Make yourself comfortable,
Whether you're standing or seated or lying down,
Eyes open or closed.
Come into the moment and settle down.
Draw into the stillness.
Accept the quiet.
Embrace slowness.
Take a moment to become 5 or 10% more comfortable wherever you are.
Shake out any tension.
Settle into your seat or space.
Adjust any clothing that's twisted or uncomfortable.
Come in.
Join me.
Join me.
Find an inner stillness that's never perfectly still.
Always the motion of your circulation,
Cells and molecules.
Deepen the quiet to a place that is not perfectly silent.
Acknowledge your environment.
Rain or shine.
Background noises.
Burbling.
Distant voices.
Take them in.
Notice them.
And then let them go.
Let gravity do its work on the mass of your body,
Pulling you down.
Giving you a benefit just in settling in.
The gentle pull of the earth on every cell.
The complete volume of your body out to the skin.
And then the world beyond.
Come into your breath.
Just notice it.
Where is it?
In your chest?
Are you breathing symmetrically?
How far down the latitudes of your body does your breath reach?
How quick or how slow?
It doesn't matter.
It's just a good opportunity to observe and to appreciate that your body works.
And it does its thing without asking and without being asked.
Now start to make minute adjustments.
Like a scientist in a lab.
Or a musician with the dials of an amplifier.
Just tweak it.
Maybe let your shoulders down a little further.
Bring your breath in a little lower.
Wiggle your knees and hips to settle in symmetrically.
Become a little more comfortable.
Breathing in a little deeper.
And breathing out a little longer each time.
Just marginally deeper and longer out.
If at any time you certainly will get distracted,
It's the nature of the mind and the neurons of the brain to wander.
Just come back to my voice or notice your breath or take stock of the sensations in your elbows or toes.
Feel the air on your skin just to return and cue you back to this moment,
This space.
You're meditating.
Ever so slowly,
Bit by bit,
We're going to retreat and draw inward.
Become smaller.
Pick up less space in this world so we can see it better.
So as we breathe,
Being ever gentle with ourselves,
We're going to start with a matched inhale to exhale,
Roughly the same length.
And then we're going to go to a slightly longer exhale each time.
Just a fraction of a moment as we draw inward and feel ourselves smaller each exhale.
Let's begin with an evenly matched breath.
Maybe you do a three count in and a three count out.
Four in,
Four out,
Six.
Maybe you don't count at all,
But you just notice that they're roughly equivalent.
In deeply,
Out slowly.
In deeply,
Out slowly.
In,
Out.
And continue that way with a matched breath.
In and out.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Breathe in.
Let it go.
A few more times.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Now we're going to begin to let the world recede by breathing out just a tiny fraction more than we breathe in.
Not even remotely enough to cause us discomfort.
Maybe it's only in our imagination and mind's eye.
Use that image of breathing out just a tiny bit more as a way of getting smaller.
Gaining a broader view on the world around you.
I'll cue you about five times and each time you just deepen your inhale and let out even a little more.
As you pull back and become small.
Breathe in.
Out.
A little more.
Feeling your skin retract and your body take up less space.
Perception expand.
Again,
A little more with every exhale.
Just let yourself take up less space.
Become just a little smaller.
Pull in.
Let go.
Breathing in and out.
When you get distracted or agitated,
Just return to gentle breathing and letting go.
And again,
Get a little smaller.
When you breathe out,
Breathe out just a moment longer than when you breathed in.
Letting go.
Retracting from the world.
So you can be in it more easily and see it better.
Feel yourself getting smaller with each exhale.
Notice the world around you,
Surrounding and comforting you as you let it in.
And once again,
Get smaller.
Your exhale just a hair longer than your inhale so that your body can let go.
You don't need to clench,
You just need to release.
Fall away.
And breathing in and out.
Letting the world fill you up.
As you take up progressively less space,
The world becomes bigger and more awesome all around you.
One more time.
Become a little smaller.
Exhaling just a little more than you inhale.
Settling in to taking up less space.
Continuing to breathe with gentleness and a generous awareness.
Letting your body and yourself settle.
Continue to breathe and observe the world from a distance until you hear the closing bells.
