Okay,
So coming to a comfortable meditation position.
And taking some extra time to make sure that we have a feeling of grounding,
Feeling of support under your body.
So making sure your knees are on the ground if you're sitting cross-legged,
If you're sitting kneeling,
Knees on the ground,
Of course.
And maybe just rocking a little bit backwards and forwards on your sitting bones,
Like the pelvis.
And just sort of really feeling the sense of sitting bones connecting with the cushion,
With the floor underneath.
Dropping weights down through the lower part of the body from the tendon,
From the belly down,
Through your legs,
Into the floor.
And then from there,
Allowing the upper body to sort of lift and lengthen and align upwards.
Extending up through the crown of the head,
Putting a little tuck down and in through the chin so that the back of the neck feels really long.
The back of the neck feels really long.
Eyes can be soft and either lowered with the eyelids slightly open or lowered with the eyelids closed.
Softening through your face,
Softening the eyes,
The cheeks,
The jaw,
Softening the shoulders,
The arms,
The hands,
The fingers,
And softening down to the belly.
Letting the breath be totally relaxed,
Uncontrolled.
And from the belly,
From the awareness of your belly,
Just kind of moving your attention to the left side of your head.
And then from there,
Just kind of moving your attention to the right side of your head.
And then from there,
Just kind of moving your attention to the left side,
Just underneath your rib cage where your stomach and spleen sit.
Sometimes when we eat certain foods or maybe a lot of food or certain flavors of food,
We can really get a strong sense of the stomach being on the left.
The food comes down the esophagus and comes into the stomach.
And the color traditionally associated with these two organs is yellow.
So we can imagine stomach and the spleen and the pancreas are a bright harvest time yellow.
The stomach is this semi-circular apostrophe-shaped organ.
The spleen as we were exploring earlier looks a little bit like a mushroom cloud on top of the pancreas.
And you might immediately get a intuitive sense of something not quite as bright and clean as it could be here in these organs.
Sometimes we feel a bit of cloudiness or a bit of other colors mixed in or spots or something and just going to allow those,
Maybe you could say,
Restrictions or imbalances,
Anything that's slightly less than optimal to just kind of sink and drain out,
Releasing down into the earth.
And perhaps just with a light inner smile,
Smiling at your stomach,
Spleen,
Pancreas,
Just saying,
It's okay,
It's okay,
Just the way you are.
So one of the negative emotions that arises when the stomach or spleen or the energy channels are not functioning tip-top is a sense of worry.
And we say things like,
I'm sick to,
Worrying sick to my stomach.
We get feelings of worry kind of like really in the guts.
So worry is not wrong.
It's not something we need to get rid of or criticize in any way,
But it is something we can encourage also to sink down into the earth.
The opposite of worry is safety and security and groundedness.
So to know that you're sitting here secure,
Safe,
Restful on the floor,
On the earth,
Gives a chance for your guts to your belly,
Your stomach to let go of those worries.
And to make an analogy with the common saying,
You could say,
Well,
Is the stomach right now,
Is it half full or half empty?
Sometimes we have a tendency to view the world like it's half empty,
Focusing on the emptiness,
The lack.
But all we need to do is just change our perspective and focus on the fullness,
The abundance,
I have abundant support,
Support,
An abundant sense of grounding,
And it can help also to tune in to the Tandon point.
So two or three fingers width below the belly button,
Right in the centre of your belly.
Our centre of gravity,
If you like,
Centre of our system,
Our body system,
And allowing this centre point right in the belly also to sink downwards,
To feel the effect of gravity pulling us down.
Maybe each time you breathe out,
There's an increased sense of centring,
Gathering,
Focusing into the Tandon point,
Beginning to harvest the fruits of our practice,
And store them in the belly,
In the Tandon.
All the work that you put into your personal practice of yoga,
Whether that be physically on the mat or in your life,
Otherwise just beginning to draw it in,
Those effects.
Maybe you can visualise it as a sense of light or a flow or gravity into the Tandon,
Into the energy centre.
Each time you breathe out,
More and more centring.
And the more we do this over time,
The more we generate a sense of contentment,
Of nourishment.
What do we lack right now,
Right here?
Maybe when we enquire like this,
Deeply,
Sensitively,
And with plenty of space and time,
Out of that might come a feeling that,
Yes,
I need to do a little bit more of this,
Or I need to eat a bit of that.
Something that's going to help us to really tune or fine tune our system.
Or maybe there's just a broadening,
Deepening sense of,
Ah.
And as we become more and more still and quiet,
If you get distracted by thoughts and start thinking about something else,
All we do is just allow them to dissipate those thoughts,
Just moving our attention away,
Coming back down into your belly,
Centring in the Tandon,
In the breath,
In the security,
Safety of just right now,
Right here.
.
.
.
.
And then from the Tandon,
Centre of your belly,
Dropping your attention down to the connection of your body with the mat,
With the cushion.
And then we're going to carry on going downwards,
Like growing roots of awareness down through the cushion floor,
Through the building that you're in,
Down into the earth,
Foundations of your building,
Deeply rooted in the earth,
The rock beneath you.
Just like the foundations of your energy,
Of your body,
Are deeply rooted in the ground,
In the earth.
We can keep on going down into the rock,
The layers of rock,
And as we keep on reaching our mind down,
Know that this is our planet,
Our planet earth,
This is the surface of our planet.
.
.
.
It's the vastness of our planet that creates enough gravity to hold us to the surface.
So as you feel the weight of your body resting downwards,
Being held supported,
This is our planet.
.
.
It's this time of year when we start to appreciate just the vast bounty that our planet has to offer.
You just have to walk down a bit of railway track and you see blackberries literally hanging off the brambles.
This is the time of year when in the allotment we're harvesting lots of fruit and vegetables.
The earth just produces it.
So many different kinds,
Flavours,
Tastes.
It's just remarkable,
Beautiful,
Very special.
.
The abundance of our planet earth.
.
So as we come to the end of our practice together,
I'm just going to take a little bit of a deeper breath and maybe start to sway the body a little bit from side to side.
And just when you feel ready,
Allowing your eyes to lift.
.
.
.
.
