Hello everyone,
Welcome to our weekly meditation.
Let's go ahead and get settled.
So find yourself in a comfortable position.
You can be seated or lying down.
You can be standing.
You can even be walking.
I like to close my eyes.
If you keep them open,
Have a soft gaze.
And let's start with our three deep breaths,
Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
I want you gently and tenderly to become aware of your body.
Just check in with your body.
Do you need to move your head back and forth and roll your shoulders back?
Do you need to move your head back and forth?
Do you need to roll your shoulders back?
Are you feeling aches and pains?
Do you have an itch?
Just say hello to the body.
Meditation is about being in the here and now.
Sometimes I even like to note the day and the time,
The day of the week,
The date,
The place I am in.
And I invite you to do a quick scan of the room.
So open your eyes.
And just look gently.
Turn your torso to look around.
Just gently take in your surroundings.
And then notice where your body is touching the floor.
It could be your feet.
Perhaps you're lying down and you're in a bed.
Your body is touching the bed.
Maybe you're in a cushion and so your thighs are touching the cushion and your feet are touching the floor.
Just wherever that contact is happening,
Place your attention there.
Close your eyes again.
And just start to feel that familiar tug of gravity,
That sensation of weight,
Of pressure,
Of your body on the floor.
Maybe it's just the sensation of your sitz bones touching your chair.
And just allow your body to relax into that sensation of being held by Mother Earth,
Being supported by the floor,
The bed,
The chair.
And with each exhale,
As we breathe in and then we exhale,
On the exhale I just invite you to release into the earth through that connection with whatever's touching the floor or the bed.
Just release into the earth through that connection,
Anything that doesn't serve you today.
We're just grounding off any negativity,
Any mental formations,
Judgments,
Concerns,
Worries.
We're carving out this space for ourselves and the benefit of our community to let all of that mental chatter go.
And so with each exhale you can imagine the tension leaving your body.
If you have a thought you can imagine it,
Literally visualize it going down through your body,
Out through your sitz bones,
Into the chair,
Into the floor,
Into the bedrock.
You're gently washing away and releasing that which doesn't serve you today.
I invite you to pick an object of focus,
Which I'll call your anchor or your home base.
Today it's your object of focus for the meditation.
And it can be really any number of things.
You're just going to choose one.
It could be the sensation of your breath in your chest.
If you're a chest breather or the sensation of your breath in your belly.
If you're doing belly breathing.
It could be the sounds that you're hearing.
It could be an awareness of a body part.
It could even be an intention or a mantra that you want to focus on.
So gently,
Effortlessly,
Don't think too much about it.
Pick your anchor for today.
And what we're going to do is just bring our attention to that anchor.
Something that brings us into the present moment.
And when our mind wanders,
We have a thought.
We simply come back to the anchor.
So for me today,
My anchor is the feeling of the breath moving through my chest.
And we'll sit in silence for a few minutes.
And your only instruction is to stay with your anchor.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
If you've noticed your mind has wandered,
That's totally fine.
That is the nature of the mind.
The nature of the mind is to think.
Just gently come back to the anchor.
The practice of meditation is in the remembering.
Okay,
It's in the awareness of where your mind is.
You don't have to be perfect.
Remembering over and over and over again.
Okay.
Again,
Bring your attention back to your anchor.
Alright.
So now I'm going to ask us to gently move our awareness into our heart center.
So that area around the physical heart,
But more broadly,
The entire upper chest cavity.
The heart chakra is the energetic center which governs our love and compassion for ourselves and others.
We all have experiences of an open heart chakra when we feel that sensation of love or generosity,
When we want to bring someone close to our heart.
We see a child or a pet,
We feel overjoyed to see them.
We have that bursting or an opening of the heart and its tenderness.
I'm sure we've all received a bruising or a punch to the heart.
When someone has said something hurtful or done something mean to ourselves or to others.
Let's just start with some gratitude of this just amazing capacity of the human body and the human emotional experience to feel that level of tenderness and vulnerability to receive those sensations and to transmit love and compassion to others.
Just allow your heart to expand and open into that sensation of love that field of loving awareness field of goodness that permeates the world.
And gently allow that field of loving awareness to reach out to your most trusted family members,
Colleagues,
Friends,
Those people you love easily.
And then let that loving kindness that field of loving awareness,
Reach out to everyone in your community in your town,
People that grocery store and on the streets coffee shops and allow that loving awareness to reach the entire globe.
So now your heart chakra to be open beaming it's rays of loving kindness,
Like the light of a sun.
If you feel comfortable I invite you to place your hands over your heart and to direct that beam of loving kindness field of awareness.
Place the attention on yourself.
Your humaneness in your human form.
In this world,
Just shine.
Some grace,
Tenderness,
Compassion and love upon yourself.
And as you venture forth into the world today I invite you to continue to radiate into know and to trust in the depth of this sensation and the truth of this reality of this field of love.
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