Inner Refuge: Stillness with Laura Shekerjian

In this practice we're going to explore moving from the contracted tense states that we can find ourselves in during the day to an experience of ourselves is more open,

More spacious,

And more grounded.

And we'll do this by using breath and awareness.

Start by getting comfortable in your chair,

On the floor,

But having your spine straight,

Having a sense that the feet and the legs are grounded,

And the chest is open.

The important thing is to feel comfortable,

Settled,

So you're not struggling in any way with your body and your posture.

Then you might notice as your body settles a bit that the breath can begin to move more freely.

Just bring your awareness to the breath,

Letting the mind follow it in and out for a few cycles of breathing.

You might notice already that when the mind simply rests on the breath,

It begins to calm down.

You can almost feel yourself just breathing deeply and release.

Let's exaggerate that a little bit,

Bringing awareness to the exhalation.

And just feeling with every exhalation,

You just let go of whatever you've been holding in your body and your thoughts,

And you create space through this simple process of breathing out.

Sometimes this can be enough to change your state,

Just bringing awareness to the breathing,

Deepening your breath,

And letting go.

But we can go even more deeply.

This time as you exhale,

Notice the pause at the end of the exhalation,

That place where everything stops.

The breath,

The movement of the body.

There's a place of stillness there at the end of every exhalation.

Notice that.

Imagine with every exhalation you're deepening your connection to the stillness within you.

You're recognizing that this is available to you constantly but it's something we don't really access throughout our everyday activities.

Now imagine at the end of your next exhalation that you just stay in that place of stillness and not follow the breath in and out any longer.

It's as if you ride the elevator of breath all the way down and then get off and stay in that place of quiet.

As you practice over time,

You'll begin to discover that this place of stillness is quite alive,

Ever expanding,

Opening,

Vibrant.

Through practice,

Through familiarization,

You can learn to return to it again and again,

Being able to stay longer and longer until it comes to permeate everything you do.