Mindfulness of breath,
Body and sound.
Begin by finding a comfortable but upright position.
Either sitting on a chair or on a cushion on the floor.
Remember that the objective is to be awake and aware.
But at the same time,
We want to allow our body to be rested and comfortable.
The objective is to be open minded and non-judgmental.
Allowing our experience to unfold without any expectation.
We begin by bringing our attention to our breath.
The breath flowing in.
The breath flowing out.
The breath isn't something we're ordinarily aware of.
Unless we draw our attention to it specifically.
So right now,
Where is the sensation of breathing most noticeable for you?
It might be around your nostrils.
Or it might be in your throat.
It might be in the expansion of your lungs.
Or it might be in the belly,
The abdomen expanding and contracting.
Wherever you can notice the breath entering and leaving the body,
Just rest your attention gently in that place.
Remember we're not trying to change the breath in any way.
We're just holding our attention and resting it gently and non-judgmentally.
It doesn't matter if the breath is fast or slow.
If the breath is steady or uneven.
Just allow your attention to be there with whatever the experience is.
It's perfectly natural and normal for your mind to wander away from time to time.
Although you'd like to keep your attention on the breath,
The mind likes to wander off into some stories about what's taking place.
Stories about the past,
Stories about the future.
Or some imaginary stories in your mind.
Whenever you notice that this has happened,
Just register where your mind has been taken.
And then very gently and kindly and without judgement,
Bring your attention back to your breath.
Allowing your focus to be on the part of the body where you most notice the in-breath and the out-breath.
If your mind wanders away many times,
Just continue to register what's happening and bring it back gently and kindly and non-judgmentally and begin again.
Allow your attention now to expand from the fairly narrow focus of your breath into the wider focus of the sense of your whole body breathing.
You can think of this as a more open,
Wide and spacious awareness of your body as a whole.
Perhaps even considering your body as a unified and strong presence,
Perhaps like a mountain grounded and stable.
Just let yourself be aware if you can of the expansion of your whole body as you breathe in and the contraction of your body as you breathe out.
So that the whole body is held in awareness with each in-breath and each out-breath.
Allowing your focus to be on the part of the body where you most notice the in-breath and the out-breath.
Once again,
You may notice that the mind wanders away from time to time,
Taking you into stories about what's happening,
The things that have happened in the past or things that have yet to happen.
Again,
When this happens,
Just mentally note where the mind has been and then very gently and kindly once again bring the attention back.
It doesn't matter if this happens once,
Twice,
Ten times,
One hundred times or one thousand times.
It's the nature of mind to wander away and it's just as much a part of the practice to notice where the mind has wandered and to escort it back kindly and without judgment and begin again,
Noticing the in-breath and the expansion and awareness of the whole body and the out-breath and the contraction of the whole body.
In addition to your awareness of the breath and the body,
Seeing if you can now bring your awareness also to sound.
You may notice sounds from your own body,
Possibly the sound of your own breath or the small movements of your body and then noticing perhaps sounds that you can notice in the room around you and finally allowing your expansive awareness to move into sounds outside the room so that you can notice sounds at all of these levels at the same time perhaps.
Can you be aware of these sounds without judgment?
That is,
Without trying to understand or to label them in some way.
Instead,
Can you notice perhaps the location of sound,
The tone of sound,
The pitch,
The volume,
Perhaps the space that sound is coming from.
So just being present with the raw sensation of sound as it reaches your body,
Instead of trying to interpret or judge that sound or to follow the stories that might exist around that sound as you continue to breathe in,
Noticing the breath and an awareness of the whole body and allowing sounds to be absorbed by your body all at the same time.
You just allowing those sounds now to fade away into the background and to bring all of your attention back to the breath,
Allowing any sensations of the body to be put to one side as all of the attention is focused on the in-breath and the out-breath once again.
Just spending a few moments reconnecting with the anchor of mindfulness,
The breath.
And as we bring this meditation to a close,
We can just notice how our body is feeling in this moment and how our mind is,
Whether it's a sense of peace,
Stability,
Calmness or any other sensation or feeling that we might have at this moment.
Just tuning into that now,
Staying present as we come back at the end of this short meditation.
So we come back to a wider alertness of the room around us.
We can open our eyes if they were closed and take a stretch and be grateful for this short practice together.
