To begin this practice,
We find a comfortable stationary position,
Allow our breath to move naturally without any attempts to control it,
To make it more deep or more shallow,
And then taking a few moments to generate a truly positive motivation for this practice,
Coming back to our highest spiritual or psychological aspirations and orienting this practice towards them,
Using it as a way to strengthen our wisdom,
Our understanding of reality,
Our understanding of the nature of our experience,
And then use that wisdom,
That inner freedom,
That flexibility to make wiser and kinder decisions with regards to both ourselves and other beings,
So that all beings can eventually be happy and free.
And then to do the main practice for this session,
Which is a variation on the theme of mindfulness of feelings,
The pleasant,
Unpleasant,
And neutral tones of our experience,
We first bring our awareness to the physical body and its sensations,
Noticing the sensations especially around the abdominal area,
And just like in some styles of mindfulness of breathing,
Noticing the sensations associated with the rise and fall of the abdomen,
Combined with the inhalation and the exhalation,
Just resting with those sensations for a while.
This in itself is not yet mindfulness of feelings,
But simply the step of preparation.
And now in this experience of all that we experience in the abdominal field,
We start slowly discerning the feeling undertone,
Discerning whether these sensations are accompanied by a feeling of being pleasant or unpleasant or somewhat neutral,
Relatively neutral.
Essentially,
It's as if each moment we're performing a scanning operation,
Checking to see whether our tactile experiences right now are pleasant,
Unpleasant,
Or relatively neutral,
Knowing full well that in the next moment or in a few minutes,
The feeling tone might change,
Becoming unpleasant or neutral or pleasant,
Or it might stay the same.
And so just observing,
Not so much the sensations of rising or falling or movement or firmness or contact with our clothes,
But specifically that,
The undertone,
With focused attention and curiosity,
Bringing our awareness to this area,
The abdominal area,
Again and again,
And observing the feeling tone there,
Which means that the sensations,
Movement and so forth,
Are still present in the background of our observation,
But are not the primary focus of interest.
Then,
To cultivate the same skill using another area,
We can gently bring our attention to the facial muscles and the experiences there.
First,
Once again,
Observing the sensations,
The movement,
The firmness,
The warmth,
All of that,
And then starting the process of discerning the feeling tone,
Once again,
Pleasant,
Unpleasant,
Or neutral.
Now,
With regards to this part of our sensory field,
Discerning the feelings,
Even as the sensations continue unfolding,
And then no longer discerning the arisal of feelings,
But simply extending our attention to all the experiences arising in the field of the body right now,
To ground and to center our awareness.
Then,
Taking a few moments to dedicate the energy and the insights of this practice to our highest spiritual and psychological aspirations,
And then slowly concluding this practice as we bring our awareness to the space around us.
