And get comfortable in whatever way is best for you.
There's no need to sit a certain way.
This is about the mind.
Take a few deep breaths and pay attention to the pleasant sensations of the breath.
Deep breaths help to calm the mind.
When we are in a state of anxiety,
The breathing tends to become shallow.
Breathing deeply tells the reptile brain that there are no predators around.
See how many times during an in-breath or an out-breath you can bring your attention fully to the pleasant sensations that it causes.
Enjoy the expansive feeling of filling the lungs and then the relaxing feeling of allowing them to empty.
Now imagine that nothing needs to change.
Nothing about yourself and nothing about your environment,
Including other people.
Imagine that nothing needs to change.
Not the sounds outside your window.
Not the feeling sensations of the body.
Not your thoughts.
Not your emotions.
Imagine that none of it needs to change.
And it's all satisfactory exactly as it is.
This doesn't mean that you won't go and change something after this practice.
That choice remains open to you.
What we're doing here is putting down the burden of needing to change things,
Which is pretty much our constant condition.
I need a glass of water.
I need something to eat.
I need to write that email.
I need to talk to this person.
I need to exercise.
I need to meditate.
These are all efforts to change something.
But the point of this practice is to rest.
To let us be satisfied with things exactly as they are.
It's very likely that thoughts will arise around the subject of changing something.
We can be OK with those too.
We don't need to change our thoughts about changing things.
Imagine that your thoughts are like the weather.
The weather just does what it's doing.
There's no changing it.
And again,
There may be a time for working with your thoughts,
Increasing your influence over them,
Reasoning,
Discernment.
That's all good.
But it's not what we're doing right now.
Right now,
We are allowing everything to be exactly as it is with no need to change it.
If you find that something in your environment calls for your attention,
Observe your attention fluctuating.
And when you remember,
Bring it back to the pleasant sensations of the breath and celebrate.
This is successful mindfulness practice.
In that moment,
When you choose to bring your attention back to the breath,
You are choosing what you think.
This is cause for celebration.
If you don't remember and you find that your attention has been wandering here and there for a minute or 10,
Never mind.
Start again and celebrate.
This too is successful practice.
There is nothing to be done about what the attention was doing for the previous 10 minutes.
We're only ever interested in right now.
Most of us who grew up in the West have been trained and become very skilled in berating ourselves,
Telling ourselves off.
In mindfulness practice,
We're doing something else.
We're setting up a positive reinforcement rather than a negative one.
That each time we remember to bring our attention back to the present moment,
This is success.
This is worthy of celebration.
In doing this,
We train the mind and we gain some of that influence over what we think and thus what we feel.
This is not a tight control.
This is not the discipline.
This is best thought of as a game.
And in this game,
You're always the winner.
