Perfect Week, Day 6: The Power of Yes (Meditation)

Make yourself feel comfortable.

If you are sitting in your chair,

Keep your back straight but not rigid,

Allowing unrestricted flow of your breath.

Keep your feet flat on the floor,

Grounding and centering you.

Let the gravity do its job and hold you down.

Keep your hands in your lap,

Resting easily.

Allow your eyes to close.

Now you are ready.

Fully be with yourself.

Give yourself permission to be with yourself.

Fully embrace the way you are with all your emotions and all your feelings.

If you are feeling happy,

Be happy.

If you are feeling sad,

Do not try to push those feelings away.

To settle down just a bit,

Let us begin by taking a couple of deeper mindful breaths as I guide you,

Breathing in through your nose and exhaling through your mouth.

Are you ready?

In,

Hold and out.

In,

Hold and out.

In,

Hold and out.

Now breathe normally and relax.

Now establish a gentle connection with your breathing.

As you breathe in and out,

Notice how your body relaxes just a bit with every exhale.

Your breath is the gateway to your awareness and you may use it in this meditation to center yourself and return to your awareness every time you drift away and disconnect.

Now notice how you can feel your breath differently in different parts of your body.

You may perceive your breath as it enters through your nostrils,

A gentle sensation of coolness in the back of your throat.

Perhaps you can feel expansion and contraction of your chest as you breathe in and out or your belly as it rises and falls.

Choose one of those points as an anchor for your breathing,

As an anchor of your awareness.

This will allow you to connect with your breathing even better.

Give yourself a couple of seconds and tune in into your breathing using the anchor,

Either your nose or your chest or your belly.

Remember,

Once you choose your anchor,

Do not try to change it during the meditation practice,

It will simply distract you.

Now as you breathe in and breathe out,

You may notice that after a couple of breaths,

Your mind wanders.

You might end up in the past or you may find planning a future.

Regardless where your mind wanders,

Allow this.

Simply notice the quality of the feeling,

Notice the emotional state.

It is very easy to judge it at this point as good or bad,

Pleasant or unpleasant.

However,

This time I invite you to say yes to anything and everything that comes your way.

It may be difficult at first,

But then after a while you realize that without resisting all those thoughts,

Emotions,

Feelings,

Even bodily sensations,

They eventually go and being replaced by different ones.

It is not the objective of this practice to stay connected with your breath at all times.

Your breath is a reminder of your intention of being truly yourself right now with all the emotions and feelings.

So once you experience the emotion,

Then as you see it passing,

You may simply return to your breath and rest the awareness in your breathing until next emotion,

Feeling or sensation comes.

And then you say once again,

Yes.

If you find yourself getting engaged with your emotional state,

Then you see that you start building a scenario around the story.

This is a good time to simply return to your breathing.

You may notice that it's very easy to engage your intellect in a discourse about your feeling or emotion.

Your intellect is designed to create those stories.

However,

You always have a choice every time you notice that your intellect start building a story around the thoughts that you just experienced.

Simply acknowledge it and then return to your breath until the next thought appears.

And then observe it,

Acknowledge it,

Embrace it by saying yes.

Remember,

There are no good or bad thoughts.

There are only thoughts that you approach with gentleness and acceptance or with resistance trying to push them away.

Every time you try to push them away,

Simply engage more and you involve more of your mental energy.

Saying yes to your emotions and feelings will allow you to gain freedom in any stressful situation.

First,

You recognize it and then without it,

Without judging,

Trying to analyze it,

You say gentle yes.

As you move along with this practice and more thoughts,

Feelings and emotions appear,

You realize how impermanent they are.

Some of them may linger for just a bit,

But they eventually pass and they being replaced by another.

If you pay close attention,

You may recognize beginning and the end of the emotional flow.

This is a good time to return to your breathing,

Anchoring yourself in the awareness.

Every time you say yes to the next coming emotional thought,

You change your brain structure.

So the next time that similar emotional feeling comes your way,

You will be able to respond with kindness.

The next minute or two,

Practice saying yes to everything that comes your way.

Now,

To conclude this short period of meditation,

Begin bringing yourself back.

First,

Acknowledge all the sensations in your body.

Recognize your feet resting on the floor,

Your hands in your lap,

Your sit bones and your back and your shoulders.

To even better connect with your body,

You may also gently wiggle your toes and then move your fingers.

Tilt your head also slowly and gently to the left,

To the right and take one deep mindful breath,

Breathing in through your nose,

Hold it and exhale through your mouth.

And when you're ready,

Open your eyes and this is the end of this meditation period.