Hello my name is Matt Albury.
The following meditation is a meditation to be used at the end of the working day to act like a natural break between the work you've done during the day and when you prepare for your evening.
There's hope that it will be useful at a time during the pandemic when we're working from home where we don't have a geographical commute from our workplaces to our home anymore.
So the idea of this meditation is to give you a chance to stop,
Reflect on your day as it was and to set intentions for your evening.
Before you start the meditation you might find it useful to scribble down on any bits of paper things that you need to remember for tomorrow.
Sort of a to-do list and once you've done this restart the meditation and we'll start to do a reflective journey of the day.
To begin with then start by getting yourself comfortable.
Allow yourself to sit comfortably in a chair or on a cushion and as you do this just take notice of everything around you.
Notice the firm floor underneath your feet,
The sensation of the chair or the cushion that's supporting your body and also take time to just notice all the sounds that you can hear around you where you are.
Sounds that are familiar to you inside of the room where you are and also sounds that you can hear outside of the room where you are.
And as you do this start to just take in some lovely breaths in through your nose and sigh out through the mouth.
Just there's no rush here but really just allow yourself to take some lovely deep breaths in.
Audibly release a sigh out from your mouth as you breathe out.
This has a powerful way of triggering your parasympathetic system into play to help you relax.
So as we start to reflect on the days it was think about something in your working day that went well.
Something that you were pleased about.
It doesn't matter how small this thing is but just take a moment just to reflect on the things that went well.
Taking time to notice what it was about those things that made you feel positive.
Maybe they brought a sense of satisfaction.
Just allow yourself to notice those feelings.
And then gently as you breathe in bring those situations into your heart centre.
So as you breathe in picture these things coming in and settling in the middle of your heart and allowing the divine love within you to take these moments from your day.
And then reflect on the day as it was and anything that was frustrating,
Anything that didn't go well or even something that might have caused upset or distress.
And as you remember these moments as you let them live again in your mind allow yourself just to be kind to yourself as you do this.
So we're reflecting on what has happened without actually bringing judgement against ourselves.
And then take these moments and like we did with the positive moments bring them in with your breath and picture them going into your heart centre again being met by divine love that dwells within you.
Just allowing these moments just to dissolve away in this divine love.
And then start to take some time now to think of tomorrow.
What are the things that you would like to do tomorrow?
Is there things you need to do?
Projects that haven't been finished?
Conversations that you need to have?
But also using this time to think of how the day has been today and allowing it to inform our tomorrow.
So allowing our experiences of this day to shape how we would like to be tomorrow.
So as we do this we take time to set intentions for ourselves of how we'd like to be.
Maybe being more patient with ourselves,
Being patient with others,
That sort of thing.
But just take this time now just to think through how you would like to be tomorrow and allow yourself to set those intentions.
And then gently pick up those thoughts and those intentions and bring them in with your breath into your heart centre.
Allowing the divine love in you to take these intentions,
Trusting that they will come up for tomorrow.
And then finally before we move into our intention setting for the evening,
Notice your feet on the floor again.
Noticing that firm floor.
Bring your awareness to all the sounds that are around you and the sensation of the chair or the cushion.
And just bring that intentional awareness to this moment,
That mindfulness,
How it feels to be in your body in the space that you're in.
And then we start to think of the coming evening.
And just take this time to think of anything that you would like to do.
How your evening would ideally go.
Just take a moment just to think of this transition now from your workplace to your time of rest,
Time of nourishing yourself.
Just take this moment just to think of how you would like your evening to be and set your intentions for your evening.
And then again we breathe these intentions into our heart centre,
Having thought through our evening.
And then just return your awareness back to your breath.
So for the final moments of our meditation,
We will really bring ourselves into the here and now.
Having reflected on the day,
We let the day go and we look forward to our evening.
And as we do this now just take some lovely breaths in and out through your nose.
Noticing the breath coming into your body.
Watching the breath rolling back out.
Feeling the sensation of the chair or the cushion supporting your body.
Just feeling that breath moving.
Your chest rising,
Your heart lifting,
Your ribs moving.
Sensations of the nostrils.
And then when you hear the bell that will be the end of the meditation and I will guide you through the grounding technique before we open our eyes.
So allow your ears to hear all the sounds around you.
What can you hear where you are?
Bring your awareness down to the chair or the cushion against your body and the firm floor underneath your feet.
And then just start to move your shoulders or have a good stretch and take a lovely big breath in through your nose and sigh out through the mouth.
And just gently open your eyes and start to take in all the things around you.
Noticing the things in the room,
Noticing the softness in your hands and your lap.
And then gently just move into your evening.
I hope that you have a really good evening and thank you for practicing with me.
