Any questions?
Let's just take a minute or two here at the beginning to slow down and start letting go of environmental sights and sounds.
And start noticing how it feels to be in your body,
On your cushion,
Stretching up your breath,
Breathing slowly.
And see if you can tune in to something pleasant about both the inhale and the exhale.
When you inhale,
You might be able to feel a gentle stretching all throughout your lungs,
Like a good morning's stretch.
And when you exhale,
You might feel muscles relaxing all throughout your body,
Associated with breathing,
But also in your face and shoulders.
And now you may already know which method of evoking feel-good works best for you.
You may be a person who can flip the switch and just tune into it,
Or maybe you have a reliable mental image,
Like your little dog,
That makes you smile.
Or you can always just smile and allow a physical smile to trip all the wires that release positive emotion in the body.
But for a few minutes,
We'll really focus on nurturing feel-good.
You can evoke positive emotion any way you like,
But as soon as you feel that little ember or warmth or expansiveness that signals pleasant emotion to you,
Then turn towards that with your attention,
Letting the see and hear and go.
And when you have a positive feel in,
You'll just pour your attention into that,
Like you're blowing on an ember.
I find it helpful to keep breathing slowly and deeply.
It's to really give oxygen to pleasant emotion.
So your positive emotion may have a distinctive flavor,
Like joy or joy in your body.
Happiness,
Gratitude,
Or compassion.
But it's not necessary.
You just know intuitively,
You can tell if it's pleasant,
And that's enough.
It's more than the content of that positive emotion.
What we're really interested in and what will sustain and nourish it the most is becoming absorbed in the contour of that positive emotion.
So we're honing in on the location of positivity in the body and noticing whether it ebbs and flows,
Whether it's growing,
Whether it has temperature and shape.
I'm going to try to relax and give it room to grow,
If it will,
Allowing space.
We can trust here that if non-positive arises,
That that's okay too.
We don't need to tense up and resist it.
When we do,
That also throttles our positivity.
So there's room for everything.
If non-positive arises,
We let that be and just turn our attention back to where we can contact positive emotion.
We may be able to keep that going and keep it expanding.
We may be able to keep it expanding and strengthening by breathing deeply and slowly and re-upping a smile from time to time.
We may be able to keep it expanding and strengthening by breathing deeply and slowly and re-upping a smile from time to time.
So if that positive emotion ever fades to the point where it starts to feel like a struggle,
It feels frustrating,
Then that would be the time to evoke it again in whatever way works best.
Imagine your dog smiling.
And later on,
On your own,
You might want to try to use music too as a trigger,
Be a very powerful and effective trigger for feel good.
Space your breathing and practice your breathing and even the others.
You may also try to recover and Perhaps love yourself as its permanent,
It will happen.
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