Sit,Walk,Work (SW^2)
Guided Meditation on Equilibrium and Heart Awareness
Hi. Welcome to the Sit Walk Work Podcast, a show about paying attention. My name is Dominic, your host, and today's episode is a standalone God in meditation designed to give you an opportunity to practice pretty much wherever you are. So when you're ready, the practice will begin shortly after the following challenge. Moving through the theme that I've been working on this month is this idea of equilibrium. So and the idea of how do we work with our heart more? We are very, we're a very heady society. We've all been trained that way, myself included. And so often our decisions and our thinking comes from here. And we forget that there's also something going on in the center of our chest, and we can actually look to it for wisdom and advice. And so I wanted a way to kind of have that show up as a matter of practice. So we started with the breath, first just the body breathing itself, then we kind of moved into a couple conscious size, which is just a nice way to relax the nervous system. Feel free to use those whenever you feel like all week long, like it's been a thing for me recently, especially when I'm super stressed. I'll take like five or 10 of those breaths. And so it's it helps to kind of reset you in the moment. So we did that. And then we moved from the breath into noticing how the mind was working today, whatever came up, I kept it really general. So it could have been a lot of things. Most of us have stuff going on in our minds that we can observe and see and find some patterns. And so we worked with the mind. And then we came back into the heart specifically and did some heart space breathing, where I had you focus your attention and your breath there. And then we played with the idea of what happens when we put a statement, like I love myself as I am. For some of us, that statement may not feel true in the mind, but it might feel true in the heart. We just forget to look there. So I asked you to kind of explore that phrase in both of those places. And then kind of set with the big picture focus of everything that was happening in practice and ended with a little bit of sound. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? All of you've got yourself settled in. Go ahead and close the eyes. With the eyes closed, we send the first signal of the practice. That signal is to say, hey, we are going to take our attention inwards and explore what's going on with ourselves. And so my intent, my outcome for practice today is centered around putting the head and heart together. So this is a theme. This is my theme for the month of putting balance back into our lives in a time in which things are wildly unbalanced. We have to find it within ourselves in the subtle in the most subtle of ways. And so let our practice be an opportunity to explore that. And of course, my outcome may differ from yours. And so I always suggest you trusting your inner voice for what you'd like to get out of your practice today. And then following that, and maybe, maybe there's some overlap between what I want to do and what you want to do. But with the eyes closed and you beginning to settle in, let your attention just kind of notice what you're bringing in right now, how you're feeling physically as you start to settle in the practice. And it can even be a question that you put out there. What am I feeling today? How am I feeling today? And then as you kind of let your focus drop to that question, see what bubbles up the responses that come back to you from that kind of statement. I'm remembering that if nothing arises, that's okay too, right? Like we aren't here to make things happen in our practice. Our practice is about getting to learn about ourselves and our experiences. So they were not so beholden to everything that just kind of comes up for a moment to moment. And I want you to start to feel your breath. There's two ways I want you to feel it. One is feel it as it moves through the body. But see if you can really hone in on feeling it as it enters the body. So noticing where your initial entry point is for your breath, whether that's you breathing through your nose or breathing through the mouth, but just kind of feel where the breath comes in and then let your attention follow the breath down, down the throat into the lungs, feel the expansion of the lungs, the movement of the diaphragm. As your body kind of makes space, right? That's what you're doing when you take a breath. You're making space. And then you catch the reverse of that in breath, your exhale. And it can be nice to let your to let yourself slip into the pattern of your breath. To kind of ride the wave or the rhythm of the breath. You Notice if you're kind of tensing up or kind of affecting the breath in any way from simply paying attention to it. And then see if you can kind of soften that and let yourself just naturally be with the body breathing itself. We are going to do some some conscious breathing here in a few moments, but for now you just let the body breathe itself. Now here's the thing. The breath is never alone and in this moment, in this moment you have so many other parts of your experience that may be vying for your attention. So you might have something that you're thinking about that's grabbing your attention. You might be pulled by the sounds in the room around you or the environment around you. You may physically be feeling some type of way. And should those moments kind of pull you away from this following the rhythm of your breath? Allow your attention to return back to breathing. And while we do various techniques in our practice here, this technique of following the breath, being distracted and coming back to the breath, is the heart of your practice. If you do nothing but this, you will learn so much about yourself and about how experience works. