Hello and welcome to this meditation.
Wherever you are in the world,
Wherever you are internally,
Welcome.
All is welcome here.
So I invite you to find a comfortable position.
You might be standing up,
You might be sitting down or laying down,
But wherever you are,
Just bringing yourself into a place of stillness.
So if you're sitting down,
Maybe finding your seat on the chair or the ground,
Feeling your feet on the ground below you,
Maybe resting your hands gently on your lap.
You can close your eyes or gently look down 45 degrees in front of you if that feels more comfortable.
I invite you now to find a posture that feels both upright as a sense of alertness,
But also relaxed,
A sense of ease.
We can think of the body like or the spine like a string of pearls kind of stacked on top of one another,
Allowing ourselves to feel a sense of dignity,
But also a sense of humility.
I'll invite you to just bring your attention to your breath.
We'll use the breath as an anchor throughout this practice,
But if at any point that feels uncomfortable,
Feel free to just find a sound outside of you in this moment right now.
Maybe that's the sound of a car going by.
Maybe it's the sound of your refrigerator and or an appliance that's humming in the background.
Or maybe it's the birds chirping,
Finding some sort of sound outside of you that will be our anchor throughout this practice.
I invite you now to bring your attention to the breath.
Breathing in,
Knowing that we're breathing in,
And breathing out,
Knowing that we're breathing out.
And in this practice,
We'll do a short practice of bringing our attention to our mind,
Our heart,
And our full body.
So starting with the mind,
Just bringing our attention to this moment.
Oftentimes when we're rushing around or we're busy or maybe when we have a lot of extra time on our hands,
Our brains can go into self-referential thinking or they can get distracted either thinking about something that happened before this moment or something that's about to happen.
But what would it be like to bring our mind and our breath into this moment right here,
Right now?
And then continuing to follow the breath and maybe bringing our attention to our heart space.
What's alive in the heart in this moment?
And how can we bring a sense of ease,
A sense of compassion to ourselves?
Maybe even putting a hand on our heart,
Offering ourselves some love in this moment.
And then bringing our attention to our entire body.
What is it like to be in this body right here,
Right now?
Not needing to fix or change or do anything different.
Whatever is here in the body is okay.
If there's pain or discomfort,
Just seeing what it's like to offer some kindness to our body.
And then in this last few breaths,
Just offering ourselves a bit more breathing room.
So often it's easy to want to hold on or tighten or contract during moments of stress or anxiety or tension.
How can we,
Using the breath,
Just continue to release and let go?
And maybe bringing to mind something that we're grateful for today.
If nothing comes to mind right away,
That's also all right.
Doesn't have to be anything big,
But maybe it's something very small.
And taking in one last breath together.
And with the sound of the bell,
Opening the eyes and coming back.
