Hello and welcome to the session,
I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable,
You can close down the eyes if you wish and take some slow,
Calm breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth,
And with each breath allow yourself to acknowledge and release any physical,
Mental or energetic blockages along with anything else that may distract you from this session,
For the next few minutes all you need to do is breathe and be here to receive the session,
Now as your body calms and your mind begins to settle,
Take a moment to set an intention for this session,
May this session ground me in presence,
Focus my mind and open me to the guidance,
Clarity and insight this practice holds for me today,
May it bring me closer to embodying my highest self,
Okay well done,
In today's session we're going to be looking at the internal family systems quality of clarity through the practice of mindfulness,
So curiosity through introspection and clarity through mindfulness are similar ways to approach the same thing,
The idea of seeing things clearly,
Clarity strengthens awareness of our parts of the physical sensations and of all of the different things that are arising in our mind without blending,
If we can see and not fall into mental phenomena or physical phenomena we are grounded in the sense of self and thus are finding ourselves in a place of peace,
Calmness and just beautiful presence,
Now there are many different ways to practice mindfulness and technically speaking the previous session on introspection was also a mindfulness practice,
But what we're going to do today is attempt to attain clarity through a more traditional approach to mindfulness,
Just a simple focusing of the breath,
You're going to draw attention to the sensation of your breath entering and leaving the nose and when your mind wanders you'll just gently bring it back,
That's it,
That's the practice,
Your mind wanders you bring it back,
Your mind wanders you bring it back,
This practice will train you to do two things,
Number one to be able to maintain focus on one thing at a time,
In this case the breath,
You could choose to focus on any object,
It could be on what you can hear,
What you can see,
What you can feel,
What you can taste,
Or upon a mantra repetition,
Could be anything,
We're just having to choose the most traditional anchor for our practice,
But we're practicing the ability to focus,
But we're also practicing something much more important and that's the ability to notice what our mind is doing without judgment,
Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposely paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment,
That's sort of a fancy way of saying that we're seeing things with clarity,
We're in a state of presence,
We've got some perspective and that's the internal family systems principle for this session,
It gives us a bit of perspective,
It gives us a bit of distance,
Not in a dissociated way but in a detached way,
In a way that allows us to notice what's arising within ourselves,
The practice of mindfulness,
Of returning your focus back to the breath,
Or whatever anchor you've chosen,
Trains these things and over time you develop a strong sense of clarity,
You're like huh,
That's my mind doing that thing,
I'm focused here but my mind's trying to pull me elsewhere,
And you'll be able to very easily and simply return yourself back to focus,
The final thing before we get into this practice is when we return ourselves back to focus,
That's actually the practice,
It's not about maintaining focus,
It's about noticing the contents of our mind,
Of our consciousness,
If your mind wanders and you notice it,
That's a good thing,
So rather than beating yourself up,
You go huh,
I'm gonna lovingly,
Calmly and with compassion return myself,
My focus back to the breath,
You know you were doing it right,
When you were doing it,
In the sense of the active practicing mindfulness means you were doing it right,
So with all that said,
I invite you to take another slow,
Calm breath,
In through the nose and out through the mouth,
And just allow your breath to return to a normal natural rhythm,
Just observe it as it enters and leaves the nose,
Just feel the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the nose,
If you find your mind wandering,
Focusing on other things or lost in thought,
Just gently and lovingly return it back to the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the nose,
Okay,
So how did you go,
That's the basic practice of mindfulness and it's the practice that I recommend beginning meditators start with,
Because like I said it does two things,
It teaches you how to focus and helps you to become aware of the contents of your mind,
From a detached curious perspective,
It helps you to step back and not become so reactive,
And when combined with some breath work to calm yourself down and with some curiosity as to whatever arises,
A mindfulness practice becomes a strong tool towards reconnecting and engaging and embodying the sense of self,
So if you haven't already,
I suggest that you start considering establishing a daily meditation practice that goes beyond these sort of guided talks,
Just one minute,
Just set a timer for one minute and focus on the sensation of your breath entering and leaving the nose,
And if your mind wanders you just gently bring it back,
You'll find that over time you'll have significantly more clarity and a lot more presence in the self,
And with that said I invite you to open your eyes and come back to your body,
And as we end this session I just want to remind you that if you have any questions about clarity or mindfulness or internal family systems in general,
To ask it in the classroom,
I'll be there to answer your questions,
And I'll see you next time.
This track was taken from the course,
Sitting in the Self,
Exploring the eight C's of internal family systems,
It's out now and available on my insight timer profile,
I encourage you to check it out,
See you there.
