Hello,
My name is Haley.
Thank you so much for joining me for this 10-minute meditation practice today.
Today's practice,
We are going to work on cultivating awareness by becoming aware of our own thoughts and when we get lost in thinking.
So I'll invite you now to find a comfortable place in which to practice today.
Finding a comfortable seat,
You may wish to sit in a chair or on the floor,
Maybe grabbing a cushion to place underneath of the body here or maybe you wish to sit with your back supported against a wall or even sitting on a couch.
Choosing whatever position is going to be comfortable for you here today.
There's no need to force ourselves into any type of fancy formal meditation position.
We're just finding a comfortable seated position.
And then when you're ready,
When you're settled,
We'll open our practice by taking three deep cleansing breaths.
So inhaling deeply through the nose and exhaling out of the mouth,
Maybe letting out a sigh.
And two more deep breaths like this,
Inhaling through the nose,
Exhaling out of the mouth,
Letting out a sigh.
One more time.
And then when you're ready,
Just allow that breath to return back to a natural pace,
A natural rhythm in and out of the nose.
I'll invite you to either close the eyes here or just gaze softly down the line of your nose.
And even though this practice today is focused on becoming aware of our thoughts,
Just take a moment now to become aware of the breath as we are going to use our breath as an anchor for our awareness in this practice.
There's no need to change your breath in any way here.
Just simply noticing how your body moves with each inhale and each exhale.
And taking a moment to find that place in the body that you can most prominently feel that breath moving in and out.
It might be in the rising and falling of your chest.
It might be in the expansion and contraction of your belly.
Or maybe you can feel the breath softly moving in and out of the nostrils.
Wherever it is that you can most prominently feel the breath in your body,
Bringing your awareness to this place.
And just gently watching the breath as you inhale and exhale here.
So as we come to rest our awareness on the breath,
You may notice as we continue on in this practice that thoughts are arising in the mind.
And this is not a problem.
And this is not something that we are going to try to stop in any way.
Instead for this practice,
We are going to becoming aware of when we are thinking.
So it might be helpful here to begin to label your inhale and your exhale.
So as you breathe internally saying to yourself,
Inhale,
Exhale.
Or you can say to yourself,
Breathing in as you inhale,
Breathing out as you exhale.
If that feels helpful to internally label the inhale and the exhale,
It's just an option.
If it doesn't feel helpful,
Just continuing to watch the breath here.
But as we do this,
When we notice thoughts coming into our experience and pulling our awareness or our attention away from the breath,
We're going to label that thought.
So we can internally say to ourself,
Thinking,
When we notice that we have been carried away by a thought.
And then gently returning our awareness back to the breath.
And maybe labeling that inhale and exhale.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
And each time a thought comes and our awareness turns towards that thought,
We notice this,
We label this action as thinking.
And then we just gently bring our attention and our awareness back to the breath.
Inhaling,
Exhaling.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
And if lots of thoughts are coming into your experience,
This is not a problem.
Again,
We're not trying to stop the thoughts.
We're just trying to become aware of them so that when they come,
We can label them as thinking.
We can tell ourselves that we're thinking.
And then we can gently bring our attention and our awareness back to the breath.
Noticing if you've become distracted by thoughts.
If so,
That's no problem.
We label the thinking and gently bring our awareness back to the breath.
As we practice becoming aware of when we are thinking or of when we are getting drawn away by the thoughts,
We actually practice identifying ourselves with the awareness of the thought instead of identifying ourselves with the thought itself.
You are not your thoughts.
You are the awareness that becomes aware of each thought.
And this is often described in the image of a vast,
Open sky.
You are this vast,
Open sky.
And the thoughts that come are the clouds that pass through the sky.
Working on identifying ourselves as the sky and not as the thoughts.
Letting go of all effort here.
And gently coming back into this time and this space.
Beginning to move the body in small ways.
And when you're ready,
You can bat the eyes open and closed.
Thank you so much for joining me for this practice today.
And I hope that you were able to get a taste of what it means to identify ourselves with this spacious,
Open sky as opposed to identifying ourselves with the thoughts or the clouds that just pass through the sky.
If this meditation interested you,
I hope to post a longer one soon.
So keep an eye out for that.
Thank you so much for practicing with me and for allowing me to guide your practice.
It's always an honor and such a privilege to be able to do so.
I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti.