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And begin to let your attention focus in on the inhale. I want you to feel what it's like when the breath is full, what the body feels like. It's kind of the ribs expand and the belly expands as the diaphragm moves down and that space that I talked about earlier gets made for you to take that inhale breath. And we're going to just do a couple rounds of what is called or what I was taught is called a conscious side. And it's exactly what it sounds like. You're going to take an in breath, you're going to fill up like you've been doing and you're just going to go. And then as soon as it's done, you just repeat the process. So it would be inhaling and kind of filling up until you kind of feel like you've taken a full breath and then just a soft maybe open mouth exhale. And as soon as that's done, repeat and let that cycle for about five times. Now, really forcing and just letting the exhale breath fall out with each round. And when you're done with that last one, let the breath just turn back to its natural pattern. But observe what that feels like to your body. And as you feel the breath, and now the body, because there are no real separation, how you breathe does affect your nervous system, which affects your body. So you can sense and feel it in your breath. And as you kind of are witnessing the body, the breath, begin to witness and notice what's going on in your mind. What is the commentary that came into practice or has come up as you've been practicing? I like to think of the mind as coloring the moment. And oftentimes each moment is pretty neutral on its own. It's what our thought patterns overlay in each moment that begins to shape our perceptions of that moment. And that's what I'd like for you to observe here. For the next few minutes, observe your thinking. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] You can notice if your pattern of thinking is future based or based in the past, often our ability to ruminate lies in the past. Sometimes it can lie in the future thinking about things you have to come, outcomes that haven't been determined yet, things that might be slightly out of our control. [BLANK_AUDIO] We're thinking about things that have happened that also can't be undone in our outer of our control and in our mind when left to its own devices. [BLANK_AUDIO] We'll run that tape. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] If you notice that your pattern of thinking isn't in alignment with maybe your outcome for practice today, or better yet, it's not useful. [BLANK_AUDIO] What would happen if you let it go? [BLANK_AUDIO] If you chose not to surrender into its certainty and allowed it to move through you the way you've allowed your breath to move freely in, freely out. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's easy to see in our pattern of breathing what happens if we grab on to either end of it. Hold too long on an exhale and things get uncomfortable, hold too long on an inhale, same happens. [BLANK_AUDIO] That experience is no different for the way we grab ideas out of our thinking mind. [BLANK_AUDIO] Some of our ideas are better served to simply be exhaled. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Another way of kind of embracing whatever's arising is to be open to allowing its opposite to be considered. [BLANK_AUDIO] So if you have all pattern where things are always a certain way, what happens if you let the idea that maybe they're not, always that way. [BLANK_AUDIO] Into your awareness. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] I'd like to begin to move our attention from focusing on the movement of our mind. And I want our attention to come down to our heart space, to the center of our heart. And as you focus your attention here, I want you to overlay your breath there too. So imagine that you're taking a breath in and that breath in is coming from the heart space. And as you breathe out, the breath is just going back into the space around you. [BLANK_AUDIO] Our heart space is a space that often when we're in our minds, maybe lost in rumination or kind of have a thought pattern that isn't helpful. We forget that we can drop our attention here into our heart. And we can ask what it thinks about the moment. And if we get still enough and listen, we will feel and answer our rise. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And as you're breathing into the heart space, allow this phrase to enter your mind and to enter your practice. I love myself as I am. And as that statement enters the practice, one, notice how the mind receives it. And if it is anything less than welcoming, ask your heart how it feels about that statement. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] I love myself as I am. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And it isn't a matter of either the mind or the heart being right. It's that both can be true. And that you can gravitate towards that, which serves you in the best way. That moves you forward. That allows you growth. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Allowing yourself to step back from focusing on the heart breathing and contemplating a phrase that you love yourself as you are. And as you step into the global witness of your practice, yourself connect with the steady, unchanging nature of your practice. Just kind of watch change happen. Try not to grab on anything. Just see it come, see it go. Watch its impermanence unfold in your breath, in the sounds, in the feelings, the sensations, the flow of thoughts. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] If something does, reach up and grab your attention as soon as you realize it. Let it go and return back to observing. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Recognize the space that's present in this moment. Notice your distance in what feels like your distance to the things that are coming up in your experience. Do you feel really a mesh or is there just a bit of space between you and whatever is happening in practice right now? [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] In the last few minutes of practice, open your attention up to the sounds around you. [BLANK_AUDIO] Feel the sounds that might be close, the ones that might be far away. Notice that there might be no distance in those sounds and how they just appear in each moment of your experience. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] When you're ready, blink your eyes open to include our practice today. As the eyes open and the world comes back in, you still have the same amount of space and experience still happens the same way as it always has. So the world with the eyes open is no different than the ones with the eyes closed. In some cases, it's easier to focus, but the rules are definitely the same. There's only experience and however we're interacting with it in that moment. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I invite you to check out my sub stack where we are building a community of like-minded individuals to discuss all topics related to the idea of paying attention. I hope to see you there, but until then, with meta may you be well.