Welcome to a daily meditation practice,
An opportunity to drop in,
Clear out any clutter,
And to be,
To just be.
Let's start by finding a comfortable position for your body.
Ideally some place that you can remain physically rested but also mentally alert.
Often people will take a comfortable seat,
Perhaps leaning up against something or feeling supported beneath your seat.
You might also choose to lay down but try your best to not drift off into sleep for this meditation.
Once you've found your comfortable position,
Just check in that there's nothing to distract you.
No fabric bunched up,
No kinks in the structure of your body,
And then begin to tune into your breath.
Feel that sensation of filling up,
Expanding the lungs,
The ribs,
The torso,
And the sense of deflating the body as you breathe out,
Emptying.
We'll take a few conscious rounds of breath together.
Come to the very bottom of your next exhale,
Empty out.
When you're prepared to breathe in,
Start from the lowest part of your belly.
Start to fill that belly up until it starts to become a big full belly,
Big Buddha belly in front of you.
Let that air rise up into the lungs and the chest,
The ribs across your chest,
All the way up into your collarbones,
Maybe into your throat.
You're full of the air.
Then slow with patience,
Let the air start to sleep out of the body,
Emptying.
Deflating,
Letting go.
Once again,
When you're ready to breathe in,
Start at the lowest point of your torso.
Fill up from the very bottom,
Filling all the way to the top of your head.
When you're ready to empty the breath,
Be patient.
Take your time letting the breath empty from the body,
Slowly feeling your roots dive a little deeper into the ground.
One last time together,
Starting to fill the breath,
Like a flower rising up into the air,
Opening and unfurling,
Lifting the body with breath.
Then slowly starting to empty the breath.
Feel your body deepen and settle.
Then find your own rhythm of breath,
Your own cadence,
Your own natural pace of the breath coming in,
The breath emptying out.
Something that is both meditative as well as slightly energizing.
Recognize each breath coming in.
Recognize the breath emptying out.
Feel that sense of nourishment of the air coming in,
Those nutrients and vitamins just floating around you,
Pulling them into the body.
The sensation of the body releasing what it no longer needs on the exhale.
Dusting off any bits of unwanted energy.
Blending out any negative sludge of the body.
Using that practice with every breath,
That nurturing breath in,
The body emptying and recycling what it doesn't need as it releases it out.
Keep following your breath.
Doing your best to not let the muscles in your face harden.
The eyebrows be soft.
The muscles around your nose,
Let them relax.
Notice if your shoulders have tightened up in towards your ears and invite them to relax down,
To get heavy,
To broaden your chest and invite even more air into the body.
Not trying to force it or push it towards anything,
Just naturally letting that air find more space,
More nooks and crannies to creep into and scoop out whatever doesn't need to be there.
Letting that release on the exhale.
Soften your jaw.
Open your eyes.
Relax the muscles around your hips and your seat.
Feel yourself melt into that stamp of your body on the earth.
You're anchored by gravity.
Let your physical vessel remain here,
Rooted down to the ground so that anything that isn't tangible,
The parts of your body that aren't physical,
Can free up space and explore and expand.
Notice where the body feels warm,
The places in your body that are holding energy.
If you feel any energetic shift,
You can always move in a way that can support that energy to travel deeper into the body.
If perhaps you feel the palms of your hands starting to tingle or find warmth,
You can move your hands to other parts of the body that might need that energy.
The heart,
The chest,
The belly.
Perhaps there's joints in your body that are aching.
Perhaps your mind is busy.
Place your hands on those physical places.
Give yourself your own healing,
Your own ability to recognize the pieces of you that need your attention.
Keep coming back to finding the awareness of what part of your physical body is tightening and tensing.
Keep coming back to release that tension.
Relax your shoulders.
Soften your eyebrows.
IFA If you've created a new shape in the body,
Feel free to relax back into a comfortable position.
Let your awareness drop back onto your breath.
For a few moments,
Grow your breath.
Letting the breath come all the way in,
Expanding and filling up.
Then emptying the body,
Washing the breath out as you breathe out.
One last time,
Full breath in,
Let it go.
You might choose to remain wherever it is that you've landed.
Perhaps you'll choose to explore and expand even further in your meditation.
If you would like to close your meditation at any point,
Take the time to come out of it gradually,
First into the body.
Use your senses to come back into play.
Sense of touch,
Guiding sensations of texture,
Sense of smell with your breath.
Listen for the sounds around you,
Ones inside the room and outside the room.
Release the inside of your mouth,
Your teeth,
Your tongue,
Your cheeks.
And lastly,
Very gently,
The eyes start to flutter until they start to take in light and open and re-arrive.
Take all this information with you back out into the world.
