G'day,
My name is Rachel Grace.
Thanks for joining me for this practice.
I invite you to take a moment now to prepare for this practice by finding a posture that supports you to be both alert and relaxed.
Allowing your eyes to gently close or softening your gaze down to the floor in front of you if that feels right for you.
We'll start the practice with the ring of a gong.
Let yourself settle in by taking a few big breaths in and out.
Allowing your breath to return to its natural and gentle rhythm.
Take a moment to notice how you're arriving into this moment,
The state of your body and the state of your heart and mind right now.
Relaxing any obvious areas of tension in your body.
Allowing yourself to settle and relax as you are right here,
Right now.
In this session we will practice using the breath as an anchor to focus and train the attention to be more steady and concentrated.
To begin,
I invite you to explore where you can most easily feel the sensations of the breath in the body.
Is it beneath the nostrils and above the upper lip?
Is it at the belly or is it at the chest?
If it's hard to get a feel for the breath,
You can place one hand on your belly feeling the rise and the fall of the breath in the palm of your hand.
Wherever is easiest for you to feel the breath,
I invite you to exclusively focus your attention there now and pay close attention to the sensations of each in-breath and every out-breath.
There's no need to control or manipulate the breath in any way,
Simply allowing the breath to breathe in its own natural rhythm.
If you notice that your mind wanders away from the breath,
No need to worry that's totally normal.
Just gently and kindly bring your attention back to the breath.
We're not actually thinking about the process of breathing,
How oxygen gets into the blood,
Or we're not caught in stories about why the breath is a certain way today.
All of that stuff is thinking,
It's not sensing.
Sensing involves directly feeling the physical sensations like rising and falling,
Tingliness,
Warmth,
Cool,
Heaviness.
You're not looking for anything special,
Just feeling the physical sensations of breathing from moment to moment.
Noticing this breath,
Let all other experiences,
Sounds,
Sensations,
Thoughts and images rise and fall,
Like waves of the ocean around the breath.
You can just let the breath breathe itself and bring a relaxed,
Receptive attention to it,
Noticing your experience as it is without judging your experience.
Where is the mind now?
If it has drifted away from being fully present,
Feeling the breath,
Gently return your attention and simply start again,
Focusing on feeling the breath in this moment.
You can bring a sense of curiosity to tracking the entire cycle of the breath,
Inhaling,
Noticing what it feels like in that pause between the inhale and the exhale,
And feeling the physical sensations in the exhaling.
See if you can stay with each stage of the breath and notice if each stage feels the same or different.
Don't worry if you feel you're not doing this perfectly.
None of us actually does it perfectly.
Just feeling the flow of the breath,
Returning your attention to your anchor of the breath each time you notice that your mind wanders.
Where is the attention now?
The moment you become aware of being lost in distraction,
This is the significant moment in mindfulness meditation.
It's a moment of awareness which gives us the chance to choose how we respond.
It's not a failure,
It's actually the training.
Noticing when the mind has wandered and gently returning attention to the breath with an attitude of kindness.
Simply starting again,
Feeling this breath as it flows in and out.
All right.
As we approach the end of our practice now,
I invite you to join me in taking a deep breath in,
Filling the lungs,
And then relaxing your body and your mind as you breathe out.
And we'll end the practice with three rings of the gong.
Allowing your eyes to open,
Gently bringing your attention back up into the environment around you.
And take a moment now to appreciate yourself for the dedication to your own well-being that you've just demonstrated.
Each time you practice you are changing your brain for the better and you're building your capacity to handle life more skillfully.
So well done.
May mindfulness positively impact you,
What you do,
And all of those around you.
Thank you for practicing with me.
I hope you will join me again.
