Allowing your feet to be flat on the floor,
A straight but relaxed spine.
Maybe closing your eyes if you feel comfortable or leaving them partly open if that's your preference.
But just allowing as we start for your awareness to descend into your body,
Starting to notice the full range of your experience.
Sensing your feet flat on the floor,
Noticing where your body makes contact with the chair.
And on this next breath,
Just on the in-breath,
Using areas of tension or tightness and on the out-breath,
Using the out-breath to really relax and release.
Again,
Scanning on the in-breath,
Relaxing and releasing on the out-breath.
And just to help you relax a little more,
Bring your attention to the muscles in your face,
Particularly relaxing your forehead,
Relaxing the muscles around your eyes,
Relaxing your cheeks and your jaw,
Even letting your tongue fall slack in your mouth.
And scanning down the back of your head now,
Down your neck and across the top of your shoulders,
Relaxing and releasing any tension you find.
Scanning down your arms now,
Your upper arms,
Your forearms,
Really allowing them to feel the weight,
Almost the comfort of gravity,
The feeling of being really pulled down to earth.
And scanning down your torso now,
Your chest,
Your abdomen,
Your pelvis,
All the way down your spine,
Just noticing any areas of tension and letting it go as best you can.
Scanning down your thighs now,
Down all the way down to your shins and your calves,
All the way down to the experience of your feet flat on the floor.
And when you're as relaxed as you can be in this moment,
Gently bringing your attention to the breath and the experience of the breath in the belly,
The rise and fall.
And just allowing your attention to rest on the breath,
Using the breath as a bit of an element.
And in this part of the practice,
If you find that your mind wanders away from the breath,
It's not a problem.
In fact,
You can be really pleased you've noticed it.
In that moment,
Just relax.
Release,
Unhook from whatever it is that's captured your attention.
And gently rebalance by bringing your attention back to the breath.
And now letting go of the breath as the object of your attention and just allowing your awareness to open up to the full range of your experience.
Perhaps noticing what you can hear,
What sensations might be present.
And then turning your attention particularly to your mindscape,
Any sense of thoughts,
Emotions,
Moods.
Now just allowing your awareness,
Your attention to rest on whatever's in the foreground of your experience.
What is kind of the thing that arrests your attention?
Just allow your attention to rest on that.
Like we're allowing our attention to rest on all the distractions,
All the things we would normally let go of.
But you just rest there.
And to help you do that from a little bit of objective distance,
You might like to label it,
Whether it's birdsong or email,
Sound,
Thought.
And just seeing if we can apply that observer,
The wise observer.
Like we're sitting in the back seat of the cinema,
All of our experience is playing out in front of us on the screen.
But you can relax because there's nothing in this moment that you need to do.
Simply observe.
And if at any point you find that your mind's really just wandering,
Captured by a thought or a sound,
Whatever it is,
You can always just come back to the breath to rebalance,
To reground,
To find that sense of presence and balance.
To come back to that place as the wise observer before opening your awareness back up to the full range of your experience.
And as you sit in that observer space,
Also remember to keep breathing.
Allow yourself to continue to relax into this space of calm you're creating for yourself,
As if you're in the eye of the storm.
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Sensations,
Sounds can be whirling around you and you're safe,
You're calm,
You're in your center.
And then letting go of all of that and just taking three deeper,
Longer breaths all the way in and all the way out.
Again,
All the way in and all the way out.
And after this last breath,
Bring yourself back to the room.
