Mindful of Body

This is a Meditate I.

O.

Mindfulness practice called Mindful of Body.

The purpose of this meditation is to mindfully investigate the field of experience we call our bodies.

And we'll start that by first arriving into the posture of meditation.

So for this meditation we'll be sitting down,

Finding your seat,

Sit bones firmly planted on the floor,

On their chair,

Allowing yourself to be balanced and aligned,

Hands on your thighs or in your lap,

Eyes open or closed,

Whichever is most comfortable.

And allowing your attention to start to drop into your body,

Becoming aware of your body,

Sinking attention downward toward the core.

And our first object of mindfulness in the body will be the touch points,

Where we're touching the floor,

The ground,

The pressure points between our body and the earth beneath us.

So first just let your attention sink into those places where your body is touching something,

Your feet touching the floor,

Your bottom touching the chair or cushion,

Maybe your hands touching your legs or each other,

Finding those touch points and becoming aware of them,

Letting your attention sink down into the areas of touching,

Feeling the pressure,

The relative solidity of these touch points.

You can always return to these touch points if you get lost or start to wander.

And from here,

We're going to leave the familiar touch point and expand the field of our attention to include the rest of our body.

So almost like a camera zooming out from a close shot,

Allow your attention to begin to zoom out from the touch points and include the rest of your body and the aperture of your attention.

Zooming out to include the entire body,

All of the sensations that make it up,

The entire field of experience,

Mindful of the entire field,

Feeling the specific areas of sensation,

Of tightness or tension or tingling or itching,

Warmth and coolness,

Pressure,

Pulsing,

Movement,

Vibrating,

Including all the different kinds of sensations that you could experience in this zoomed out,

Attentional focus.

And then notice too from this vantage that there is a process happening that's changing the field moment by moment,

And that process is the process of breathing.

So as you're zoomed out and paying attention to the whole field of the body,

Notice how the sensation of breath,

The experience of breath expanding and contracting,

Coming in and coming out,

Is rippling through the field of the body.

And from here what we're going to do is allow our attention to move between this zoomed out focus,

This mindful investigation of the entire field of our body with the breath rippling through it,

And a more zoomed in focus on any particular body sensation that really calls your attention or grabs your attention.

So as you're zoomed out,

You're noticing the whole body,

Feeling the sensations.

If something grabs your attention,

If it pulls on you,

Allow yourself to zoom in on that particular sensation.

It could be an ache or pain.

It could be a tingle,

Itch.

Whatever it is,

Allow yourself to zoom in for a moment,

To notice it at a more microscopic level,

To observe it,

To pay attention,

To let it be and do whatever it's doing.

And then at some point when it feels natural,

Allow your attention to zoom back out gradually to include the whole field of your body,

Resting in this open attention,

Taking it all in.

And at some point again,

You'll be pulled into and you can zoom in on a particular experience in the body.

Zooming in,

Noticing,

Feeling,

Ah,

It's like this.

At some point the sensation changes or we lose interest.

At that point,

We can just gradually zoom back out,

Oscillating between the zoomed out perspective and the zoomed in perspective,

Allowing our attention and our intuition in a sense to guide the process,

Being mindful of whatever's there,

Regardless of if we're zoomed out or zoomed in.

Thank you.

Thank you.