A meditation on the body and the breath.
So just start by allowing your body to settle into a deeper stillness.
As you breathe out you can imagine releasing the weight of the body down to the ground beneath you,
Through your feet,
Your legs and your sitting bones.
Can you feel the stability of the ground beneath your body?
Relax the muscles of your thighs and with each exhale imagine the legs heavy and releasing down.
And as you breathe in feel the energy rising up your spine and sit upright with your spine rising up in its natural curves.
Let the back of your neck be long and imagine a golden thread drawing the crown of your head up towards the sky.
Let the shoulders release down your back as you breathe out and as you breathe in let your chest be broad,
Soft and open.
Can you relax the muscles of your face?
All the tiny muscles around your eyes,
Your forehead,
Even your cheeks softening.
Let the mouth and tongue relax,
Release your jaw and just let your throat soften.
You can even have a sense of the sides of your neck releasing and allowing that release to travel down the shoulders,
Down your arms,
Into your hands.
And take a moment to bring your attention into your hands.
Can you feel the aliveness in the palms of your hands and your fingertips?
The warmth,
The tingling,
All the changing sensations in your hands?
And just bring one of your hands to your lower belly and feel the breath down in your lower belly.
You can imagine that the inhalation just softens the walls of your belly.
Let your lower back soften and open and see if you can keep your attention with your breath down in the belly.
Allow the breath to calm your body,
Calm your mind and when you get distracted and you start thinking about something else,
Just include the breath and include the body.
If there's physical pain in the body,
Just take the breath to those places and imagine that the breath can just comb through any tension.
Breathing in a sense of spaciousness,
Breathing out letting go.
Feel your breath,
Feel the body and just start to broaden your attention out now through the whole of the body as if every pore of your body could breathe.
Let your awareness be expansive and start to broaden your awareness out wider and wider,
Having a sense of the sounds inside the room and outside the room and just listen.
Notice how the sounds come and go,
Arise and pass away,
Just like the breath moving through your body,
Rising and falling.
And now for the last few moments of the practice,
Just let go of all of your efforts and let your mind rest and just sitting and when you're ready start to bring the practice to a close.
