Let's begin by settling into a relaxed seated position on a chair or the ground if you prefer.
Closing the eyes or taking a soft downward gaze,
Feel the uprightness of your spine,
Sitting tall as you comfortably can without straining anything to make that happen.
Allow your face to soften and see if you can release any tightness you might feel in the jaw or around the eyes.
Let the weight of your body settle into your seat,
Finding a sense of being held by whatever you're sitting on.
Now bringing awareness to the breath,
Wherever you feel it most prominently,
At the nostrils maybe or in movements in the abdomen.
Just sitting for a while,
Feeling the breath wherever you feel it.
The mind is likely to pull your attention away from time to time,
Perhaps even a lot.
This is perfectly natural.
Noticing whenever you've wandered away from the awareness of the breath is a good result.
You simply notice it without judgment and return to feeling the breath.
Let's open awareness out into the body a little.
Maybe start by noticing sensations where your body makes contact with whatever you're sitting on.
Simply feeling whatever you feel,
Bringing a sense of curiosity to the inquiry.
Remember it's not an intellectual process,
It's about felt sense.
Now letting your awareness take in the whole body,
Settling on whatever sensations present themselves most obviously,
Wherever they present themselves.
Simply feeling whatever you feel,
Wherever you feel it in your body.
We're going to explore a way of working with difficult thoughts or emotions now,
Via the body.
So bring to mind something that's been troubling you recently.
It doesn't have to be anything major,
Maybe something you're aware of as mildly unpleasant or unresolved,
A misunderstanding,
An argument,
Some anger or regret or guilt,
Or a worry about something that might or might not happen.
If there's nothing current,
Perhaps recalling something along these lines from further in the past.
We're just looking to bring forth some difficult thought or emotion to work with for a short time.
When you have something,
Simply sit with this thought for a little bit.
Simply sit with the thought itself.
Bring some curiosity to it.
Where exactly is that thought?
Not intellectualizing with another thought like,
It's in my brain.
As you experience the thought directly,
Where exactly is it?
What is it?
Does it have color or shape or smell?
Any substance at all?
See if you can get a sense of the thought as a pattern of energy.
Now see if you can notice any sensations in the body that might be related to that thought.
Is the thought expressed physically in any way?
Some tensing or gripping or clenching?
Some jitteriness?
Any tightening around the jaw or in the belly?
Anything,
Anywhere.
Just see if you can notice any sensations that might be seen as an expression of your troubling thought.
And once again,
Simply feeling whatever you feel.
And if you notice you've wandered off down some rabbit hole of the mind,
Simply coming back to feeling whatever you feel.
We're not trying to do anything with these sensations other than feel them with a gentle curiosity.
Are you able to do that or do you find yourself wanting to change your experience?
Neither approach is wrong or right.
You're simply trying to notice your experience,
Whatever it happens to be,
Right now.
If you've found some sensation like this,
Try breathing into it,
As if you could inhale into the part of the body where you feel something and also exhale from there.
Just breathing into the sensation.
Notice if anything changes as you do this.
Maybe after a while the difficult thoughts and the sensations associated with it might ebb away.
If this happens,
Return to simple mindfulness of the breath for a short while.
If not,
Carry on working with the sensations in the body,
Just noticing them for a little while longer.
It can be useful and interesting to practice like this from time to time,
Especially when you find you're in the grip of challenging thoughts.
If you can actually become aware that this is happening and you have the space in your life to pause and have a look,
It can be really useful.
Just looking to see if you can notice that a thought is not a real thing,
Just a pattern of mental energy that shifts and changes.
And especially looking to the body,
Where we can easily start creating tension in response to such thoughts.
Just noticing and breathing into them can release their grip.
And if you can soften the grip in the body,
Often you'll find a similar softening can take place in the mind.
Let's spend a minute now simply watching the breath,
Feeling it wherever you feel it in the body.
When you're ready,
Opening your eyes or lifting your gaze.
Go well,
Move calmly on to whatever you're doing next.
Take care.
