Welcome to this meditation,
Mindfulness of the body.
In this meditation,
We will practice dropping into the body through tuning the senses.
Within every human body,
There are five senses.
The sense of touch,
Sense of taste,
Sight,
Sound,
And smell.
Often these senses can distract us.
We don't have control over them and they scatter our attention.
But with some training and some mindfulness,
We can use these senses as anchor points to drop deeper into the body.
So let's begin this meditation by firstly taking three deep breaths.
Taking a deep breath in,
Feeling your inhale fill up the lungs,
Expand the lungs,
And then exhaling out fully all the way to the end of the exhale.
Taking another breath in,
And exhaling out all the way to the end of the exhale.
And then taking a third deep breath in,
Filling up the lungs and then converting that inhale into a long exhale.
Remembering that freedom always lies at the end of the exhale.
And now allow your breathing to return to its natural rhythm,
Its natural pace,
And just let the body breathe the body.
Don't try and control the breathing or manipulate the breathing,
But instead trust in your body's ability to breathe.
The body knows how to breathe.
And on your next inhale,
Let your attention on the breathing go into the background and bring to the foreground the attention to touch,
To the body's feeling of touch.
We can investigate the sensory anchor point of touch by feeling the points where our skin is making contact with the surface.
And so if you're sitting on the floor,
You might want to begin this body scan by feeling where the legs are touching the floor,
Or feeling perhaps where the hands are touching the legs.
Without judgement,
Just noticing the temperature and the texture of our skin making contact with the surface.
And as the breathing continues in the background,
Really hone the attention to the micro-detail of the contact between skin and surface.
Perhaps also noticing the pressure of the tailbone and our backside plugged into a cushion either on the floor or on a chair.
Taking a deep breath in,
Exhaling out fully,
And bringing our attention up into the mouth,
Noticing any taste or any texture in the mouth as we anchor in to the sensory awareness of taste.
Is there a flavor in the mouth that you can notice,
Or is the flavor neutral?
Is the mouth salivating,
Or is it resting?
And pay a particular attention to the position of the tongue,
Because when the mind is busy,
The tongue also becomes busy.
But when the mind is quiet,
The tongue rests at the bottom of the mouth very quietly.
As you breathe in,
And as you breathe out,
See if you can quiet down the tongue,
And just pay attention to the tastes in the mouth.
Breathing up into the nose,
Take a deep breath in,
And notice if there's any sense of smell or lack thereof.
And exhale fully on the breath out.
Bringing your attention right to the tip of the nose,
And investigate this olfactory image,
The sense of smell.
And even if there's no sense of smell on the inhale,
Pay attention to what that is like.
Take a deep breath in,
And bring your attention up to your ears,
Receiving the sounds of the environment as if your ears were like microphones.
Not judging,
But just taking in every micro detail of sound,
And absorbing it,
Filtering it,
Into the body.
What sounds can you notice?
And where do the sounds that you're receiving actually meet the ears?
Upon which moment do sounds actually turn into sounds?
Participate this with curiosity and kindness.
On your next inhale,
Bring your attention to your eyeballs,
And notice the vision,
Or the field of vision that exists behind your closed eyes.
Look into the eyelids,
And notice the specks of light and the patches of darkness that exist in that field of vision.
Pay attention to this sight as you breathe in,
And as you breathe out.
And as we end this meditation,
Allow the eyes to open and receive with a fresh mind whatever exists in that field of vision.
Thank you for your practice.
