Welcome to your meditation practice.
Find your seat with the eyes closed and remember your motivation.
Remember your motivation for cultivating mindfulness and allow the energy of that motivation to bring you back to this present moment.
Begin by assuming a posture of full attention without any tension,
Allowing the eyes to close,
Feeling your sit bones pressing down into the chair,
The ground,
Wherever you're seated.
With the eyes closed,
Gently shift the body weight from side to side gently so you can find the center of gravity,
That point of physical alignment that allows your head,
Neck and back to be balanced,
Comfortable,
Supportive of this reflection and of this practice.
Take a few full deep breaths and as you exhale,
Release tensions from the neck,
Shoulders,
Arms and down through the whole body.
Return to the natural breath.
Feel the rhythm of the natural breath.
And let's begin working with emotions in our meditation.
Through mindfulness and meditation,
We become the healer of our emotions,
Accepting them and infusing them with loving awareness.
With meditation and mindfulness,
We create a spacious,
Welcoming,
Vast inner environment within which emotions when they arise can do so safely and can quite naturally release,
Dissolve and be integrated as energy and intelligence into our life,
No longer reactive,
But creative.
So bring to mind now a situation that activates emotions for you,
A challenging situation,
Perhaps that is current or one that is still alive in your memory track.
Remember it and keep breathing.
Remember it without becoming overly involved in the story.
Simply remember it as a way of calling forth those emotional reactions.
And as emotions arise,
Be aware of them and label the emotion in a simple way.
Perhaps sadness or anger,
Confusion,
Whatever it is for you,
Just simply label the emotion without trying to change it or manipulate it in any way.
Acknowledge this emotion and you name it is arising in my awareness.
I am aware of sadness and I breathe into that sadness or whatever the emotion is for you.
Simply say in your mind,
I am aware of you and I am breathing into you.
Let go of the thoughts of the event of the person or the situation and bring your attention into the body to the place where that emotion resides most immediately.
Perhaps it's in the heart or the gut or the throat,
I don't know.
And if it's comfortable,
Place your hand on that place and with a breath,
Send loving awareness to that place in the body where the emotion arises.
Send loving awareness with the breath rhythm.
If thoughts stir,
If internal dialogue and memories arise,
Let them go and simply be with the breath and gently infusing the body with loving awareness in that place where the emotion resides.
You don't push it away.
You don't try to hurry it along or to change it.
You simply breathe and welcome,
Acknowledge.
And with your breath and the feeling of loving awareness,
Say,
I am aware of you.
You are safe here.
Touch the place of emotion inwardly with loving awareness.
And then take three deep breaths,
Perhaps touching your heart,
Smooth,
Comfortable breaths.
And then be still and feel the energy of that emotion dispersing and dissolving into your whole body like a cube of sugar dissolves into an ocean or a vast lake.
And when you're ready,
Open your eyes and with balanced presence,
Return to your world.
