Wherever you are,
Whatever you're doing,
Take a big breath,
Take a couple big breaths and just let it out.
Just extending that exhale signals the body to relax,
Letting us drop in.
Find a posture where you can be comfortable,
Soft,
But also alert.
Whether you're sitting,
Standing,
Walking,
See to it that you have an upright spine.
An upright spine increases alertness in your system.
And as we get underway here,
I'm just going to invite you to attend to the entire physical environment,
The entire world around you right now.
And this includes physical sensations within the body,
Emotions,
Thought forms,
All of it.
Just let your awareness be wide open,
Not focusing on any one thing.
Just taking it all in,
Feeling how spacious awareness is.
At any moment if you catch yourself kind of clinging to something or paying attention to it,
You can just notice that and let go.
Coming back to open awareness.
Sounds around you,
Smells,
Textures,
Maybe you're barefoot in the grass right now.
Maybe you're aware of the touch of clothes on your skin,
The temperature of the air,
Sounds of nature,
Sounds of your house or your apartment,
Wherever you live.
Be open to the environment,
Wide open.
And now I want to invite you to let the environment fade into the background of awareness just a little bit while you start to focus on physical sensation.
So attending to physical sensation throughout the body and then your peripheral awareness,
Everything else.
And know when we practice this way,
You're not supposed to not have thoughts,
You're not supposed to feel a certain way,
Nothing in the world needs to start happening or stop.
Everything is just in the background while in the foreground you're paying attention to the flow of sensation like a river flowing between two banks.
Tons of the body just flow and flow,
Endlessly flow.
If at any point any event in peripheral awareness starts to move into your field of focus,
Kind of replacing the focus of physical sensation,
You can just notice it,
Notice distractions creeping in and just relaxing.
Resetting your intention to flow with the sensations of the body,
Letting everything else be in the background.
We can tighten up our attention even more now,
From the entire physical body to just the torso,
Really attending to the expansion and contraction of breath through the torso,
Letting everything else in all of the world and all of experience just be in the background.
You don't have to stop it,
You don't have to do anything to it,
Just let it happen in the background of awareness.
In the foreground,
You're just feeling this flow of breath rolling through you like a wave.
Feel the sensations of breathing in and how they're distinct from the sensations of breathing out.
Let awareness be open,
You're not just trying to be aware of the breath,
You're focusing on the expansion and contraction of the breath while staying totally open to all of life,
All of the world.
Just appreciate this dynamic equilibrium.
When awareness is open and relaxed,
Events can just flow and it supports our paying closer attention to what we choose to focus on.
And when we anchor ourselves,
Anchor our attention on a particular object like the breath,
It supports the opening up of our peripheral awareness.
These two systems,
They support each other,
They're two sides of the same coin.
So often when we practice mindfulness,
We just struggle with ourselves.
We have this idea that we shouldn't have thoughts in our mind,
We should be feeling something different in our breath.
Oftentimes the problem is an awareness deficit disorder,
We're not relaxing enough in awareness and just letting things happen.
Take just another moment to let everything flow,
Let your awareness be wide open as the sky.
Letting everything just arise and pass as it does,
As you stay trained on the expansion and contraction of the breath.
Feel the steadiness of this focus,
Feel the pleasure of being embodied and breathing.
Feel the constant unbroken awareness moment to moment.
Appreciate that whether awareness is focused or open or both,
And it's always both,
Doesn't take any effort to be aware.
You're already aware.
Awareness is simply what you are.
