Sit,Walk,Work (SW^2)
Awakening to Lovingkindness
"Ready some gentlemen, may I have your attention please?" So I'll give you a quick recap as to where the practice went. We started in our body, so we started focusing on what we were feeling physically today as a means of grounding ourselves. For those who are new or to the practice, all of these things can be areas of focus, your body, your breath, your thoughts, everything that kind of happens in your experience becomes a door or a tool to kind of learning and observing and creating your overall experience. So we started physically in the body, and then we moved from the physical bodies into the breath, which can often naturally pair well together after we got through our sense of groundedness, we moved into our breath, and then from the breath, we moved into observing and noticing our thoughts in a very general way, and then we noticed them in a very specific way around gratitude and joy and kind of a bit of self-call-it-self-love, self-compassion, self-kindness, whatever language word feels good for you, and that was kind of where we focused on a bit today, and then that took us around to noticing our awareness or experience, which was as often the hardest part of class, right, like it's for me to ask you just to sit here and be, and kind of suspend your natural desire to judge the moment or want to be somewhere else or think that it needs to be different than it is, that's a tough one. So for a couple of minutes, dropped back into our breath and voila! 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 stand-alone guided 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 times. Alright, well welcome everyone, first off, let me thank you all for being here, making time out of your day to practice in this community, is not only good for you, but it's also good for all of us, right, to kind of sit and take a bit of time to explore what's going on in the body and in the mind, it's a 30-minute guided practice, which means I'll do most of the talking and kind of follow along with my instructions that I provide, right, you're going to sit and kind of observe what's going on in the body and mind at any given moment, which is its own dance that gets strung together to make your complete experience. And so, a couple things to note for the folks that might be new, there will be periods of silence that you'll encounter along the way, so just know that that's part of the practice and that gets your attention in the same way any of the prompts that I give would, because we're all on the path learning here, we all have a different experience when it comes to meditation, and so with that, if you haven't already made yourself comfortable, go ahead and begin to do so, if you're sitting, you want your spine kind of as long as it can be. The point of that is you want to be able to breathe, so you don't want to be kind of constricted in any way that's going to take away your ability to breathe, so make sure you kind of get your posture set up in that way and nice and grounded, you might be filling the feet connected to the floor, you might be filling the sits bones connected to your seat if you're sitting, if you're kind of lying down or lying back, then let yourself kind of soften into the surface that's holding you and supporting you, let your arms soften pull your shoulders down from from the ears a bit, and then put your hands someplace they're going to be nice and comfortable in your lap or by your side. Take a breath in to make sure you can, and then as you breathe out close your eyes and kind of start to turn the attention inwards, that's kind of the first way we start off in the practice. Now, if it doesn't feel comfortable or safe for you to close the eyes, you can begin to kind of shift your gaze just slightly out in front of you, but if not, I advise you to close the eyes so that you can kind of hold your attention inwards for the practice. And as we first start to sit, there can be a lot of things that we bring into our practice, a lot of shoots, a lot of expectations, a lot of desire for the practice to be something for us. So tonight, I'm going to ask you just to kind of maybe suspend some of that for the time being and kind of let this moment just open up to you in the way that it is. And so that means you don't have to be perfect, you don't have to get it right, but you simply get to see what it is when you pull back some of the story that we put on things. And with the eyes closed, I want you to begin to let your attention get a general sense for how the body is feeling this afternoon, evening-ish, depending on where you are. And this direction is a broad one that kind of allows your attention just to kind of notice what it feels. You might feel your weight, you might feel the pressure of your hands, for example. You might feel your breath or the ambient temperature in the room. There isn't any one thing that I'm directing your attention to. This is a little more fluid, but the intention is kind of free to just move from what it feels now to what it feels now, and so on and so forth. Thank you. the world. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] When you really feel things start to soften and settle, you might even notice subtleties like the heartbeat in your chest or feel the pulse in your arms or your hands. Now where meditation can often get challenging is anytime we try to direct our attention consciously, it might get pulled away. Because in the field of your awareness that you are observing. There are multiple objects that can capture your attention, not just what I'm asking you to focus on. So when your attention strays, we get lost in this background noise, or some random dot that showed up. [BLANK_AUDIO] Your goal is to notice that and go back to observing what's happening in the body. