Welcome to this meditation.
This is a simple practice intended to help you come back to presence.
So finding a meditation position that feels comfortable,
Allowing yourself to feel relaxed,
Yet with the sensation of being alert,
Letting the hands rest gently either on your lap or on your knees,
Closing your eyes or if you prefer leaving the eyes open with a soft gaze in front of you,
Taking several full deep breaths and with each exhale tuning into a sense of letting go.
A nice deep breath in and a full exhale out,
Noticing what it's like to collect your attention right here and allowing your breath to come right back to its natural rhythm and noticing where you sense the breath most in your body.
So that might be the air coming through your nostrils,
Sensations in your belly or maybe your whole body breathing.
Taking the next few minutes to really tune into and give attention to where the breath is wherever you're experiencing it.
Tuning in and seeing if it's possible to allow yourself to relax even just a little bit more.
And when you notice that your mind has wandered off,
Maybe gotten lost in thought,
It's really no problem.
It's exactly what this practice is about.
Gently guiding yourself right back to the breath.
Mindfulness is an opportunity to really honor your experience being with what's here right now.
So perhaps that's an open sense of clarity or maybe it's more like lots of thoughts or sensations like feeling restless.
Whatever is here for you,
Gently allowing it to be and at the same time noticing that you're not this experience.
You are the one watching it.
You are the one watching it.
The act of being here and noticing and allowing what's here in our experience is our foundation.
Whether that's emotions or thoughts,
Sensations in the body,
The beauty of it is that when we create space for ourselves to allow what's here,
We can then more fully show up for others and really be present for what is happening,
Our experience and that of others.
What's here right now in your experience?
Inviting yourself to open into it,
Just allowing it.
And as we end this meditation,
I'd like to offer these words from the poet and playwright Derek Walcott.
The time will come when with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door in your own mirror and each will smile at the others welcome and say sit here eat you will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine,
Give bread,
Give back your heart to itself to the stranger who has loved you all your life whom you ignored for another who knows your heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
The photographs,
The desperate notes.
Peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit and feast on your life.
And bringing your attention back to your breath and opening your eyes as you're ready.
