Let's take our comfortable and yet dignified seat and take one or two deeper breaths as we become quiet and still.
Just make sure our body is comfortable.
You can rest for a few minutes.
The joint is in neutral.
Let's straighten our back a little bit when we inhale next,
Get a little bit taller.
And as we exhale we can soften a little bit so we're not too rigid.
Softening our shoulders and seeing if we can balance our head on the top of our spine so we don't need to use any effort to be upright.
Back of the neck is long so our neck is in line with our spine and then maybe softening a little further so we're comfortable.
Is there a balance somewhere?
A few deeper breaths.
So let's use a breathing exercise to become more centered and still.
So I invite you as you inhale to imagine your attention running from your tailbone up to the crown of your head.
Exhaling you can let your attention run down your spine back to your tailbone.
Inhaling up to the crown and exhaling back to our tailbone.
Each breath comfortable.
And unique.
And if your mind wanders,
Know that that's what it does.
We just return.
If we would like to,
We can extend this journey of our breath.
Next time we exhale we can allow our attention to leave our tailbone and go all the way down into the earth.
Connect with the earth beneath us and we can inhale all the way up from the earth through our spine into the great space above us.
Back down into the earth.
Connecting heaven and earth and us sitting quietly in between.
So we can release the breathing practice now.
Bring our attention to our breath and our body.
Just noticing.
Noticing the body.
Feeling.
Let's take our attention into our mind.
So taking our seat as the observer.
I'm having a peek what the weather is like in the mind.
You can visualize that any way you like.
What's the energy like in our mind?
So are we able to get a sense of all the things that are important to us in there?
Fighting to get done.
On fears and the doubts.
Judgments.
Can we recall that we may have had those and what they were and still be in our observer seat?
If we fall in to the to the tumult and to the storm that's okay we can just notice we've done it.
Come back to our observer seat.
There are hopes and aspirations for ourselves,
For our loved ones.
So much we want to achieve,
Hope for.
Soft and busy.
From our observer seat,
From our calm body.
Are we able to find compassion for our mind?
For ourself.
Are we able to hold that that maybe busy,
Maybe frantic,
Maybe chaotic energy in our mind however you would describe it?
Can we hold it as if we were putting our arms around it and have compassion?
It's okay.
It's okay to feel like this.
So it is safe for me to feel just as I feel right now.
Is there a calmer energy in us somewhere?
So is there peaceful energy in us somewhere?
So you might describe that as the observer or your heart or some other part of you completely.
Can we rest with that energy for a few moments?
So and your attention may get pulled back to the hopes and the fears and when we notice let's return to our space of calm.
Explore the space of calm.
Stretch out into it.
So and now you will have both these energies in you.
And you can choose,
You are liberated to choose.
And we can use our mind energy to create and hope,
Work and then we can step back,
Release it.
And take some peaceful breaths.
So feeling our body now as a whole and the energy or energies in our body.
And then taking a few deeper breaths as we prepare to transition back to the outer world.
And starting to mobilize our body,
Our fingers and toes,
Our arms and our legs and having a stretch if that's for you.
And in your own time returning to your waking world.
Thank you for practicing with me.
