Begin by taking a comfortable position in your chair.
Standing upright in dignified position.
Your feet resting comfortably on the floor,
Uncrossed.
Your hands in your lap.
Now allow your eyes to close.
And as you're settling down,
Bring to mind the intention behind this practice.
Bring to mind the courage.
Bring to mind that you will develop an inner strength to deal with the inner critic,
But also with anything,
Any challenge that may come your way.
May your heart in this practice be light.
Approach it with enthusiasm and optimism.
That's a good place to start.
As you're settling down,
Let us take a couple of deeper breaths.
In hold and out through your mouth.
In through your nose.
Hold and out through your mouth.
Letting go of all the stress,
All the expectations.
Anything that may get in the way of this moment.
And one more time in through your nose.
In hold and out.
Releasing and letting go.
Now bring your attention to your breathing.
Recognize how your breath enters your body through your nose,
Travels to your chest and to your belly and on the way out,
Your belly,
Chest and the nose.
Keep your mouth closed during the period of this practice.
This allow you to control your breath a bit better.
Allowing yourself to feel your breath.
And as you follow your breathing,
You may recognize that there are some parts of your body that you perceive your breathing a bit better.
Perhaps this is the tip of your nose or expansion and contraction of your belly or rise and fall of your chest.
Perhaps you can perceive the breath through the action of your entire body.
Choose one of those and you will use it as the anchor for your attention.
As you tune in into your breathing.
Allow yourself to direct your gaze towards the anchor.
Allow yourself to breathe in and breathe out.
Observing this simple action through the lens of the anchor you have chosen.
And as you continue breathing,
You may find yourself drifting,
Losing connection with your breath.
You may find yourself distracted by a thought or a sensation in your body or a sound.
Whatever that is,
Allow yourself to simply acknowledge this fact and return to your breathing.
Return to observing your breath.
And then,
Next time,
You find yourself distracted.
Catch the moment in which you detect distraction.
And you may notice what is the reaction of your body when you return your gaze towards the natural sense of your breathing.
The objective for this practice is to recognize what is the quality of this return.
How do you feel about the fact that you lost your focus?
Perhaps you can detect a slight agitation.
Perhaps you may observe tensing of some of the muscles in your body.
Whichever reaction you perceive,
This is the action of the inner critic.
That's the part of you that is unhappy about losing control.
Detection is a practice of a thousand returns.
It is not important for how long you may keep focus on your breath,
But how gentle you return every time you're being distracted.
So as you keep breathing and keep being distracted,
Allow yourself to turn a gentle gaze towards that moment of return with all the gentleness.
Pay attention to this moment when you return with a soft and gentle gaze.
Listen to the action of your breathing.
Working with inner critic is like training a puppy.
Puppy runs away all the time and every time a little puppy runs away you bring him back and ask him to stay.
And the puppy runs away again and you bring him back.
With all the love and gentleness you say stay.
There's no need to get upset with the puppy or beat the puppy because it's his nature to run away.
If you give him enough patience and attention it will eventually learn.
So again,
As you breathe in and breathe out,
Allow yourself not to control and not to judge,
But simply acknowledge every time you find yourself distracted.
With all the gentleness you can master,
Return over and over to the practice of your breathing.
And as the time goes on you may find yourself in periods of less distraction.
And the more gentle you are the easier it is to return.
And over time the return becomes effortless as the voice of the inner critic gets quieter and quieter.
There's less judgment,
Less tension.
You may use the same technique to work with anything that happens in your life.
Every time that you lose control.
Every time that things may not go your way.
Remind yourself this is just one of many returns you have to make.
And without judgment,
Return to the task at hand and pat yourself on the shoulder that perhaps for the first time you noticed the work of the inner critic.
And you made your first step towards letting him go.
You may continue this exercise for a couple of minutes,
Paying close attention to those small moments when you find yourself distracted.
And also gently return to your breath.
To conclude this session,
Bring yourself gently back to the place where you are.
Recognize your feet resting on the floor and your hands and your whole body.
As you slowly return,
Ground yourself and center.
As all the external senses start coming back,
You may slowly wiggle your toes,
Move your fingers.
Also slowly move your head a bit to the left,
A bit to the right.
And when you're ready,
In your own time,
You may open your eyes.
And this is the end of this session.
I'm Tomek from Synergy Lab,
Sydney.
Thank you very much for joining me for this session.
I look forward to meet you again in session three of the Perfect Week.
For now,
I bid you a wonderful day and thank you for listening.
