Welcome to this guided practice.
My name is Teresa Kulikowski Gillespie and I'm really happy to be with you today.
Today's practice is going to be a mindfulness practice.
We're going to be opening to the foundations of mindfulness.
And from there,
Adding this element,
Cultivating this element of compassion.
Intentionally holding our experience with kindness,
With care.
So to begin the practice,
I invite you to find a comfortable position.
If you feel like you need to lay down,
That's perfectly fine.
Otherwise sitting on your cushion,
Your chair,
Your bench.
If it's comfortable to close the eyes,
You can do that.
Otherwise softening the gaze and looking a few feet in front of you.
Allowing your body to settle into a comfortable posture.
Offering the invitation to the body and to the mind to be fully here.
To be here now,
This one moment.
This eternal present.
I'm beginning to notice the breath.
Notice what it feels like to be you in this moment,
Breathing just this breath.
Realizing the inhale,
The exhale.
And in this practice of mindfulness of the breath,
We don't have to change anything.
It's enough to become curious about how the breath is naturally.
We don't have to fix anything.
We don't have to force anything that isn't already there.
Maybe noticing where in the body you feel this breath.
Sometimes it's in the nose,
Sometimes the back of the throat,
Maybe the rise and fall of the chest or the belly.
You might allow your attention to rest in this felt sense in the body.
Following the inhale,
Following the feeling of the exhale.
Becoming gently curious about the rhythm of the breath.
What does it actually feel like being in this body,
Feeling this one breath?
And you might add a compassionate wish,
May I hold this breath with kind attention.
May I open to this breath with compassion.
We're not holding the breath in terms of not breathing,
Just holding a space for the breath.
May I be with this breath with kindness,
With care.
Beginning to each inhale and exhale with the kindest attention.
And beginning to gently open the attention to include the body,
Noticing any sensations in the feet,
Noticing sensations in the lower parts of the legs and the knees.
Sometimes we notice temperature changes,
Sometimes there's a sense of touch,
Buzzing,
Tingling.
Sometimes we don't feel anything.
There's no right or wrong answer here.
Notice enough to open to the experience exactly as it is.
Noticing sensations in the upper parts of the legs,
Into the hips and the pelvic floor.
Noticing if there's any tension or noticing if there's opening expansion.
Sensing into the abdomen,
The chest.
You might be able to feel the movement of the breath in this region of the body.
Arise and fall.
Noticing any sensations in the region of the heart.
Noticing the back,
Lower back,
Middle back,
Upper back.
Noticing contact with sensations in the hands,
Each individual finger,
The thumb,
The index finger,
The middle finger,
Ring finger,
Pinky.
Noticing sensations in the forearms,
The elbows.
Opening to the experience in the upper parts of the arms,
Into the shoulders.
Staying with curiosity.
What is this part of the body feeling in this moment?
Noticing the region of the throat and the neck.
Seeing the light of awareness.
Remembering that there's nothing that has to be fixed or changed.
It's enough to create a space for these sensations and actually feel them.
Noticing any sensations in the face,
Around the mouth and the nose,
The eyes.
Noticing the crown of the head,
The back of the head,
Around the ears.
And as we make contact with this felt sense in the body,
You might offer this compassionate wish.
May I hold this experience with kindness.
May I open with compassion.
And may I fully experience this with care.
Sometimes we might begin to notice that there's different feeling tones throughout the body.
Sometimes those feelings are pleasant and that's okay.
Sometimes they're unpleasant,
That's okay.
Sometimes they're neutral and that's okay.
As you experience the body in this moment,
You might begin to notice those pleasant sensations or the unpleasant ones,
The neutral ones.
In offering this compassionate wish,
May I hold it all with kind attention.
May I open with compassion.
May I allow myself to experience this with care.
Trying to gently shift the attention to the state of the mind in this very moment.
Noticing the thoughts.
Noticing mental patterns.
What are the images that are arising?
What are the words that are there?
Are they their stories?
And taking that seat of the observer of the mind.
We don't need to be so identified with the activity in our minds,
It's okay to bear witness to it,
Notice it without it being who we are.
Even if it feels appropriate for you in this moment,
You might offer the compassionate wish,
May I hold my mind with kind attention.
May I open to this mental experience with compassion.
May I allow myself to experience this with care.
And as we become aware of the felt sense in the body,
We notice the breath,
We notice mental activity.
We might also begin to notice the ever-changing nature of it all.
This impermanent nature of experience rises and falls like the waves of the ocean.
While the awareness itself is that deep,
Settled part of the ocean.
It's peaceful.
At ease.
I'm not afraid of the waves.
We also might notice that these experiences aren't as personal as we might believe them to be at first.
They come and they go,
They don't necessarily belong to us.
There's thousands of causes and conditions that lead them to arise and then pass.
May we hold this impermanent nature of experience with kind attention.
May we open to it fully with the heart of compassion.
May we allow ourselves to experience all of it with care.
And just as each of our own individual experiences are not quite so personal and they're impermanent,
So too is everyone else's experience.
May we hold ourselves in all beings in this space of the compassionate heart.
May we open to ourselves and all beings with kind attention and care.
Understanding how you're doing in this moment.
Taking a few slow,
Deep breaths.
We'll close with a quote by Albert Einstein.
He experiences himself,
His thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest,
A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
Restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
So whenever you're ready,
Gently,
Slowly,
You can open your eyes if your eyes were closed.
Move the body in whatever way feels comfortable.
Thank you so much for engaging in this practice with me,
And I hope that it serves your highest good and the greatest good of all universal beings.
Thank you.
Thank you.
