So,
Just taking a few moments to get really comfy and cosy.
And just inviting the whole of you into this wonderfully relaxing posture,
Shavasana.
These first moments inviting yourself in,
Inviting the weight of your body into the mat.
And just for these few moments,
If it feels like a good thing,
You can very easily and safely pop all of that to-do list,
All of the stress involved in what it is to be you,
To one side,
And welcome yourself just as you are into this very moment.
Noticing how the body feels,
Noticing those parts in contact with the mat,
The cushions,
And inviting a real weightiness in.
We're just going to invite the breath to soothe the body in a very simple,
Powerful way.
So with every exhale,
You're just breathing down the whole body,
Imagining the breath is flowing from the nostrils all the way down the body,
Along the spine,
Down the legs,
And out through the toes.
And just noticing how delicious that feels.
All the way down the body,
Out through the toes.
And I'd like to invite you to bring to mind something from nature,
Something you've seen or experienced or felt recently.
You may be going out for walks or just had just a moment this morning or yesterday or something that caught your eye,
Caught your attention,
Invited you to wake up for that moment.
When I mean wake up,
It's that sense of being truly present or connected,
Immersed.
The sight of the sunshine on the edge of that brown leaf,
The dew drops on the silken threads of the spiderwebs on the railings.
Something.
And we're going to invite that around the body,
Very simply,
Very powerfully,
To truly nourish,
To truly nourish ourselves.
So the very special qualities of that moment,
A quality of a rare,
A rarity or preciousness,
Just inviting a sense of rare preciousness to flow around the whole body.
So we're going to start with the head,
The crown of the head,
The eyebrows center,
The tips of the eyelashes,
The upper lip and the lower lip,
The soft space,
The base of the throat in between the collarbones,
The tops of each of the shoulders,
Inside the elbow,
The little crook at the elbow,
The soft space at the wrists,
Palms of the hands,
Tips of the fingers and the thumbs.
Coming to the wrists,
Little crooks at the elbows,
The tips of your shoulders,
That soft space in between the collarbones,
Down the chest,
The tip of the left breast and the right breast to the center of the chest and the heart,
And the solar plexus point,
And the edges of the ribs and the navel,
Chi high,
The hip bones left and right,
The pelvis,
Center of the pelvis,
The center of the pelvic floor,
The left hip and the right hip and down the legs,
The tops of the thighs,
The knees and the back of the knees,
The calf muscles,
The ankles,
The heels,
The insteps,
The ball of each foot,
The top of the foot,
And all of the toes,
Tips of the toes,
That lightness,
What was that?
That experience,
That rare preciousness,
What's that like?
When we invite that around the whole of us.
We can often find beauty outside ourselves and yet there's often a little missing link there.
We don't often find the beauty within ourselves.
So for these last few moments of a very simple late summer practice here together,
Inviting in that preciousness into the whole of you.
Just as you are is enough.
Just as you are is enough.
And so starting to breathe into all of the areas of the body anointed with this wonderful delicacy.
It's like,
Oh,
What a beautiful and very precious person.
We each are.
You can start to bring the awareness into your movement,
Moving fingers and toes,
Toes and fingers,
Maybe moving the face a little bit,
Fluttering your eyelashes,
Running the tongue around the teeth,
Maybe even turning the head from side to side,
Gentle rock from side to side.
And if you're lying on your back,
It can be quite nice to stretch the whole body out and then hug your knees.
And if you're lying on your front,
Stretching back into Charles pose and just breathing into the spine.
Making your way onto your side.
Just giving yourself a hug,
Lying on your side.
You can continue to lie on your side or can come up.
We're going to finish with three arms.
I'm just going to revisit those couple of sentences from wild geese by Mary Oliver.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair yours and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes over the moorland and the deep trees,
The mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again.
Whoever you are,
No matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination calls to you like the wild geese harsh and exciting.
Over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
