The final practice I want to offer today is labeling thoughts.
And just a very simple way of labeling thoughts is recognizing are you thinking about the past?
Are you thinking about the future?
Or are you judging the present?
So you can just say past,
Future,
Or judging.
And this is a way for you to come back into mindfulness,
Into a state of more balanced,
Even mindedness by just first bringing awareness to what's happening.
Oh,
There I go again,
Worrying about what I have to get done for work by tomorrow.
Oh,
There I am regretting that I said that yesterday,
Wishing I wouldn't have said that.
Or,
Oh,
I'm judging the sounds that I hear.
I don't like this.
When is this meditation going to be over?
So as we do this practice,
Just letting yourself think so that when you catch yourself thinking,
You can see what kind of habitual thinking patterns are there.
You might find that most of the time you're thinking about the future,
Or most of the time you're thinking about the past.
And there's no bad or good here.
It's just a matter of being more aware.
Because when you find out what you're doing habitually,
You can consciously choose to shift.
But if you don't even know what's going on,
You can't shift anything.
So closing our eyes,
Dropping into the anchor of the breath in the nostrils,
Breathing in through the nose,
Feeling the cool air coming in,
Breathing out,
Feeling the warm air coming out.
Taking a few deep breaths in through the nose and out through the nose.
Or out through the mouth if you need to let out a sigh like I did just then.
Listening to your body and being curious,
What does it feel like when I focus on breathing in through the nose and out through the nose.
And noticing when a thought comes,
Hearing it,
Oh what's for dinner?
Labeling,
Future,
And then coming back to focusing on the breath in your nostril.
Oh another thought comes,
I wish he would turn off the TV,
Judging the present,
Labeling the judgment,
And just coming back to the sound,
The chimes,
The feeling of the breath in your nostrils.
Continuing,
Noticing thoughts as they come,
Anchoring back on the breath over and over,
Not with any judgment,
Recognizing you're perfectly human,
Your brain is doing what a brain does,
It's thinking,
And that's not a problem,
Just letting yourself see and be curious about what kind of thoughts is my brain thinking often.
And then coming back to the anchor of the breath in your nostrils.
And we'll end this practice by bringing our hand to our heart and just saying thank you to ourselves for being willing to listen to our thoughts,
To get some separation from them by seeing are they past,
Future,
Are they judging,
And then by coming back to the real present,
The gift of being here now in the body,
In the experience of the breath.
So wiggling your fingers,
Wiggling your toes,
And then slowly blinking your eyes open and seeing how you feel now.
