volume of the sounds that you can hear.
My voice.
Perhaps the sounds of things in the room.
Maybe a clock.
Your computer.
Other people in the house.
Perhaps the sounds from outside the house.
Just seeing if you can allow those to come to the forefront of your attention.
Just gently showing our minds that we want to choose where our attention goes.
Now,
Drawing that attention inwards and finding your breath wherever it is moving in your body most strongly.
Find that place and allow your awareness to almost settle alongside it as if you can observe that movement and observe that breath.
Really tuning into the sensations associated with breathing.
The expansion and contraction of muscles.
Perhaps the feeling of air moving.
And don't worry if you get distracted.
If your mind is still a little hooked to sound or even to thoughts.
Don't worry.
It doesn't matter.
But just as best you can see if you can guide your attention back to the breath and at the moment to the movement associated with the breath.
Just see if you can observe the breath.
Perhaps tuning into the length of the breath.
The texture.
The rhythm.
Perhaps the sound.
See if you can bring curiosity to your observation of the breath because curiosity lights up the mind.
So curiosity will make it easier to hook your mind's tension just to the breath.
So see if you can be curious about each breath.
How does the breath feel when it begins?
Where does it begin?
What happens as you move through each breath?
What happens when the in-breath becomes an out-breath?
Just being aware of the breath.
Oh my goodness.
Almost as if your attention can settle over and around the breath.
No sense of urgency.
No sense of forcing the breath to be any particular way.
If it feels at all uncomfortable to breathe or forced because your awareness is with the breath,
See if you can just allow that to be.
Notice if it changes.
Notice if it doesn't.
So bringing awareness now to the place in your body where you are really noticing your breath.
That may be in the area of your head,
Your face.
That might be in your chest and ribs or it might be in your belly.
Just notice.
I invite you,
If it's not there already,
To see if you can bring your awareness to your breath in your belly.
You may even feel inclined to take a slightly deeper breath when you move your awareness to your belly and your breathing.
That's okay.
It doesn't matter if you don't.
Just see if you can notice your breathing from your belly.
Notice if it has moved,
If you have moved your attention consciously down here.
Notice how it feels to breathe here,
To be aware of the breath in this part of the body.
Still your breath.
Still happening without any effort required from you.
Being aware of where we are breathing and consciously shifting it low down into the body,
Into the belly can be really helpful for calming,
For grounding.
It can be really helpful to shift our awareness out of our thinking mind and back into our body.
Not that we're choosing not to think,
But we're thinking as an entire system,
Not just in our heads.
Being aware of each breath as it starts and finishes in the belly.
Bringing our mind and body out of fight and flight,
Out of doing and activity and into a place where we can observe and respond with clarity and with all our mind's resources.
Notice if you have any sense of grounding or clarity.
Notice if you don't and that's okay.
But from this place now,
Tune into how you are.
So aware of how your body feels tense or relaxed,
Comfortable or uncomfortable.
Is there a sense of being poised,
Ready to do something or a sense of resting?
Notice how you feel,
What emotions are here.
All are welcome and from this place of balance and clarity,
It's easier to observe our emotions.
Just know what we're working with.
And how is your mind?
Without needing to get caught up back into thought,
Simply see how close you can get to just be able to observe the general state of your mind,
The general energy or busyness.
Just like the body,
Is your mind poised,
Ready to do the next thing,
Think about the next thing or is there a sense of slowing down?
Is there a sense of lots of activity?
Or is there more clarity?
Just really being aware of exactly how you are right now in your mind,
In your body,
In your feelings.
With that gentle focus back to your breath as the centre of all of this.
If your mind gets hooked into thoughts,
If you start to follow a thread,
Just notice and come back to the breath.
And notice how even when you are observing other things,
How you feel,
How your body feels,
Your breath still continues.
And it's why it's such a good anchor to keep coming back to because the breath will happen no matter what.
So no matter how we feel,
No matter how busy our minds are,
No matter whether there's relaxation or tension in the body,
The breath still happens.
And this is a really important reminder all of the time,
But especially at the moment when there is so much uncertainty,
So much unknown,
So much that's unpredictable.
We remind ourselves that the breath is predictable.
It's not ever the same.
But it will still be here.
So the breath is something we can always come back to.
The certainty of the in-breath and the out-breath.
It can bring us stability at times when maybe sometimes that's all there feels like there is.
So aware now of your breath,
Aware now of your breath as it moves through your whole body.
So perhaps expanding that awareness.
And see if you can have a sense of your breath moving through your whole body.
A sense that it is the underlying force behind everything.
Movement,
Feelings,
Thoughts.
The breath is always there accompanying them.
So often we ignore the breath.
We don't notice it.
We tune it out.
And it can help to settle us to tune it back in.
To bring it to the forefront.
Even when noticing that breath feels difficult.
Maybe it's not the nature of the breath that we tune into,
But the consistency of it.
The predictability of the breath and the consistency.
Always here.
Come back to the breath.
So as we begin to draw this to a close,
I just invite you to take one last observation of how you are.
What's here?
What's here after a few minutes of practice?
After a little grounding with the breath.
Again,
No particular state you needed to achieve.
So this isn't about success or failure.
Just about an awareness of what is.
What's with you today?
I once heard a definition of meditation as being an opportunity to pull up a chair,
Close your eyes and see who comes to visit.
So who or what's come to visit you today?
Now I invite you perhaps on your next in breath,
Maybe to make it a little deeper,
A little longer.
And to with that,
Bring your awareness outside of your body.
Back to the room that you're in.
And perhaps to the sounds that you can hear.
Once again,
Bringing sound to the forefront of your awareness.
And perhaps moving your awareness to light,
Your sense of sight.
Even with closed eyes.
Can you have a sense of light or shape?
Just for the last few moments,
Being aware of the room around you,
Just seeing if you can have a sense of yourself in this room.
Breathing.
Aware of yourself and aware of what's around you.
