Awareness of Breathing with Kindfulness

So,

Beginning by settling into your lying down posture.

And if you're sleepy,

You can just stay seated.

Just being aware of your body in space,

The parts of your body that are touching a surface.

Kind of feeling the weight of your body.

And if you're laying down,

Seeing if you can see if there's any kind of like tensions in your body,

Like any holding,

Bracing,

That kind of thing.

And seeing if you can experiment with letting go a little bit more of those tensions.

Almost as though you're like fully trusting that the mat or the floor was going to support you and that you don't need to do anything other than just lay down.

And if you're sitting up,

Then kind of the same thing,

There's a little bit more having to hold yourself up.

But in similar ways,

Maybe letting go of tensions that are not useful right now.

So as your body kind of settles down,

See if you can notice the stillness,

The stability of the body.

And kind of giving yourself the permission to just be on vacation for the next few minutes.

Nothing to do,

Nothing to solve,

Nothing to attain,

Not even relaxation or any special state.

But just for now resting in being,

Just being who you are right now.

And then I'm going to invite you to place one of your hands on the front of your body somewhere,

Like your chest or somewhere around your abdomen.

A place where you're going to notice the body kind of rising on the in-breath and falling down on the out-breath.

Maybe moving the hand a little bit around just to find that sweet spot.

Kind of establishing this area as an anchor,

Kind of a center of gravity for your attention.

So that whenever it wanders away,

It's not lost because it can come back to this one spot.

Basically the spot right underneath the palm of your hand,

The point of contact between your hand and the front of your body.

And so turning your attention there right now and noticing with a lot of curiosity,

Noticing all the sensations that are showing up there.

So they might be sensations of movement,

Like the rising and the falling of the hand.

And if that's what you're noticing,

See if you can pay kind of a subtle attention and notice that the movement is always kind of slightly different.

Kind of just riding those waves with your attention as the body kind of naturally breathes and pushes the hand up and then the hand goes down.

And then you might notice other sensations like maybe sensations of touch,

Of pressure,

Maybe even of temperature like warmth.

And again,

If you pay really close attention,

Noticing all the subtleties.

Like where does the sensation of touch begin and where does it end?

Noticing the gradients of temperature in the palm of the hand.

And so seeing if you can bring your attention to this point again and again,

Get curious.

Just staying with these sensations as they change from moment to moment.

So notice that there's nothing much to do here.

We're just letting the body breathe on its own.

And we're letting all these sensations just evolve in their own way.

And all we're doing is really just watching the show.

Maybe you're going to notice that your mind doesn't really like this show and rather be thinking about the future.

Maybe it's having a running commentary about what's going on.

Or maybe it's thinking about the past.

So when this kind of normal brain activity starts happening,

See if you can just be aware of that.

Maybe labeling it,

Oh,

There's thinking,

There's planning,

There's remembering.

Once you labeled it,

You're free to bring your attention back.

To the hand,

To the breathing.

Basically using the sensations between the hand and the body as a gateway to the present moment.

So what am I aware of right now?

Am I aware of the sensations of breathing at the level of my hand?

Or am I lost in thought?

And if I'm lost in thought,

Can I just become aware of that and choose to come back to the simplicity of just breathing in,

Breathing out?

My hand rising and falling.

Sensations of warmth and touch.

Knowing that we can come back to certain thoughts later after the meditation.

But just for now,

As an experiment,

We're practicing coming back again and again to this anchor.

We're practicing being present.

All,

This feels good.

When my body breathes in,

I'm aware that my body's breathing in.

When my body breathes out,

I'm present,

I'm aware that it's breathing out.

When my mind wanders,

I'm aware that my mind is wandering.

And I have a choice to become aware once again of my body breathing in,

My body breathing out.

We're just keeping it simple.

And now I'm going to invite you to keep some awareness of that region of your body where your hand's touching your body,

But to start also expanding your awareness around that area.

As though we were throwing a pebble in a pond and the waves were rippling out.

In the same way,

The waves of your attention are rippling out so that you become aware of your body as a whole.

Just lying here,

Just sitting here.

See if you can feel the body as a whole breathing in and breathing out.

Feeling the weight of the body,

The contact points with the floor.

And at the same time,

The contact points between your hand and your body.

Noticing the whole body breathing in,

The whole body breathing out.

When the mind wanders,

Being aware of that and coming right back to the whole body breathing in,

The whole body breathing out.

See if you can get familiar with this state that you're in,

Kind of this maybe this more spacious awareness that you're in.

Maybe being more familiar with being more embodied,

More familiar with being more present.

So that when you're done meditating,

You can maybe remember what it feels like to be more mindful.