Welcome to this short practice called the Internal Compass.
So an invitation to settle,
Have a sense of arrival,
Closing your eyes,
Bringing your awareness to your body,
Points of contact that you're making with the earth,
The weight of your body,
Checking in with your posture,
Elongating your spine,
Checking in with the back of your neck that it's neither too long,
Nor too short,
A natural,
Comfortable,
Dignified posture.
Noticing the weight of your body,
How it presses into the earth,
Perhaps noticing the weight of expectations,
The burdens and responsibilities,
And as best you can observing the felt sensation of these within your body as we learn to listen and pay attention to its language,
Its information that often gets so ignored.
Settling into yourself,
How are you?
And an invitation to narrow your awareness to the breath,
Breathing in and breathing out,
Extending that out breath if you can,
Just a little bit longer than the in-breath.
And then allowing the breath to fall into an easy,
Natural rhythm,
Having a sense of the breath breathing itself and then expanding your awareness to include all of the body of you breathing here,
Present,
Nothing to fix,
Nothing to change.
Just for the space of this practice,
We're going to settle in our bodies,
Observing the physical and felt sensations that are here,
As we check in with ourselves and our internal compass.
So I'm going to take a moment for us to explore what our body is asking of us.
Is there anything that you could take care of in the moments that follow this practice or at some point today,
You make a mental note of what your body's asking of you.
Do you need to move,
Rest,
Take a quiet cup of tea,
Stare out of the window?
What is one thing you need to feel composed and centered today?
Placing a hand on your heart and one on your belly,
Making a commitment to your body to honour this need as best you can today.
And a further invitation for today is that each time you receive a request or an urge to help somebody or fix something,
To please people,
I'm going to invite you to take 20 minutes before making a decision.
This invitation to take your time,
Take exquisite care of yourself.
So an invitation to take one deep inhalation,
One long exhalation,
Returning your awareness to the breath.
And as best you can,
Taking this sense of connection and awareness into whatever you have left to do with your day.
Thank you for joining me.
