An Awareness Practice

Hello,

My name is Matt Albury.

The following meditation is an awareness practice.

So during the meditation I will guide you to take your awareness to different places.

The first awareness will be at our breath and with this we focus on the breath as if we were filling a jug full of water.

So we'd watch the breath fill up from the base of the tummy,

From the bottom of the stomach and follow the air all the way up,

Right up to the top of the lungs and then we'll notice the pause and then the breath going back down.

So we just watch the natural flow of your breath coming and going as if you were filling a jug with water.

Then I will ask you to bring your awareness to your face and noticing the sensations and the softness in the face.

From there we will bring awareness to the body and the stillness in particular of actually physically sitting still and then we'll move our awareness to the bliss awareness or the anada which is our sense of being still and fully aware in our body.

So to start our practice bring yourself to a place where you are comfortable.

So have a bit of a wriggle around to make sure that you're comfortable in your seat and then take your awareness to the sensation of your feet on the floor,

Chair or the cushion that's supporting your body and then take your awareness then out to the sounds around you.

So here in the sounds where you are and maybe the sounds you can hear outside of the room where you are and then until you hear the bell take a few lovely deep breaths in through your nose and sign out through your mouth.

Just lovely deep breaths to get the parasympathetic system into that place of that relaxed response.

So the first stage of our awareness practice is to bring your awareness now to the actual breath coming into your body but here we're using the yogic jug style breath breathing.

So we bring the awareness to the breath at the bottom of the belly right in your bowels.

So watching that breath rolling in all the way up,

All the way up the top of the lungs and then noticing the little pause that happens in your breath cycle,

The natural little pause and then watch the breath just rolling back out through your body.

And again when you do this you'll notice a small pause again at the at the base as you've exhaled all your air out and then let the air naturally come back in with the inhale.

And let this be your first place of awareness.

So we're watching the breath coming in and going out of the body,

Noticing the rhythm,

Noticing all the lovely soft movements of the body as the breath comes in and goes out.

And if we get distracted at all as we do this practice,

Similar to mindfulness we just come back to what we're doing.

So we just come back to watching the breath rolling into the body and leaving the body.

Just coming back with ease,

Not getting frustrated if we get distracted.

Just accepting distraction is part of our practice.

And then when you're ready start to bring your awareness away from the breath,

Bringing awareness to your face.

And as we bring awareness to our face we notice the muscles in the face,

Muscles around the eyes,

The forehead,

The jaw.

And we aim to bring softness to these muscles.

So we're allowing gravity to have its way.

So as you breathe in and out just let the muscles in your face soften.

Just noticing the sensations of your face just gently softening the muscles at the side of the jaw,

Softening,

Possibly even just allowing your mouth to open slightly so the jaw is relaxed.

So let this be your next place of awareness.

Just allowing your face just to soften every time you breathe in and every time that you breathe out.

And then the next stage bring your awareness to the sensation of being sat still.

So here we notice what it feels like to be sat in the chair or the cushion or lying down.

Just bringing that awareness to the stillness.

You might notice the stillness and the softness in the hands as they rest in your lap or in your thighs.

And as you do this you might find it useful to do a body scan of your body just noticing your legs,

The stillness in the legs,

The stillness in the torso,

The arms.

And as we bring this awareness to that sense of stillness we bring that mountain-like quality to our practice.

So we are sat still like an immovable mountain.

Our head being the peak of the mountain and our legs and our backside being the base of the mountain.

And our awareness just settles on a sense of stillness.

Just a physical stillness in the body.

And for a while just watch this place of stillness.

And then we allow our awareness just to widen out to the whole expression of being still.

Just noticing the sounds around you,

Just in the physical sensation of being sat in your body,

The lovely rhythm of your breath as you inhale and exhale.

And then in your own time when you are ready allow your awareness just to drop down to your heart center,

The base of your heart,

Your physical heart.

And just allow your focus to sit here.

Just allowing everything else to be as it is.

Just dropping our awareness down to our heart center,

To this place of stillness,

This place of anada,

This sense of bliss that comes from being sat still,

Dropping down to your core essence at your heart center.

And just allow yourself just to be absorbed in this place,

Just dropping every time as your breath comes and go dropping more and more into that stillness.

If you're a visual person it might be useful to picture as if you were dropping from the top of a body of water with all the ripples and everything is going on,

You're dropping down deeper and deeper into the still waters.

So just pitching yourself just dropping down and down and down into this stillness.

And just like accepting everything else on the top of the water is just doing its thing,

It hasn't gone away.

Our mind is doing its own thing,

Hasn't gone away,

But we just keep dropping and dropping and dropping into this stillness,

This sense of bliss as we focus on our heart center.

Just allow yourself just to be absorbed in this place.

Thank you.

And then when you're ready just return your awareness now back to the breath.

So we're taking our awareness back to where we started with this jug breath.

So we're watching the breath coming up from the belly all the way up to the top of the lungs,

Noticing the pause that naturally occurs and then just watch the breath drop all the way back down again to the bottom of the belly.

And as you do this allow yourself to be absorbed in the movement of your body,

Noticing the ribs move,

The ribs on the side and the chest on the back.

Notice the movement in your belly as the breath rolls in and rolls out.

So we're allowing this breath to roll in and out again with that sense of softness,

Not trying to hold anything in,

Just letting the body soften as the breath calms and goes.

Just continue with that now,

Just being observing and absorbed in the breath until you hear the bell.

And when you hear the bell I'll start to guide you back through a grounding technique and then that will be the end of our practice for today.

So gently open your eyes and as you do look down at your hands in your lap or the hands in your thighs and just taking awareness of the sensations in your hands at this moment.

And then without moving your head allow your awareness to just open out to all that is around you,

Everything that you can see in your field of view.

And then take your hands and just allow your hands just as if you were washing your hands.

Just feel the physical sensation of your hands on each other,

Just as like as if you were rubbing soap or a cream into your hand.

And then take your awareness to the sensation at the bottom of the feet on the floor,

Which is that firmness of that floor underneath your feet.

And then take a lovely deep breath in through your nose and just sigh out through your mouth.

And we do that again,

A lovely deep breath in and then just sigh out.

And then when you're ready just gently move nice and slowly,

Maybe move your shoulders,

Move your legs and then gently go into your day.