So get into a comfortable position.
Settling into stillness.
And take a deep inhale through your nose.
Slow.
And just start becoming aware of sensations.
Start feeling our bodies sitting.
So we're just taking our attention away from our thoughts.
Settling our attention in our body.
Bringing those sensations to the foreground,
Whatever they are.
And start feeling the other sensations of sitting,
Your feet on the floor.
A connection with the lower half of your body.
Moving up now to feel sensations of breathing in your belly or in your chest.
The expansion and contraction.
And when we come to a meditation,
Maybe we've been busy,
So the thoughts might be happening.
They'll be like little images popping up,
Noises,
Sounds,
Voices.
But we're trying as best we can to maintain awareness of our body and those thoughts are happening but they're in the background slightly.
You just follow one breath.
And it's not a problem if they come to the foreground,
That will happen.
Now we'll get lost in thought.
A thought will come in and we think,
Ah we'll follow that thought or not even,
It just happens.
And then when we notice we just come back to the body sitting.
Start again from this moment.
And all the time we're in the body,
We're relaxing the body.
The body likes our attention.
Starts to release tension.
To feel your shoulders,
The sensations there.
Bringing awareness of sensations in your jaw and tongue,
Cheeks,
Eyes,
Those muscles that we sometimes hold,
Tightness.
So allowing those muscles to release and relax.
And if we're not sure what we should be doing,
The mind is confused or trying to figure something out,
Asking questions.
Just reconnect with the breath.
That's just confusion showing itself.
The thoughts are in different places at different times.
Sometimes we are confused,
We're asking questions,
We have doubt.
So we're getting to know all our mind states.
Getting to know what certain emotions bring us,
How our mind reacts to those.
So we're getting to know ourselves deeply.
And when we know ourselves,
And we can become familiar with knowing becomes that knowledge,
We can just let go easier because we've seen it before.
We don't get caught up in it.
We just recognize,
Oh that's happening.
I've seen you before.
I know you will pass.
But we also have the trust in our bodies to relax and come back to our natural state which is calm,
Contentment.
Eventually everything settles.
So we just sit in a relaxed manner.
Feeling our body sitting,
Breathing,
Feeling our muscles.
We can say breathing in and breathing out or name what's happening,
Give our mind something to do.
So we're giving up any struggle as well with what we encounter.
Sometimes we come to a place or something will come up that we don't like or we resist.
Can we just allow,
Relax into it,
Open to what's happening.
Just let it be.
The main part of the practice is giving up the struggle with what is.
Once again feel the muscles in your face.
Jaw.
Sometimes you might have been trying too hard.
Allow shoulders to release,
The jaw,
The throat,
The neck,
The chest and the belly.
You can breathe into those as it were.
So it's almost like the breath is filling these places.
You feel the coolness,
The inhale.
Bringing sensations in our hands to the foreground.
Becoming familiar with all the sensations in our body.
Maybe feeling each fingertip,
The back of your hand.
The front.
Sensations of contact.
We start to get to know what sort of thoughts we have.
Either about the past or the future or even about meditation.
Some thoughts are just wandering thoughts but some thoughts bring an emotion.
And that emotion we can feel maybe in our throat or in our chest tightening up.
And this is perfectly normal.
This is how we are.
So for the last few minutes just be with this breath.
I'm saying in or out or breathing in,
Breathing out or just feeling the breath as the breath is happening.
Feel your shoulders and chest expanding or you feel the breath in your nose.
Be as relaxed as you can.
Sometimes our awareness is on a particular part of the breath or sometimes it's just it can expand to feel more than just that part of the breath.
Just let whatever happens happen.
There's no right or wrong.
Now just take a really slow inhale right to the top of your lungs.
And let the breath leave on its own.
Do a couple more.
Allow breathing to return to normal and then open your eyes.
We don't have to allow thoughts to flood back in.
Go back into thinking.
We can just make this our new habit to feel our body still even with our eyes open.
So we've always got that choice.
We can choose to carry on thinking or we can choose to come back.
