Arriving Fully To Sounds

Arriving fully to sounds.

Find a comfortable seated position,

Resting your hands on your knees or in your lap.

Sit upright and relax the body completely.

To help you settle in,

Take three deep breaths,

Breathing deeply in through the nose and slowly out the mouth.

Now that you're a little more settled,

A little more relaxed,

Just simply begin to notice the sounds around you.

Allow the sounds to come to you.

See if you can just listen without labeling what you hear,

Without any judgments,

But just allowing the ears to do what they naturally do,

Hear sounds.

Notice how sounds are just coming and going.

And all you need to do is just observe this coming and going.

Also notice the effortless quality of listening.

You don't have to turn it on.

You don't need to try,

But very naturally your ears are receiving sounds.

Just in this effortless hearing.

Besides the sounds,

See if you can notice the silence from which all the sounds come and go from.

And if you get distracted,

Just tell your mind,

Listen.

Or you can even say,

Do you hear that?

And immediately you'll fall back into that open,

Spacious listening.

Slowly bring your attention now from the sounds back to the body.

One more time,

Relaxing your body from head to toe.

And then all together,

Taking a deep inhale through the nose,

Just letting it go completely out the mouth.

Slowly beginning to move the fingers and the toes.

And when you're ready,

Gently opening the eyes.