Hello and welcome to Levitate.
I'm Ryan Mel.
In this series of classes from Levitate,
We're going to learn the basics of meditation.
Giving you some tools and techniques to better enjoy your life.
A meditation practice can have a profound effect on your mental and physical health.
It can also change the way you experience the world.
Simply put,
It can help you to calmly meet the inevitable highs and lows of daily life.
Allowing you to feel a greater sense of well-being,
Whatever the weather.
Let's start with finding a comfortable seat.
Sitting in a restful,
Supported upright position.
Closing our eyes.
And taking a few nice deep breaths.
As you breathe,
You can let go of any expectations.
Setting aside the plans and events of the day.
And simply acknowledging how you're feeling right now.
Here in the present moment.
Breathing in calm.
Here in the present moment.
Breathing in calm.
Breathing out stress.
We spend so much of our time anticipating,
Planning for or worrying about the future.
And perhaps even more of our time dwelling on the past.
And when we live like this,
We become really disconnected.
And might easily start to think of the present moment as a vanishingly thin line joining the past to the future.
But there is another way to live.
One in which we take the time to connect to the present.
Noticing the sounds,
The sensations and the spaciousness of life lived in the here and now.
Today we're going to work with the body.
One of the most powerful ways in is to connect with the body.
Letting go of the tension that builds up.
So that we can find greater ease in our own skin.
And it will also enable us to become better readers of the quieter signals.
So that we're not so surprised by that sudden hunger or wave of tiredness.
Because we saw it coming some time ago.
So let's invite your muscles to relax and your mind to unclench.
You might start by just bringing your attention to the crown of your head and giving the muscles up there permission to release and relax and soften.
Just allowing the relaxation to slowly begin to spread to the muscles at the back of your head.
Finding some softness in the muscles of your forehead.
And the skin of your forehead.
Just letting the tension drain out of your temples.
Finding some softness in the muscles around your eyes.
And the eyes themselves.
Letting your cheeks relax.
Your jaw muscles relax.
Really letting any facial expression just fall away.
See if you can bring that same softness into each and every muscle of your neck.
The back of the neck.
The sides of the neck.
Just allowing all those muscles to soften and relax.
Bringing some softness to the shoulder muscles.
And the muscles of your upper arms.
Your elbows.
Your forearms.
Your wrists.
Feeling that relaxation spreading down to your hands and fingers.
Finding a little softness in the muscles between and beneath your shoulder blades.
Finding a little softness in the spine.
And the muscles of your back.
Relaxing the muscles between each rib.
And bringing that softness down to your tummy.
Just letting it all hang out.
Feeling your hips relaxing.
And your pelvis.
And your sit bones.
Finding some softness in the tops of your legs.
And your thigh muscles.
And your kneecaps in the backs of your knees.
And your shins in your calves.
Allowing your ankles to relax and release.
And your heels.
And the soles of your feet.
And the tops of your feet.
And each and every toe.
As if any residual tension was just draining out of the ends of the toes and the soles of your feet into the ground beneath you.
Let's just take a moment to notice how amazing that feels.
How there is perhaps a little less of a hard defined boundary between your body and the world around you.
How perhaps you're able for a moment at a time to experience your body as one in harmony with your environment.
And we'll start to deepen our breath.
With me taking a deep slow breath in.
And letting that go.
And again sending it all the way down into your belly.
And letting go of any tension with a sigh.
As you start to open your eyes.
Thank you so much for your practice.
And I'll see you back here for the next class soon.
