Let's get in touch with our sitting bones.
Get in touch with distributing the weight evenly between one side and the other.
Making sure that your tailbone is also relaxing slightly downward.
And feeling the breath.
Feeling the breath as a way of releasing tension.
One way to understand meditation is learning to recognize and release tension in the body.
The better you get at it,
The better you are able to recognize your mind.
The different ways in which your mind resists reality.
The different ways in which your ego is resisting experience.
Either by dreaming,
Expecting something in the future,
Or avoiding the present.
So as you breathe,
As always,
Soften.
Soften your shoulders.
Soften your mouth.
Soften your tongue.
Feel your arms resting on your thighs,
Heavy,
Relaxed,
Steady.
The same the way feel your hips resting on your cushion.
Meditation is letting go into deep stillness.
It only happens when you're willing to let go.
Now the beauty of meditation is you only have to see.
You only have to see what's happening.
And the act of seeing,
Noticing,
In itself,
Helps you let go.
But you have to see.
You have to be there with the experience.
But one of the hardest things at the beginning of the practice is to let go of the mind.
And go into the body.
And see if you can do that.
See if you can hold a strong intention to be more embodied.
Of course,
We always become aware of the most predominant sensations.
Where are they?
What's standing out?
And it's not about looking for them.
It's actually more about relaxing and letting the sensations arise into your consciousness.
They're there.
But it's almost something about relaxing that allows us to feel where we are still holding tension.
Feel the breath as it moves in and out from the lungs.
Feel the breath as it moves in and out from the belly.
And ask yourself,
How happy,
How surrendered I am to the flow.
Surrender is a wonderful word.
Surrender speaks about letting go of any strategy,
Letting go of any trying.
And just experiencing the present moment as it is.
Your tongue,
Your mouth is a great indicator of relaxation.
Your eyes,
Your face muscles,
Your hands.
And now something that I've noticed that is very powerful is ever so often,
Expand your awareness to feel everything around you.
Feel the noises.
Feel the quality of the air.
The temperature.
Even just energetically feel the space around you as far as you can sense.
And then from that level of expansion of awareness,
Go back into your body and notice where you're holding tension.
The act of just noticing the tensions,
Those slight sensations,
Wherever you feel,
Body,
See if you can soften that by simply feeling it.
You will notice that you will feel more sensation wherever your mind is active in the body.
Sometimes it's the hands or the feet,
Or the neck.
The more you feel the sensations as they are in all their dimensions,
You are releasing the tensions of the mind.
You're releasing stress.
You're releasing fear.
I like to bring my awareness to the breath too.
And I always take advantage of the exhalation.
It's a way of reminding me how to let go.
Just feeling the exhalation and feeling the stillness at the end of it.
I'm expanding my awareness to feel all the sensations that are arising within me.
With time,
You will notice the subtle shifts in the inner landscape.
Maybe the heartbeat changes its beat.
Maybe you feel your gut rearranging itself.
The signals of your nervous system decompressing.
Remember,
You just need to feel.
The sensations that are standing out.
Intense sensations can be like a lightning moving from one place to another.
Sometimes they can be very steady.
When you expand your awareness and sense everything around you,
Hold the idea that you are infinite,
Spacious.
Think of yourself as space.
Hold in space for everything.
Resistance to nothing.
Since you are pure space.
And from there,
Feel again the body.
Notice again what you notice.
See if you can feel more.
Allow more.
Let go more fully.
Soften.
Allowing everything that is arising to be just the way it is.
Softening into silence.
Learning to trust.
I'm the space that allows everything.
And I feel everything.
