I'd like to invite you as always to begin by turning inwards,
Allowing yourself to turn away from the busy doing world that we live in.
Look inwards towards that deepest sense of being that's always there.
Allowing yourself to settle in and experience a deeper sense of yourself.
So begin by settling into the space that you're physically in.
Sitting in a chair with your back upright,
Active but relaxed.
With your head above your spine,
With your chin tucked in slightly and not resting back on anything.
Feel your feet on the floor or the chair.
And notice where your body makes contact with the chair.
For now you're here,
Exactly where you're supposed to be.
Allow yourself to set an intention right now.
To allow yourself to really be right here.
I am exactly where I planned to be.
This is exactly what I planned to be doing.
There is nowhere else for me to be right now.
This is it.
Only this moment,
The present moment,
Is real.
In this practice we'll explore a deeper connection to our sense of being.
The essential you that we lose contact with in our busy doing life.
First we'll spend time journeying inwards.
Turning our attention inwards.
So gently and without effort,
Take your attention to your fingertips.
Allowing your full focus and awareness to rest there.
After a few moments you may notice a gentle humming or vibration beginning in your fingertips.
Stay with it.
Allow yourself to keep your awareness right there.
Just on the tips of your fingers.
Noticing what sensations you can feel.
Perhaps you feel it more in one side than the other.
Perhaps more in certain fingers.
Maybe nothing at all.
That's okay.
Just allow whatever you experience.
That tingling or humming is your nervous system responding to your attention.
Keeping your fingers priming for movement and sending that signal back to you.
Now gently add your toes to your awareness.
Keeping your fingers in your awareness too.
Just see if you can experience that same gentle vibration.
If you don't feel anything,
That's also something to just notice.
No judgement or effort.
Just allow whatever you experience to be there.
From here,
See if you can allow that sensation to spread to the rest of your hands and your feet.
Spreading up the ankles and up the wrists.
And slowly up to include your arms and your legs.
Your hips.
Your shoulders.
Across your chest and your belly.
Now move onto the breath.
Like the body,
Our breath is always present.
And focus first on seeing where you notice the breath.
Perhaps it's where the cool air enters your mouth or your nostrils.
Or perhaps today it's where the chest rises and falls.
Maybe it's the belly and it's rising and falling.
Just allow your attention to settle wherever it lands.
Notice that your body's breathing for you.
You don't have to do anything to make it happen.
Sometimes when we focus on the breath,
Our mind tries to control it.
And suddenly the simple act of breathing seems momentarily difficult.
But after a few moments that falls away and the body just knows what to do.
Your body's breathing and you are just watching.
There's a you that's separate from the act of breathing.
Now we'll begin to label that process of breathing.
When you breathe in,
Label it rising.
When you breathe out,
Falling.
Rising.
Falling.
Rising.
Falling.
Not trying to control the breath or change it,
Just labeling it.
This is your base camp.
You can return here at any time to anchor yourself in this practice.
Now we'll open out to a series of questions.
Using that to tune into our sense of being.
The first question is where am I?
So start with noticing.
Where is your body located?
What sort of space?
Do you feel as if you're contained in that space or are there no sense of boundaries?
Does your sense of your being finish at your physical body?
Does it feel open and spacious,
Going beyond that?
Are you everywhere but nowhere at the same time?
Your sense of place is here one moment but also shifting and dissolving as you open to that awareness of it.
I am both inside and outside,
In the physical body and yet also unbounded by it.
Now the question of when am I?
As you settle into this practice and open your awareness outwards,
You may notice how resting in simply being distorts your sense and experience of time.
Minutes disappear.
Sometimes you may have moments of simply resting and being in the now without any ideas of past and future.
And even the experience of now begins to fall as mental activity begins to settle.
I am outside of thought,
Time,
Space and my made up self.
Next we ask how am I?
Now as you rest in your sense of just being,
Feel that you are complete just as you are.
There seems to be nothing more that your mind and body needs.
Wants and desires that may have been present at the start of your practice begin to lose their colour.
They begin to fall away as your sense of being whole and complete in this experience grows.
You seem to know that nothing more is needed in this moment.
I am fine.
One needs,
Wants or desires.
And finally what am I?
So you may discover that this feeling of being is familiar.
It is something you have always known,
Although perhaps never really acknowledged.
And if it is familiar,
That is because it is.
It is you.
The real you.
Your authentic self.
Full of potential,
Creativity and purpose.
Just waiting to be experienced,
Known and used in your physical life.
I am complete,
Familiar.
Without need of any reference.
And so we have arrived.
Although there is no real destination.
But the more we rest in our inbuilt sense of being,
We are nurturing and expanding this fundamental human capacity.
We notice what it feels.
What it does.
And why.
We see and feel the changes in our life.
In our outlook.
As we tap into the joy and creativity of this inner resource.
Now we return to the breath.
That place that is always there.
We can tap into it any time that we need to remember this truth.
The rising and falling that reminds us that we are the observer.
The witness.
That the doing.
All the doing.
Is always separate from who we are.
That we can always know peace.
Rising.
Falling.
Rising.
Falling.
Just being.
And now.
Gently wiggle your fingers and your toes.
Enjoying the return of movement as you come back to this physical space.
When you are ready.
Just gently blink your eyes open.
Give yourself time to settle back into this space.
Keeping your gaze soft.
Holding onto that sensation of your being.
So you can infuse it into your day.
And actually
