Hey everybody,
This is Kristen from Teaching Balance and I am here with you with this week's mindfulness meditation practice.
This is our final week of July,
Our final week before August,
Which of course for many of us involves going back to school.
I know many of you are in other parts of the country and you go back later.
And at least as of this filming,
It's still unclear exactly what that's going to look like.
There's a lot of stress around it,
A lot of fear around it,
And I can't imagine that that's not going to continue.
And so when I was reflecting on what theme to offer you for this week,
This final week of our Joy and Lightness Month,
I couldn't not just think about humor and laughter.
And I don't know if you've gotten the impression,
I know some of you I know more personally and have been on retreats with you or I have led a class with you.
Those of you people who know me know that I am a laugher.
I am an easy laugh.
The cornier the better.
Even right now,
Obviously,
You can get that from me.
And I actually feel very blessed by that fact.
Some people might not find it to be a personal value,
To be easily amused,
But I think that it is.
I come from a long line of people who really just try to laugh as much as they can and make fun of things,
Make fun of situations,
Try to bring lightness.
And even now,
Sometimes when I find myself in kind of intense situations,
More so with people that I don't know,
But are in this circumstance where they're sharing something and it's heavy or intense,
I have to fight the impulse to kind of make a joke or lighten the moment because I want to allow those people to have their space and to feel their feelings and not try to deflect that even though it's something that I would normally do for myself.
So yes,
Humor can be a form of deflection,
But I also think that humor is an incredibly valuable therapy.
So I really just want to invite that for you and you may be also of the mind of the more laughter the better.
Make it happen.
Do whatever it takes.
Hopefully over these months before summer when school was still happening and through this summer with COVID still happening,
That you've had the opportunity to bring in joy and laughter with the people in your life and even in the things that you watch.
So comedies,
Stand up on Netflix,
You know,
Whatever it might be because I really,
Really do believe in the value of laughter as a therapy,
As a balancing kind of equilibrium reinstater and all those sorts of things.
So that really is just my very simple invitation to you.
And in particular,
Even when things do get really,
Really hard and you've heard that expression regarding gallows humor.
When the days are dark,
There's still this human sort of,
I think quality,
This calling to do what we can to give ourselves a little bit of laughter and a little bit of a chuckle.
So that is my invitation to you to seek out humor and laughter as much as you can as a way to help you work through whatever challenges that you're dealing with.
And if there are no challenges and everything is good,
That's so great too.
And just allow humor and lightness to add to that and to help to increase the joy that you experience.
So we're actually going to work not humor per se into our meditation today,
But I am going to tweak it a little bit.
So you'll see what we'll do in a minute.
Let me start my timer for 10 minutes.
Allow yourself to settle in to your seated position.
You might be in a chair or cushion,
You might even be lying down.
Just a reminder,
If you're in the chair,
I'm going to invite you to at least initially try to embody that posture with both feet flat on the ground,
Legs uncrossed.
I would also invite you,
I like to do this a lot,
Just roll your shoulders back.
I have a quality of kind of hunching over computers and phones and books and writing.
So it's always nice just to roll those shoulders back and open up the chest,
Which of course is the perfect segue to inviting in some deeper breaths.
Let's do that now.
Allowing that deep breathing to activate your body's relaxation response and just be more present in your body.
Settling in,
Remembering if you care to,
You can rest your attention either on the breath or on the body or on sounds.
Or also just open awareness,
Just monitoring your experience sitting here from moment to moment,
Noticing a sound,
A smell,
A sensation,
Whatever it might be.
Thich Nhat Hanh,
The Buddhist monk from Vietnam,
When he is doing and teaching meditation,
Will often talk about an internal narrative,
Almost like a mantra.
And it's taken a few different forms depending on what he's trying to convey.
But the one that I want to invite you to consider playing with for this particular sit is something like this.
As you breathe in,
Allow yourself to say to yourself,
As I breathe in,
I am home.
As I breathe out,
I smile.
And this is something you can do throughout the meditation or just come back to,
Perhaps every time you notice your mind has wandered.
Breathing in,
I am home.
Breathing out,
I smile.
And that smile,
If you care to try it on,
Can be a very,
Very small,
Tiny smile.
Most of the time when I meditate,
The muscles of my face are very relaxed,
Unengaged.
But it does have an impact if you allow yourself to just very slightly and gently smile.
So in this spirit of lightness and joy,
Allowing yourself to play with this idea of just a gentle little smile throughout or just when you notice your mind has wandered,
Whatever feels good to you.
Breathing in,
I am home.
Breathing out,
I smile.
So let's try this in silence and I'll interrupt once again with that mantra a couple times before we're done.
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