Welcome to the Art of Meditation,
A school taking you on that journey to discover the science,
The traditions and the practice of meditation.
I'm Nicholas Constantine and it's a pleasure to be guiding this meditation today.
Come to a comfortable meditation posture that can be either cross-legged or in a chair with a little pillow underneath you or maybe sitting on your knees.
And from here close your eyes.
Maybe you find a predominant emotion and generally just check in how you feel right now.
And from here let us go to the top of the head and slowly scan the body for tension.
So we move down the cranium,
Left and right brain and see if there's tension that we can let go.
Move down the eyebrows and if you find tension here let that go.
Enter the eyes,
The nose,
The lips.
Maybe there's tension in your chin or your throat.
Let go of that.
Let go of tension in your shoulders,
Your chest,
Your belly.
And your hamstrings and glutes,
Your quadriceps,
Your upper leg,
Your knee,
Your shins and the balls of your feet.
And now just feel the whole body.
See if there's still some tension left.
And from here just let go.
Let go of your mind.
See what happens if you just let go of everything.
And then bring your attention to your nose and just focus on your breathing.
And as we anchor our attention to our breathing and maybe feel the belly rising with the inhale and just lowering with the exhale.
As we anchor this attention to our breathing,
Feel the body relaxing and calming down.
We feel focused and relaxed at the same time.
Maybe you want to count the breath.
Every inhale and exhale one.
To really anchor your attention to the breathing and just to train your focus and awareness.
And when your mind wanders off,
Just rejoice for having captured this uncaught mind.
Just doing its work like a secretary reminding you of things that you have forgotten or still have to do.
And from here just let go.
Go of everything.
And bring your attention to your heart center.
Middle of the chest a little bit to the right.
Maybe you feel a sense of warmth,
A sense of homecoming.
And here just focus on one thing or many things that you're grateful for.
And here we focus on this muscle of gratitude.
Shifting our perspective to things,
To the many things that we can be grateful for.
And if you found that thing you want to focus,
Just see that sense of gratitude just spreading your whole body.
And then just let go.
Let go of everything.
Your awareness,
Your attention.
Just become an observer of it all.
Innocent,
Non-judgmental.
Just tune into how you feel.
Already after such a short amount of mental training.
And when you now open your eyes,
Just see how the visual experience is just an addition to the spaces of the inner experience.
And then congratulate yourself.
And I hope to see you here tomorrow.
I just wish you a wonderful day.
