Welcome to this meditation for beginning your day.
My name is Lucy.
I'll be guiding you through a few minutes of settling as a way of creating a moment of intention and perhaps setting up a space to inspire clarity and focus as a move into a new day.
So you might begin by finding a place to settle down,
Landing in the body,
Whether you are choosing a standing,
Seated or maybe reclined posture.
Is it possible to find a place where your spine feels long and supported,
Even dignified?
Take a few moments to allow any wriggles in the shoulders or the hips,
Sensing the head,
The neck,
Sensing the arms or legs,
Anywhere that might like to move a little before coming towards stillness.
You might begin here to connect with your breath,
With the inhalation following the breath,
Perhaps from the nostrils,
Feeling towards the lungs,
Maybe a sensation of expansion and with the exhalation following the breath all the way out,
Releasing,
Letting go,
Letting go.
Perhaps another couple of breaths like that,
Arriving with this freshness,
Each inhalation,
Being with this breath and allowing each exhalation,
Aware of the sensations in such a simple gesture,
In such a potent gesture of the life breath every moment.
And something that is common in our day-to-day lives is that our attention gets pulled in all sorts of directions.
And so one way we can practice coming back to a sense of presence in the body as things are in this moment is by paying attention to an anchor.
And for you,
This may be the breath,
Feeling the expansion,
The tug,
The sensation of air entering and releasing.
It might be sounds,
Observing the sounds in your immediate environment.
Or you may find it more useful to get a feeling or sense of the density and the connection of the body to the ground and the contact with space around you.
So you might notice here which of those three options might come the most easily for you.
And for today,
Let's lean into that one.
So for the next couple of minutes,
Allow this anchor to be like a friend.
And as we sit or stand or lie down,
Know you're sitting,
Know you're standing,
Know you are lined up.
As we breathe,
Knowing you're breathing in,
Knowing you're breathing out,
Not needing to shape the breath or change the sounds we hear or perfect the sensations in the body.
The practice of being mindful is simply to notice what it is that is happening as it is happening so that we are present here with this moment rather than caught up in a judgement or a plan or revising of something that has passed.
You might imagine this a bit like your anchor being that friend and the friend being in a crowded room like a train station or a party.
And if you get distracted,
You might just look out for that friend,
Whether it's the breath,
The sounds or the sensations of your body.
As you see them or sense them again,
No need to rush towards it,
But just a friendliness.
Oh,
There's my friend.
There's a breath.
There's a sound right here.
There's a feeling of my hands or my feet.
In this way,
We are practicing a sense of kindness or kind attention.
And the magic moment of noticing we are distracted becomes the most potent moment in our practice.
That moment when we can choose to do something different and come back to where we are,
Become mindful again,
Without judgment,
Without further stories,
Just gently letting go.
It's taking another minute or so here.
Aware of breath,
Aware of sound,
Aware of the body as it is.
It's taking another minute or so.
It's taking another minute or so.
It's taking another minute or so.
And very gently,
You may like to begin deepening the breath,
Maybe intuitively moving a little into the body,
Stretching out,
Hugging in,
Maybe a sigh.
And as you slowly move into your day,
See if you can take this gesture of kind attention into the situations that life meets us with,
Especially when it feels challenging,
When it feels new.
Pray that friend of the breath,
The sounds that happen,
Or the space of your body,
And see what happens as we bring this more mindful approach to each moment of our day.
Thank you so much for practicing.
