Welcome,
Take the next few minutes for yourself.
Put your body somewhere it can stay for a while without asking anything of you.
A seat,
A bed,
The floor.
The nearest comfortable option is the right one.
Move around a little as you arrive.
Shift your weight.
Roll one shoulder,
Then the other.
Let your jaw hang loose.
Adjust again as often as you like,
Right through to the end.
Give your hands a place to be,
Thighs,
Belly or the surface next to you.
Somewhere your arms can go properly heavy.
Now decide about your eyes.
You can close them.
You can also leave them open,
With your gaze resting on a spot on the floor a little way ahead.
Both work.
And whichever you pick will see you through.
Find where your body meets what's underneath it,
The seat or the mattress,
The points where your arms make contact,
The soles of your feet if the floor is within reach.
That contact is the steady part of this practice.
Come back to it as often as you want,
And the same ground is under you later on,
Wherever you happen to be.
Let one breath in,
And let it out again,
At whatever pace it turns up with.
Your body is running that already.
In a moment we turn towards something you're waiting on,
So here's the shape of these minutes.
The specifics of your situation can stay outside the practice.
We'll stay with how the waiting is sitting in you right now,
And with the ground underneath you.
If anything here gets heavy,
Stop following my voice and rest your attention on the surface supporting you.
Doing only that is enough for today.
Ending the track here and picking it up another time works just as well.
You may have arrived here holding something that is still open,
A message you sent,
A decision that belongs to someone else,
A result that arrives on its own schedule.
Waiting like that asks a great deal of a person,
And it can be genuinely hard to sit inside.
This practice stays with you for a while in the middle of it.
Your mind may have gone out ahead of you and tried to settle it in advance.
It runs the outcome,
Then runs it again with a different ending.
Minds tend to do that with a question that has no answer yet.
See whether that reaching is happening right now.
If your attention has traveled ahead,
Let it make the short journey back.
Come back to your hands.
Feel the temperature of the air on your skin and the weight of your arms where they rest.
Your attention will go out ahead again.
That is the ordinary rhythm of a waiting day.
Each time you notice it,
The way back stays the same.
Hands,
Weight,
Contact,
The ground under you.
Now let's find one fact that is available to you right now.
Something plainly true in this room.
Here are three examples.
The floor is holding my feet.
The light in here is low.
My hands are warmer than the air around them.
Now find your own and let it stay simple.
Say your fact once inside your own head,
In your own words.
That fact is small and it is completely yours.
The larger answer sits somewhere ahead of you,
On its own schedule.
This small one is here with you now.
For the next moments,
Let the unanswered part stay unanswered.
Your body stays here,
Supported.
Both of those are true at the same time,
And they can share this room.
Solving it can wait until solving it is possible.
If sitting with it grows heavy,
Come back to your hands.
With closed eyes,
You can open them and take in the room.
With open eyes,
Let your gaze lift and settle on one clear object.
Either route keeps you inside this practice.
Let the practice come to a stop.
Widen your attention to the space you're in and to the surface underneath your body.
Let your breath fill out if it wants to.
Wiggle your fingers,
Press your feet gently into the floor.
If you closed your eyes,
Let them open at their own pace.
If you kept them open,
Let your gaze lift to what's actually in front of you.
The waiting carries on after this track ends.
And wherever you are,
Something is holding you up.
Take care of yourself.
