Practice Presence With Sensation

Hello and welcome to your practice.

My name is Nkechi Njaka and I am a mindfulness meditation teacher.

I want to invite you to find a comfortable way to be in space for the next 15 minutes or so.

That's maybe taking your posture or sit in a chair,

Maybe you're sitting on your bed or on a cushion.

Wherever you found yourself in space,

I invite you to find a posture that feels both relaxed but allows you to also be awake.

Thinking of lengthening the spine,

So feeling the root of the spine connected to the sits bones,

Connected to the seat,

Cushion,

And then lengthening,

Following that line of energy all the way to the crown of the head.

And so from this posture,

I invite you to close your eyes if it feels safe to close your eyes in this practice.

If you'd like,

You can keep the eyes open,

Bringing the gaze in towards the chest or towards the earth.

And from here,

We will take three deep breaths together,

So drawing a breath in through the nose and exhaling breath out through the mouth.

And again,

Drawing breath in through the nose,

Exhaling breath out through the mouth.

And one more time together,

Inhaling in and exhaling out.

So finding yourself in space will begin to connect with all of the places where we're making contact with either the earth or ourself,

To maybe feeling the sits bones on your chair or couch cushion,

Maybe feeling the feet planted on the earth,

Maybe the back side of the body is connected to a wall or the back of a chair,

Just noticing.

And allowing yourself to be just a little bit more aware of any other sensations present.

So this could be temperature of the room,

Warmth,

Heat or coolness,

Tingling in the body,

Pressure,

Soft or hard surfaces,

The fabric of your clothing against your skin,

So just noticing sensation.

So in our practice of mindfulness,

We're really most interested in what is present in this moment.

And one way to always come back to what's present in this moment is to notice sensation in the body.

Noticing what you notice and allowing what you notice to be here.

Drawing a breath in,

Bringing awareness to the very top of the body and as you exhale,

Letting the breath touch the corners of the face that are still holding tension.

This could be the forehead,

We hold a lot of tension there in the eyebrows,

Maybe moving to the eyes,

Feeling into the eye sockets,

The eyelids,

Letting it all be soft,

Gentle,

Easy.

And then feeling right underneath the eyes and feeling into the cheekbone,

Breathing into the spaces of the bone of the cheek,

Moving horizontally to the sides of the face where the temples might be,

The very start,

Very top of the jawbone,

Letting the jaw be heavy,

Releasing any tension in the jaw.

And following the bone to the chin,

Moving up and sensing the lips in space,

Letting the lips be soft,

Unpursing the lips,

Unclenching the jaw,

Creating more space.

Noticing what you notice and letting what you notice exist here too.

And so in our mindfulness practice,

It is our choice to focus on the very top of the face,

And then to focus on the very top of the face,

And then to focus on the very top of the face.

And so in our mindfulness practice,

It is our choice to be in the moment,

Particularly when the mind wanders away.

It is that we're sensing.

And we do so holding ourselves in our practice in a lens of loving kindness.

Might we find each moment curious?

Might we find ourselves in each moment with more wonder and with more awe?

With less judgment,

Less critique,

With less judgment,

Less critique,

With less judgment,

More awe,

Noticing what you notice and allowing it to be here.

Feeling what you feel,

Being with the body.

Feeling what you feel,

Being with the body.

Drawing a breath in,

Remembering the breath,

And as you exhale,

Feeling a sense of gravity,

A sense of movement moving towards the earth.

Just letting the muscles,

The bones soften.

Drawing a breath in,

Maybe this time the shoulders slightly rise,

Spine lengthens,

And as you exhale,

Maybe the shoulders drop,

And the spine remains tall,

Keeping that space of the chest open.

We'll spend some time here.

We'll spend some time here.

If you have the awareness of the shoulders rounded forward,

Maybe on the next exhale,

Gently roll the shoulders back.

We tend to round forward in our day-to-day,

Being on our devices,

Computer,

Driving.

And so what does it feel like to just gently roll the shoulders back,

Allowing the space of the heart,

Center of the body,

To just open slightly?

You might notice sensation here,

If you've done that,

If you've opened the chest just a little.

And if you have the access to,

Gently lift the chin,

So that the chin might be parallel to the earth.

You might open the throat just a little bit as well.

Open throat,

Open heart.

Noticing what you notice here.

Feeling what you feel.

And any time the mind wanders away from your true expression here,

What you're feeling,

What you're noticing,

You always have the option to come back.

And so,

If you have the awareness of the shoulders rounded forward,

Feeling what you're noticing,

You always have the option to come back.

That is the practice.

Returning back to yourself.

And noticing your inhale in the center of the body.

Noticing your exhale in the center of the body.

And feeling into this rise and fall,

This ebb and flow that is your breath.

Feeling more deeply into the sensation of breath moving through you.

And maybe you feel this at the top in the chest.

Maybe you feel this in the chest.

Maybe you feel this at the top in the chest.

Maybe you feel this in the diaphragm.

Maybe you feel breath in the ribs,

The belly.

Just noticing what you notice.

And letting it exist here.

And might you extend the breath to every corner of the body,

Creating so much spaciousness,

And then seeing what remains as you exhale.

So,

Seeing if you can maintain that sense of spaciousness that you can sense or feel or create with the breath.

And noticing and allowing what you notice to be here.

And remembering to hold yourself and your practice with the lens of loving kindness,

Wonder,

Awe.

And so we'll close with just a slight reflection of what this practice can offer us.

In the practice of mindfulness,

We each have the opportunity to create more spaciousness moment to moment.

And this practice creates more space to be with what is and the windows that reveal to us our very nature,

All that is wonderful and all that is complex.

So close the practice the same way we started by taking three breaths together,

Drawing a breath in and exhaling breath out.

And again,

Drawing breath in,

Exhaling breath out.

And a third time inhaling in and exhaling breath out.