Hello,
Welcome to this meditation on refuge in silence.
Finding a position where you can feel a sustainable place to simply be with yourself for this time.
It might be seated and if so feeling as supported upright and if lying you support your head as you need.
So in either position we feel chin drawing lightly in towards the throat,
Space at the base of the skull,
A positioning for our physical being that allows a soothing within the nervous system and allows a dropping beneath the more busy,
More chatty tones of our front brain,
Our minds.
So space,
The base of the skull,
The brain stem,
Inviting,
Quieting in through the system,
Letting us know it's okay to settle here for this time and if it supports receiving that notion that it's okay to settle in this moment,
You might bring your hands onto your belly or another part of you that helps you tune in to that inherent ability to drop in,
To soothe.
Even if that's felt we've not spent much time there or it's been very accessible,
Leading ourselves in,
Go soft around the jaw and the eyes,
Chin drawing lightly towards the soft throat,
Allowing us to receive information that we don't need to speak,
Have an opinion,
A soft receptiveness throat area,
Quality of surrender in the eyes too,
Dropping our attention down to the heart space and as I offer you more and more quiet moments,
Silence within this time,
Silence within this time,
We can recognize that silence isn't an absence of noise,
There is something coming in from the outside,
Even noises,
Our physical body from the inside,
The silence we're looking particularly to drop in is that beneath any noise or chatter of the mind,
To notice when thought,
Story,
Preoccupation comes in,
We don't need to follow it,
It's important it will be there after the practice,
But for now we can shift our attention away from that pull of the mind stuff,
In towards rhythm of the breath,
Curiosity about the tones,
Textures,
The shifts and changes within our experience,
Drop into silence now,
For the next five minutes,
Noticing the kind attention,
How it feels for you to be away from stimulus,
To soften your attention away from the draw of the mind,
Breathing into,
We might describe as silence,
Noticing if any spontaneous sounds,
Ah,
Or another vowel sound on the exhalation,
Feels natural to feel how our voice is in to still air around us,
And whether it feels easeful or more challenging for you to be with yourself in silence,
Coming into this place of a refuge,
Of a stepping away from very often busy,
Noisier tones for the world around,
Is tuning back into a baseline,
A potential place to grow anew,
To let things recalibrate,
To restore,
Really found in these moments where we allow,
We drop away,
We shed some of the layers,
We meet any process that we need,
Any self-support we need,
Now please do stay for longer in silence,
Very helpful to cultivate more and more time spent in meditation,
Just being with yourself,
Holding a kind space for yourself.
Whenever you come out,
Making your way out gently,
Slowly,
Moving into this next part of the day,
Your life,
In a way that supports bringing these qualities with you.
Namaste.