Thank you for carving out this time to sit together.
Go ahead and begin by dropping immediately into that sense of open awareness.
Welcoming all the sensations that are available to us each moment.
Just take in everything there is to take in.
Today's practice is about noticing the sensations that arise when we hear a sound,
Touch any aspect of our experience.
Smell something.
Taste.
See.
And notice the activities of the mind as being part of that tapestry of experience.
And fully experience everything there is in each moment.
Don't run away from your life.
And notice how all sensations are impermanent.
How they come and go.
Even the sensations that appear to last.
Don't.
Time continues to move and shift and change,
And so do the sensations.
Notice how we so often ignore,
Suppress,
Or even repress sensations that arise.
We think they're not worth paying attention to.
We don't like them,
So we want to ignore them.
So we're actively training now to sit with them,
Experience them completely.
Over and over come back to being fully,
Completely embodied.
Bringing a childlike sense of wonder.
Think back perhaps to being a child.
Lying in the grass and just touching,
Looking at a piece of grass or a leaf and marveling at it.
It hasn't changed.
Even now,
You might pick up a pebble or a stone and just enjoy the simple delight of touching it.
Enjoy the feeling of breath entering the lungs.
Enjoy the feeling of your heart beating in your chest.
Enjoy and explore.
I also invite you to notice how quickly we make judgments and decisions about the sensations that enter our awareness.
Just observe the basic mechanics of each moment.
See if you can notice a subtle attempt to understand or break down whatever you're experiencing.
And see if you can simply experience without doing so.
Just stay open and curious.
Make sure you're not ignoring the things you don't like.
Whatever sensation arises,
And you notice that it's carrying with it weight,
Burden.
Just unburden it.
Experience it as it is.
Even painful sensations.
The sensation shows up and we have some sort of negative feeling about it.
Shine a light on that.
Be careful of idealism.
We're not here to shut this off,
Just to see it for what it is.
And notice if the mind gets carried away and attempts to turn all this into some kind of creative thought exercise.
Come back to the body.
Feel the ground,
Feel your body,
Feel all the sensations.
Over and over.
Just come back.
One breath at a time.
Notice how in the same breath you can feel the beating of your heart.
The sounds of your environment,
Temperature and pressure on your body.
All at once.
All is one unified tapestry of sensation and experience.
Be curious.
We're not being Sherlock Holmes,
Deducing the answer.
We're just endlessly,
Infinitely exploring.
Not getting stuck to anything,
Including the many insights and discoveries along the way.
Let go and release even those.
And over the next minute or so,
Just gradually begin to transition out of formal practice.
Notice the sensations that arise here as well.
Subtle shifts and changes that we make as we leave.
Stay embodied throughout this as well.
All right,
Well,
Throughout the day,
Just see what you can do to remember to come back to the body.
Use those moments of disembodiment to remember to come back.
Rather than grabbing our phone to alleviate some low-level discomfort.
Just remember that we just sat here today.
And you didn't need anything.
So enjoy your practice for the rest of the day.
Stay curious.
Let's send us one final breath,
Breathing in.
And out.
Thank you for joining me and thank you for your practice.
