Guided Meditation You Are Not Your Thoughts Sometimes your mind can go into overdrive.
Your mind can feel out of control with your thoughts whirling around.
This meditation will help you to take a step back and calm down.
It helps by dropping your awareness deeply inside your body and arriving in each present moment.
This can make you feel less tangled up in your thoughts.
The way we are made as humans means we can't be resting inside our senses in the body and lost in thoughts at exactly the same moment.
We just can't do both those things at once.
So a fantastic way to shift our awareness from being in our thoughts is to drop into being aware of our body.
It might be that your mind bounces back into thinking in the very next moment.
That's normal.
But the mindfulness practice is to notice when this happens and call the mind back to the body again.
And we do that over and over again.
That way we gradually change our normal state from being lost in our thoughts to being more stable and present,
Grounded in our body.
So to begin with,
Let's choose a position for the meditation.
You can do it sitting or you can do it lying or you could even do it standing.
It's really up to you.
The aim is to be as relaxed as possible but still paying attention.
As you settle into your position,
Very gradually allowing your awareness to drop deep in the body.
Feel where your body touches the surface you're resting upon.
If you're sitting,
Feeling into your bottom on the chair and your feet on the floor.
If you're lying down,
Feel your back on the bed or the floor and your head resting on a pillow or cushion.
And let's take a slightly deeper in-breath and then release and let go on the out-breath before allowing your in-breath to naturally flow back into your body in its own time.
Do this a few more times if you'd like to.
Really giving your weight up to the surface it's resting on with each out-breath.
And now allowing your breathing to settle and to find its own natural rhythm.
Seeing if you can allow the belly to expand a little bit on the in-breath and come down a little bit on the out-breath.
Remember that there's no special way of breathing here and especially being careful not to force or strain.
If bringing your attention to your breathing makes you uncomfortable right now,
Then I suggest you rest your awareness inside one of your senses.
Perhaps whatever you can hear or smell or touch.
Perhaps feeling the contact of your hands on the body or your feet on the floor.
It's just trying to rest inside the senses of your body as best you can.
That can help you steady your mind.
It can also be interesting to explore how breathing feels in the back of the body.
What can you feel there?
Maybe there's a sense of your back getting a little bit wider on the in-breath and releasing back on the out-breath.
Coming into the lower back as well.
Maybe noticing that the shape of the lower back changes a little bit on the in-breath and the out-breath,
Keeping your breathing natural.
Maybe there's a feeling there of getting wider on the in-breath and releasing or softening back on the out-breath.
Being aware of breathing in the back of the body can be naturally soothing.
It brings in the part of the nervous system that helps with calm and settling.
Now becoming aware of the whole body sitting or lying here.
Feel the different feelings in your body and let your body be held and supported by the floor,
Bed or chair.
Giving your weight into the support again and again.
Now turning your awareness to your thoughts,
To your thinking.
Mindfulness helps us to look at our thoughts rather than from our thoughts.
As humans,
We can be aware of our thoughts rather than getting completely caught up in what our thoughts are saying.
What sort of thoughts are flowing through your mind right now?
Being aware of that with interest and curiosity rather than judgement.
Remembering that it's perfectly normal for minds to think.
We're all thinking all the time but mindfulness helps us to look at our thoughts rather than getting helplessly swept away by our thoughts.
Seeing if we can get a little bit more space around the thinking mind.
A lovely image is to think of awareness as like a big blue sky and that our thoughts are like clouds passing across the sky.
So we can rest in the awareness and just watch the thoughts coming and going,
Coming and going.
And all the time using body awareness as an anchor,
Holding us steady.
As we rest our awareness deep in the body,
We can feel more steady and still as we let our thoughts come and go,
Come and go.
You'll probably find from time to time that you've got completely lost in your thinking.
You'll notice that you've been completely swept away with the content of your thoughts.
You're not worrying or planning or caught up with fear.
But in the noticing that that's happened,
You're having a moment of success in your mindfulness.
You know what's going on and then you have this magic moment of choice.
Now you can choose to invite your awareness back inside the body,
Inside feelings,
Inside your senses.
You can go back to letting the thoughts just pass through the mind like clouds passing across a clear blue sky.
So this is the mindfulness training.
To become aware of the body,
Aware of our thoughts.
We use body awareness as an anchor and let the thoughts come and go.
Shifting from being lost in our heads to resting in our bodies.
So let's rest here quietly for a few moments together,
Meditating together,
Doing this mindfulness training.
You can keep doing the meditation for as long as you like.
When you're ready to finish,
Very gently moving the body,
Stretching if you want to.
Seeing if you can take with you this feeling of being aware of your body and looking at the thinking mind rather than being lost in it.
Keeping that feeling as you engage with whatever comes next.
