And welcome back.
And let's continue to explore together these qualities of presence,
Qualities of nature,
And how they arise together.
And so we can close our eyes,
Feel into our inner landscape,
Where we can find these qualities of nature,
As a part of nature,
And feel resourced by them,
Like our own personal,
Inner nature retreat.
And beginning to feel the breath flowing in this inner landscape.
And letting ourselves feel shoulders,
Hands,
And seat settled and supported.
As we also notice this stream of air coming into us and out of us.
And now for the next couple of in-breath.
Let's trace the free flow of air from the nose as it comes down into our body.
The sensations of that free flow of air coming from inside our nose to inside our chest.
And as we breathe in,
We scan downward,
Feeling that free flow of air and its sensations.
And let's feel that for the next three breaths.
The in-breath as this opportunity to trace downward,
This inflow of air inside us.
And then letting that fade.
And beginning to notice our out-breath more.
And starting with the front body on the out-breath,
Scanning down the front body from the chest to the belly.
And as we scan downward on the out-breath,
Noticing there's this subtle cascade.
There's this subtle wave-like motion that naturally happens as the breath leaves our body.
And so following with the downward tracing,
This downward cascade of a wave along our front body.
And just like there's no fixed grain size to a waterway,
Noticing the subtlety of this movement.
Whatever it is that we think of it as,
Oh,
That's the wave,
I've got it.
How there's a finer level of flows within those flows,
Just in our front body as we breathe.
Nothing in our body is physically stuck.
Braced together any more than the free flow of water or the free flow of air.
It's just opening to that fineness of the wave.
So free and yet so mutually interconnected.
And so we'll combine these two,
The in-breath and the out-breath,
As a way not to talk about the fineness and mutualness,
But to feel that the breath coming in and our body are not as different as we may have thought.
So breathing in,
Tracing that free flow of air down inside us.
Out.
Tracing down a cascading wave of our front body.
Breathing in,
Free flow of air.
Breathing out,
The wave of our body.
Let's do that three times.
And now another option for practice.
Continuing to breathe in and trace the free flow of air down into the middle of yourself.
And now if you'd like,
Notice the wave of your 3D,
Torso and belly and back.
So on the out-breath,
There's a downward tracing of the entire surface of your front body,
Back body,
Side body.
Breathing in,
It comes down into the center of you.
Breathing out,
The wave.
You can just play with that if you'd like here.
And an invitation here to relate to this experience in your inner landscape,
Simply as flows of nature.
Flows of nature happening in space.
And then letting go of feeling like there's anything that you particularly need to practice or notice or manage in your experience.
Your experience happens as it is.
And as a flow of nature,
Your experience can't help but happen with these qualities of presence.
These ways of nature.
These ways that nature is together.
Mutual flow.
Free flow.
And that this freedom and connection,
Just like we see in a wave of water,
Are not two separate things.
And as we feel into these qualities,
Setting aside our preconceptions,
We'll actually more fully feel them as arising together and staying with your inner landscape,
Your inner nature retreat.
And keep your eyes closed or gently open them as we discuss a little bit more this practice.
And one of the things that can begin to happen as we relate,
I always find it interesting,
You know,
If I'm like,
Oh,
I'm being mindful of my breath and I already have a bit of a filter on my experience,
I'm going to feel the sensations of my breath as I breathe.
And it's just,
It's kind of endlessly fascinating how we put up these filters once we have something labeled,
Especially once we have something labeled as mine.
And we can think that we're so familiar with our breath and with our body that we know what it is.
Oh yeah,
This is my body.
You know,
And I can see this sometimes in certain practices.
It's like,
Oh,
You know,
This is my body.
I'm just going to feel my physical body.
You know,
What good is that going to be?
That's not really going to get me anywhere.
You know,
Give me the juicy stuff of practice.
Something that's,
You know,
Really seems extraordinary.
And the invitation of this approach and this practice is to,
In a way,
Set aside what we may think of as our breath and our body from our preconceptions and allow ourselves to feel it as it is.
And can use these qualities of presence that,
You know,
Are grounded even in very basic,
Simple physics.
The mutuality of action-reaction.
The fineness of flows with any flows.
You know,
We don't find a fundamental grain size in nature.
So we can use those almost as a way to probe through our preconceptions and experience this,
You know,
Utter richness that's right there in our experience of breathing.
And so what can begin to happen is that,
You know,
The body doesn't feel so much like my body,
My thing that I mechanically move around and get to do this or that.
It actually feels,
Well,
I'm not going to try and put words to it,
But experientially,
This is the opening of noticing that we can,
Through these simple access points,
Access more of the fullness of our nature.
And what it shares in common with all of nature.
And one may begin to feel that if we're feeling very subtly that wave where it's both,
You know,
Every little piece is connected to the next little piece.
That's what makes the wave manifest.
And also that there's that infinite freedom within that wave-like connection.
And that,
You know,
If you've ever seen like a tuning fork,
You're like,
Well,
What about my,
You know,
My chest,
My bones?
They're not,
They're not waving like that.
You just take a tuning fork and notice how even metal waves oscillates as that free flow and that mutual flow arising together as how that tuning fork is together.
And so may begin to feel that in our chest,
In our center body.
The 3D can be fun to just,
Oh yeah,
It's not happening just here.
I can feel it all around.
And also we may find it easier to begin to feel some of this fineness in our body,
In our sensitive fingers.
And that's what we'll be turning to next to,
To feel the,
The fineness of.
Hard to put words to the,
I'm just going to stay with the labels,
The,
The free flow and the mutual flow that is the being of our fingers.
And that actually fills our fingers with that experience of our fingers.
And that's what we'll be turning to next for an experiential way to begin to feel the third quality that we may explore,
Which is the,
The whole quality,
The whole flow of this flow of nature.
So to be continued.
Thank you all.