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] One of the things that happens when we start to focus our attention into witness ourselves in this way is that we really see how much is going on in each moment. That's overshadowed by our thinking mind or priorities or the drum beat of time, right? Because there's something else that we have to take care of in the next moment. We can overlook these subtle parts of our experience. [BLANK_AUDIO] And so in taking our attention wide I like to now bring it in and make it a little more specific, a little more concentrated. [BLANK_AUDIO] It's as if we're taking the flow of our attention and we're funneling it in a specific direction. And that direction is towards any sense of feeling grounded in this moment. [BLANK_AUDIO] And you can take that direction in a couple of ways. One, you can physically feel the parts of your body that are grounding you. [BLANK_AUDIO] Feet connected, sits bones connected, arms and legs, heavy or light. [BLANK_AUDIO] Affirmness that comes from you being still in this moment. [BLANK_AUDIO] Noticing if there's any steadiness in the way that the mind is moving or the way the breath is moving. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] It's when we start to consciously look for this sense of groundedness within us. [BLANK_AUDIO] And we can start to see that it's always present, it's always available. [BLANK_AUDIO] Even when it's overshadowed by all of the noise of life, the signal is still there, an undercurrent of it, supporting. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And I'm keeping with that sensation of feeling connected and grounded right here in the present moment. [BLANK_AUDIO] Begin to let your attention slip into your pattern of breathing. [BLANK_AUDIO] If it hasn't already, the breath has been right there in the stream of your experience, along with your thoughts and your feeling, and the sensations of your body. [BLANK_AUDIO] And as you come to direct your attention on your breath, you can start by simply noticing your inhales and your exhale. [BLANK_AUDIO] When the breath comes in, when the breath goes out, [BLANK_AUDIO] The pace at which that happens. [BLANK_AUDIO] The pace at the body that move and conjunction with it. [BLANK_AUDIO] And it might be helpful to consider the original intention we started practice with, which is, could we kind of be here with the moment? Without our judgment of it being anything other than what it is, changing moment to moment, and let that be okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And as your attention, as your attention kind of follows the breath, notice the effect that has on the rest of your experience. These various streams and parts of your experience kind of work together in conjunction. The way we breathe impacts the way we feel, overlays the way we think. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Remembering that each time we get distracted or get lost in thought, as we call it, or maybe lost in a sensation, then we can always come back to the original area of focus. No need to make a big deal out of it. Simply go back to observing. Over time, this becomes path to unlocking a bit of compassion and kindness for ourselves. Instead of trying to force anything to happen, we learn to meet the moment a bit more generously. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And as far in the practice, you've had a chance to give your attention to the body, to overlay that with the breath, to be here with the flow of your experience. And now we'll begin to use and use our mind in a way that helps to make things a bit more present. Up to this point, we've kind of just allowed it to be there, providing commentary or maybe additional thoughts. So now I'd like to focus the mind a bit. One of the ways we can do that is by directing your attention towards a specific thought. And for practice today, I'd like for you to direct your attention towards any type of thoughts related to gratitude and joy. [BLANK_AUDIO] This is a broad, broad kind of focus area. So just kind of remember that. That could be simple things, large things, but just moments recently. Or at any time in your life, really, in which you felt a deep sense of gratitude for joy. For yourself. For others. And as you give your attention to thinking about this, let it go wide and big and broad. And notice your breath and notice what you feel in your body. And you really let yourself be open to this particular thought. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] The nice thing about using the mind in this way is that you can add in as much sensory information as you can recall. Sounds or smells or anything that helps to make this moment more vivid, more real, more embodied. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] And when you feel like you can actually feel that gratitude and joy within yourself. Direct your attention towards where that exists in your body. [BLANK_AUDIO] And being able to feel it in the body and in the breath, we offer ourselves that feeling as a gift, as a reminder. [BLANK_AUDIO] Joy and gratitude, but also. [BLANK_AUDIO] Love for yourself, just as you are in this moment. [BLANK_AUDIO] And now for this moment, you are okay. [BLANK_AUDIO] With this next breath, you are whole and complete. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Noticing how this idea that you are whole and you are okay and you're entitled to the gratitude and love that you give to others, you're entitled to have that yourself. [BLANK_AUDIO] These ideas swirl here in your experience. Let yourself be open to receiving them and notice how that feels. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] Throughout practice, kind of alluded to this thing called awareness to the space in which you've kind of been the witness for what's been happening. Space in with your thoughts and sounds and the feelings and the breath all of it kind of shows up in the space of awareness. And awareness is often aligned with the metaphor of a stream that all of this has kind of been flown, moving within us and through us. And so for this next part of practice, kind of release any focus on any one thing. Simply sit and observe the flow of the stream of your experience. Noticing the spaciousness of it the way that every part is allowed to be present. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] In the last minute of practice, start to slip your attention back to your breath. You can't move from just resting in this space to grounding it back within your body, back to one of the starting points of your practice. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] When you're ready, you can link the eyes open, they were closed. Take a breath in for yourself. Maybe follow that with another breath in for each other. And a third breath you can give to everybody else. 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.