So this is a meditation to help you begin to settle into awareness.
And we settle into awareness by coming to the body.
And coming to the body and the mind in quite a natural way.
There's no rush to get into the meditation.
You might start just by looking around briefly,
Orienting yourself into the environment that you're in.
There's no rush to close your eyes.
You might wish to close your eyes later in the course of the practice when it feels a bit more natural to do so.
So we're settling into the sensations of the body.
It's like we're coming home to our actual experience of the body.
And that helps us anchor in the present moment.
As is always of the present moment and in the present moment.
What do you notice in this present moment?
What's already quite naturally within your awareness?
Perhaps you're aware of your hands.
They might be touching each other,
Sensations of warmth,
Or even a sort of stickiness.
They might be resting on your thighs and so you might feel some clothing.
Perhaps you're aware of different sensations around your shoulders,
Your back,
Your belly,
Your legs and feet.
Just notice where the attention goes,
What the mind is knowing.
The settling process can be like leaves blowing from trees in the autumn.
Eventually they settle on the ground.
But they might have a roundabout route of getting there.
So we allow settling to take its own time.
Allow the body to relax.
Allow thoughts to come to an end.
Allow them to do their own thing as we relax into awareness.
It can be helpful to take up a particular aspect of your experience and allow that to be a kind of anchor,
Helping your attention stay in one area.
It's not exclusive to that particular area,
Perhaps the breath or the body or sounds.
But an anchor is something we can come back to if we find there's a lot of thinking that's taking us away from the present moment.
So when you find that's happening,
And it happens to all of us at some point,
Just notice that's what the mind has been doing.
It's been thinking and now you've woken up into awareness.
And perhaps letting the sensations of the breath come to the fore.
Letting awareness revolve around those sensations and movements of the breath.
Or you might choose a type of body sensation.
Perhaps sensations in the hands.
Or perhaps the sensations connected with your sitting bones or your buttocks in contact with a chair or cushion.
So you can just let your attention anchor there.
This doesn't mean that you won't be aware of other things.
You will and that's fine.
But having one particular area of attention just helps us relax into awareness.
We can allow settling to happen around that anchor.
Another anchor that can be very helpful is to let the attention rest with sound or with hearing.
That might be sounds around us,
The sounds of traffic or the wind or little mechanical sounds within the room that we're in,
The heating or the fan.
Or it might also be sounds within our own bodies.
There's no need to reach out to any of these sounds.
It's as if we're receiving sound.
We allow it to come to us.
We are simply open to whatever sound arises within the present moment.
And you can play with different areas of experience.
The awareness of sound,
Awareness of body sensations,
Being mindful of the breath,
Its movement and sensations.
There are many different objects of experience that we can know.
But body,
Breath and sounds are quite simple,
Quite naturally occurring.
So use these objects to help awareness settle and ground.
Whatever is happening and whatever you're noticing,
The important thing to notice is that you're aware of it.
Yes.
Okay.
.
