Okay,
Daily meditation,
May 21st,
2020.
Introduction Most of us already know that environmental stress can affect our health,
Including worsening symptoms of anxiety,
Depression,
Or insomnia,
Increasing our immunity,
And in even more severe cases,
Increasing our predisposition to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Most people come to meditation to help relieve some of that stress that they're experiencing.
One of the facets of mindfulness meditation and mindfulness-based stress reduction that has personally helped me a lot in relieving stress as well as helping me in my career as a yoga teacher is called embodiment.
This involves delving fully into our physical experience and connecting with the wisdom of our bodies.
Embodiment helps us see our thoughts as thoughts and focus on direct sensory experience as a gateway into the present moment.
And that is what we will try in our practice today.
Sitting up comfortably,
Stacking head over heart,
Heart over pelvis.
Close your eyes and feel yourself sitting here.
Inhale to press the chest forwards and upwards as you lengthen the spine.
Inhale to relax the shoulders down as you ground through your seat.
Feel the support of the earth beneath you here.
Take a few full conscious breaths,
Inhaling through the nose to fill the chest with air and draw the breath all the way into your abdomen.
Then exhale and hug the navel in towards the spine to release the breath fully either out of the nose or out of the mouth.
Continue these deep breaths here and sense into your abdomen contracting and expanding like a balloon.
Now allow the breath to take its natural rhythm.
No need to force or control.
Using your exhales to start to let go of any place you might be holding.
Release any grip in the hands,
Any clenching in the jaw.
Open the belly.
Notice whether the breath is deep or soft and just allow it to flow in and out effortlessly.
Begin to notice how you're feeling today.
Noticing the sensations of sitting.
Noticing the feeling of your body's position in space.
See if you can soften all the hard edges here.
If you feel any tension,
Pay closer attention to each sensation as it arises.
Any tingling,
Pressure or temperature.
Embody all of the sensations that are present.
Just as if I were to tell you to bring your awareness to the inside of your right hand,
You might start to feel a little pulse in the center of your palm.
Bring that same sense of embodiment to all the sensations arising.
Then add into your awareness the sensations of breathing.
Whether the breath is deep or soft,
Full or subtle,
Just notice.
Rather than aiming your focus at the breath,
See if you can just notice how it appears.
Allow your awareness to rest gently on the sensations of the body,
Breathing in and out.
See where in the body you can feel the breath most distinctly,
Wherever feels right for you in this moment.
And try to stay with the breath here all the way through.
From the beginning of an inhale through to the end of the exhale,
Just be with your breath.
See if you can override the tendency to force or change how your body feels and instead try to accept its signals.
Become curious about the way your body and your mind speak to you.
Instead of shutting it all out,
Witness everything that appears here,
The sense data,
The mental data.
Listen deeply to all of it.
Witness any little signal that might appear as they are all an opportunity to learn something more about yourself and how you react to thoughts and feelings.
If you notice that you're lost in thought,
Once again,
Drop back and simply witness each thought as it appears and watch what happens.
There is no need to push thoughts away or resist them.
You can notice them and allow them to be as they are,
Doing your best not to judge and then returning gently to the experience of the breath.
In the final minute of this session,
Allow everything that is present to come flooding in.
Become aware of your visual field,
The breath,
Sounds,
Sensations and thoughts all at once.
Simply embody all aspects of your awareness and feel it expanding,
Becoming more and more spacious with each breath.
Gently flutter the eyelids back open and return to your outside world.
That will conclude our practice for today.
Thank you so much for joining me.
