The following practice is led by Sonia Lockyer,
Host of the Wellbeing Ritual Club.
Let's take a moment.
Take a little moment to settle and get yourself comfortable.
Whatever seated position you're going to choose today.
Take a little bit of time to sit.
Find a way to have your spine straight.
So you may choose to keep your eyes open.
In which case,
Let your eyes soften.
Looking towards the periphery out to the sides.
So that your gaze can melt.
Or you may choose to drop your eyelids.
Even with the eyelids dropped,
The whole thing happens.
Looking out to the periphery.
Resting your tongue up in the roof of your mouth.
Letting your jaw soften.
Allowing that softness to spread around the ears,
Around the back of the head.
The occiput ridge.
Giving your sense of hearing an opportunity to help you arrive.
Just noticing the sounds in your space.
The sounds that are further away.
And the sound of your in-breath and your out-breath.
As you breathe through your nose.
Noticing the parts of your body that are in contact with the floor.
Or the chair.
Whatever the surface is that you're sitting on.
And noticing this sense of weight.
Of heaviness.
And the way that you are held and supported.
As you exhale,
Feeling how the body is almost drawn to,
Magnetically drawn to the earth.
Beneath.
Maybe the foundations of a building.
Let's saw it all beneath.
Beneath that rock.
And right within the center of the earth,
It's close.
Noticing the column of the spine as it moves up through the neck to the occiput ridge at the base of the skull.
Where there is a sense of openness and spaciousness.
We're going to practice tumbling together.
The art of giving and receiving.
Giving and receiving takes place on the breath.
Inhale and opportunity to receive.
Exhale and opportunity to give away.
The theme for practice today is flow.
Work with the polarities around flow.
The way that flow feels in your life.
That's what you're going to be giving away.
The absence of flow.
How that feels.
That's what we're going to be receiving.
The absence of flow to me might feel like something forceful.
Stocked or determined.
But you'll have your own understanding of what the opposite of flow is or the absence of flow.
How that feels to you.
Maybe begin by playing with some textures.
As you breathe in,
Notice how it feels to breathe in a sense of hardness.
A steely hardness.
And as you breathe out,
Offer up a soft touch of maybe lamb's wool or the fur of a pet.
Something that feels soft to you.
That's what you're breathing out.
Giving us the opportunity to explore these polarities.
How we can contact them.
Playing and giving away with the breath.
And then we can play with breathing in.
A sense of inky darkness like a night sky.
And breathing out,
Offering up the fresh light of the morning.
The sunrise.
Breathing in the darkness.
Breathing out the light.
That's starting to build our capacity to choose what it is that we breathe in and what it is we offer as we breathe out.
So let's come to the practice breathing in.
A sense of forcefulness.
And offering up on the out breath a sense of flow.
Nothing needs to be forced.
Times when tumbling feels impossible and times when tumbling comes effortlessly.
Just let be what is.
Keep curious as you play with it.
Breathing in a sense of forcing.
And breathing out a sense of flow.
Breathing out a sense of flow.
And then we take the tongue and practice to someone we care for deeply.
Someone whom we love so very much we wish the whole world for them.
They too have experiences of the difference between forcing things in life and feeling the flow of life.
So as you inhale willingly breathe in their sense of forcing.
Their dogged determination.
Where they push against the grain.
Breathe it in and draw it right the way down into the centre of your navel.
And then as you exhale offer up to them the memory of a sense of flow.
The feeling of flow.
The ease of flow.
So that that can be breathed in by them and taken to their very core.
This might look like a ribbon of breath.
Breathing in a force.
The offering of the out breath flow.
Breathing out a sense of flow.
Remembering there's no getting this wrong we're just curious.
Just exploring.
And then let's bring the practice to someone neutral.
So this person could be someone that you see quite regularly just in your day to day business they might work in a shop or have the same commute or for some reason your paths cross and you might smile at one another but you don't necessarily know each other's names.
Completely neutral territory.
And they too experience pushing through being forceful and experience being in flow.
Their story may be different but the palette of their experience is the same.
So as you breathe in willingly draw in from them the sense of forcing.
Draw it right down into your navel and as you exhale offer up the gift of flow.
That they may receive that.
Imagine something combined.
Boys.
The fun bit.
Picturing someone who really really gets under your skin.
The person you find challenging.
And let's explore.
As you inhale,
Of course this person like you knows how it feels to force.
As you inhale,
Are you able,
Are you willing to inhale their sense of forcing?
And as you exhale,
Are you willing to give to them a sense of flow?
With your breath,
Receiving and giving.
Staying kind with yourself as you practice.
It's not always easy.
We are after all human and fallible so just smile if today feels like it's an impossible task.
Maybe you can go there.
Maybe you can touch the part of yourself that is bigger than the story.
The part of you that is the same as the part of them.
And let's expand the practice out to all living beings.
Every living being on earth is familiar with the spectrum between forcing and life,
Pushing through how that feels.
And how it feels to be in flow.
And there's countless other situations and circumstances and the stories may not be the same.
But the feeling state is the same.
The experience of the feeling is the same.
So let's throw the practice open,
Inhaling the entire population's experience of pushing through,
Of forcing.
And offering up the entire population's capacity to be in flow as you exhale.
Sending it all the way around the world to all living beings.
And let's open up the practice out to all living beings.
And let's open up the practice out to all living beings.
And then releasing the practice.
Maybe placing your hands on your heart.
Noticing how it feels in your body.
A little bit of soothing breath.
An open heart.
And just ever offering up the fruits of our practice to all beings so that our personal practice becomes collective.
Namaste.
