Let's begin by establishing a relaxed upright seated posture on a chair with your feet on the floor or sitting directly on the ground if you prefer.
Closing the eyes or taking a soft downward gaze.
Be tall through the spine but without strain.
Allow the muscles of your face and your belly to soften.
Feeling the weight of your body held by your seat as you settle into stillness.
Take a few moments to check in with yourself,
Noticing how you're feeling.
Physically,
Are there any sensations in the body making themselves felt?
Emotionally,
How's the internal climate?
Is there an underlying mood or feeling tone present?
It's not an intellectual inquiry and there's no need to change whatever you feel.
Simply feeling it with curiosity and without judgement.
How are you feeling now?
Gently bringing awareness to the sensations of breathing,
Noticing them wherever you feel them most prominently.
Perhaps a soft flow of air at the nostrils.
Perhaps a gentle rise and fall in the abdomen with each inhale and each exhale.
Simply paying attention to breathing,
Following each breath as closely as you can.
When thoughts carry your awareness away,
As they tend to do,
Noticing this and returning to the breath.
These wanderings of the mind,
The noticing of that,
The returning to awareness,
This is our practice.
Let's open up awareness more widely into the body now.
Once again,
What sensations can you feel?
A brief scan of the body.
Face,
Shoulders,
Arms,
Hands,
Chest,
Belly,
Your seat,
Legs,
Feet.
Simply feeling whatever sensations are there and returning to feeling them when the mind wanders.
As the belly moves softly with each breath,
Can you feel any resonance of that elsewhere in the body?
Maybe noticing a sense of the whole body breathing.
No worries if not.
Simply inquiring closely into it is enough.
But if you can,
Can you get a feeling of the whole body breathing?
Now letting awareness expand a little wider to sounds.
Start with sounds nearby.
What can you hear immediately in your vicinity?
The sound of your own breath,
Maybe anything close by.
Listening with full awareness.
Not trying to analyse the sounds or create stories about them,
Judgments about whether they're pleasant or unpleasant.
Just perceiving them as raw sound.
As always,
A constant element of the practice is noticing those mind wanderings.
Noticing them and returning to whatever you're doing,
Which right now is listening to sounds.
Range wider with your awareness now.
Opening out to listen to sounds wherever you hear them,
However close or distance,
Broadening your perception.
Again,
Simply listening to whatever presents itself to your awareness.
Notice how the soundscape is constantly shifting,
How there's no way to tell whatever sound will enter your awareness next.
Just listening.
Let's spend the last part of this meditation bringing awareness to thoughts and feelings.
Trying to get a sense of them as passing occurrences in consciousness.
No different really from the sensations of the breath,
Other sensations in the body or sounds.
Like all of these things,
Thoughts come and go,
Moving in and out of awareness.
Watch for a while,
Trying without trying too hard,
But trying not to be dragged off by any thought or feeling.
Just observing them with curiosity.
And if a thought does tug at you strongly,
Look at it closely.
Not think on it,
Just look at the raw thing.
What is a thought as you experience it?
Not some story about neurochemical processes or the like.
Simply the experience of a thought.
What is a thought?
Where is it?
Does it have colour or smell or a shape?
Does a thought have any substance at all?
Is it possible to experience thought as a form of energy in the space of awareness?
It's the same with feelings,
Emotions,
Even uncomfortable ones,
Those we give stories to.
As a raw experience,
Right now,
What is a feeling?
Does it have a colour or a smell or a shape?
Does it have any substance at all?
Is it possible to experience feeling simply as energy in the space of awareness?
Trying to observe thoughts and feelings passing through awareness in the same way as sensations or sounds.
Not giving them life by adding narrative to their raw energy.
Watch for a little while longer,
Returning when the mind wanders.
Okay,
Let's spend the last minute of this meditation by returning awareness to the breath.
Let everything else fall into the background and simply feel the sensations of breathing once again.
Trying to notice each inhale and each exhale from beginning to end.
Gently open your eyes or lift your gaze and go well with whatever comes next.
