Welcome to your relaxation into presence meditation.
We'll start by finding a comfortable seat.
You can sit up on a chair so that your low back is supported.
Or you can sit cross-legged on the floor with pillows stacked under your hips.
Take these first few moments here to get comfortable in your physical body.
Maybe roll the shoulders a little bit.
Maybe the neck.
Eventually landing yourself in stillness.
Knowing that throughout the practice you might have to move and shift around a little bit.
Know that that's okay.
You want to be comfortable.
Find your seat.
Sit up tall.
And lean your body weight slightly back so that you feel your hips drop heavy into the support.
Relax your belly.
Let it be soft like a baby.
And then bring your awareness to rest down at your feet.
Notice what you feel there.
Any sensations?
It might even be a lack of sensation.
See how much you can let your feet relax.
Draw your awareness up into your hips and feel them heavy.
With the belly soft,
Draw your awareness up your spine to notice your shoulders.
Feel that they can hang in space without effort.
They don't need to look a certain way.
Just a gentle awareness without judgment will allow these areas of space to soften.
Draw up your neck to bring a very slight tuck of your chin.
Feel the back of the neck long.
Become aware of your cheeks.
Let them relax.
Let your eyeballs feel heavy in their sockets.
The weave of your eyelids soft.
Let the skin between your eyebrows soften too.
Become aware of your jaw.
Make sure it's unhinged.
And then feel your tongue resting in your mouth.
See if you can become aware of it down into the base of your throat.
Find it soft down there.
Keep traveling awareness down the inner body to feel the belly and the path of your breath in and out of your nose.
Notice the place that you feel your breath the most.
Let your awareness rest gently on this point.
It might be your belly or the rise and fall of your chest.
It might be the air passing through the back of your throat.
It might even be your nostrils and the sensations of the exchange of air there.
Notice the place that you feel your breath the most.
You might even feel the whole body breathing as one.
The collective rise and effortless fall of every inhale and exhale in every cell of your body.
Notice the place that you feel your breath the most.
You might find throughout this practice that your mind starts to wander.
And you start to notice thought.
Know that the goal of meditation is not to stop the thoughts.
It's impossible to do that.
The practice of meditation simply shows us when we attach to the stories that our mind tells us.
We are not those thoughts.
And those thoughts aren't the only aspect of this experience right now.
So instead of trying to stop the thoughts when they arise,
Can you instead choose to shift your awareness somewhere else?
When I notice myself starting to ruminate on the stories,
I let my awareness shift back to the sensations of relaxation in my body.
You can recheck in with a soft belly,
Relaxed shoulders,
Soft eyes,
Relaxed jaw and cheeks and tongue,
And the effortless rhythm of your breath.
You might even choose to relax into the experience of sound.
Hearing the sounds of the world around you without judging or assessing.
All the sounds,
Simply listening to those sounds All the sounds show up and effortlessly pass by.
Notice the space between each sound too.
And how there's a quality of stillness in that space.
Notice the space between each sound too.
I would love to leave you with the next two minutes in complete silence so that you can relax deeply into your present moment.
And your awareness might shift around during this time.
That is normal.
There are so many different aspects and so much depth in every moment.
So let yourself experience the sounds,
Your breath,
Your physical body,
Your energy of being.
And when you find yourself getting distracted or thinking a little bit too much and attaching to that,
Just be kind to yourself and lovingly rest back into your soft belly,
Eyes,
Relaxed shoulders,
And soft tongue.
Relax back into the rhythm of breath.
Your two minutes of silence starts now.
Okay.
Allow your awareness to shift back.
Into your breath.
Back into your body.
Notice how you feel here.
Relaxed in the presence of right now.
To come out of your meditation.
Let your chin bow towards your chest.
And take a moment of gratitude for giving yourself the space to simply be.
And then when you're ready,
Softly blink open your eyes,
The gaze will still be down.
Notice your legs.
Raise your head up,
Your gaze up,
When you're ready to move relaxed into the rest of your day and night.
