Sit,Walk,Work (SW^2)
Embracing Transitions: A Meditation on Breath, Body, and Mind
Welcome to the Sit Walk Work Podcast, a show about paying attention. My name is Dominic and I'm your host and today is a guided meditation. And what you can expect is that the practice will open up with a brief recap, followed by the actual practice itself. If you find today's episode valuable, please share with your friends and family and feel free to leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? So in today's practice, I wanted to focus a bit on transitions in our practice and how they show up sometimes in our worlds outside of our practice. So we opened up practice, first by simply noticing what we came into the practice with. And then from there, we moved into focusing on the breath, specifically the in and the outflow of your breath. And then we transitioned from the breath into feeling the body. So we kind of opened up the space of our attention a bit wider. And then we moved from that into focusing on the breath with a bit of a focus word attached to our breathing. So as you breathed, you kind of had this mental word that you were allowing yourself to incorporate. And then we opened the attention to all parts of our experience and kind of allowed ourselves the opportunity to notice those parts of our experience. But also notice the story and the words we put over our experiences and tried to play a little bit with letting some of that go so that we could just be with the changing nature of our experience. And then I kind of dropped in that question for contemplation, which was, dear love, what would you have me know today and then allowed you to sit with that for a few breaths. This is a non-movement practice, so you just kind of need to make yourself comfortable lying down, sitting down somewhere in between. So take this opportunity to kind of get yourself settled in, let the hands rest comfortably by your side or in your either one's fine. If you're sitting up, try to keep the spine nice and long, take a full breath in, that's how you kind of know you've got a pretty reasonable posture that you can really breathe in. If you're lying down, obviously you have the space to be able to breathe, so take a good breath in there as well. Soften the face and the jaw, we hold a lot of tension in this area, so just kind of take a quick scan of it and relax it a bit. The shoulders drop down, and then if it feels safe and comfortable, close your eyes. Doesn't feel safe to close the eyes, look out at a space a couple of inches out in front of you that's not going to be moving a lot and it's going to allow you to rest your vision there. And that kind of sets the groundwork, if you will, the foundation for the practice. You can expect as we move through practice today that we are going to move between various prompts that I provide and a bit of silence to allow you time to sit with those prompts and to explore your practice a bit. And we'll begin the practice of meditation now. A lot of what you do in this class is you learn to pay attention, and it seems like a simple statement, but our attention is often lost in various things throughout the day. Before you put yourself in this moment, you could have came from a variety of activities that held your attention. And so just kind of notice the general sense of what you're coming into practice with today, heaviness, lightness, sadness, happiness, frustration, numbness. There could be a variety of choices and it's not a right or wrong here. It's a merely an acknowledgement that of curiosity applied to yourself, noticing how you feel physically, where tension is held, how this feeling tone interacts with your pattern of breath, and how busy your mind might be in this moment. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] It takes time to transition, whether that's simply just moving from one activity to the next or on a larger scale, changing one portion of our lives. These moments of transition, when we bring our attention to them, can be opportunities for us to explore our practice, and we'll begin by moving our attention to spotlight our breathing today to notice that pattern a little more closely than before. Feel the start of the breath, whether that's breathing in through the nose or breathing in through the mouth, feel the expansion of the breath as it comes down into the lungs as the diaphragm moves, as space is made, or the external to come into your internal space, feel the natural progression or the breath pauses, because you've taken in as much as you can, and as you exhale, the exchange begins and feel the emptiness of that exhale pause at the bottom. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] We often think that our practice is meant to provide us refuge. From the totality of our experience, that when we are focused on one area, that there's a problem if our mind wanders, or if we get distracted, sometimes we might bring a story to the experience. So I ask as you move through practice today and when you find yourself distracted and you notice that distraction, instead of putting a story on what happened, simply return back to wherever you were originally focused, in this case the breath, lengthening the seeds and creating the condition for a bit of self-compassion, and a bit of kindness. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] The wave of your breathing, the rhythm of it, has been with you all day, and this is where the power of your attention comes to play, because unless we're really focused on it, and just kind of falls to the background, where your breath isn't alone in your experience. Your hearing and your feeling, smelling and tasting, all of these elements, these sensory elements, are working in conjunction to kind of create this moment to moment experience. Did you get the witness? So we'll begin to shift our attention from this breath, to how the body is feeling in this moment. Starting with the parts of your body that immediately register. So if you're sitting down, you can feel your sit bones against the surface that you're sitting on, chair, a couch, floor, yoga mat. You can feel your shoulders, your arms resting in your lap. If you're lying down, you can feel how your body is held, by the surface supporting. And in this way, we take our attention wider than just the breath, and we let our attention scan the entire body. We free it up a little bit, so that it's not constrained to any one thing or any one space. You can move from the heaviest parts of yourself to the lightest parts of yourself. You can overlay your breathing and feel where the breath moves the body and these two seemingly separate acts become one. And as you change focus, all the other elements of the experience remain, although they may be slightly in the background. Thank you. [end of transcript] . As you let the attention enter weave between the breath and between the feelings that are present, notice if the mind slipped into storytelling, or what I like the call shooting, telling you how things should be if you're getting it right, this little background commentary, which is also just part of experiencing, but it's adding tension and affecting our breath and overlaying what you're doing, can you soften that a little bit, choose to let it go, put it down, come back to feeling, come back to breathing. . . . Practice is an opportunity to experience all parts of yourself. To notice where you get stuck or you hold on to one thing a little tighter than you should and it gives you space to let it go so that you can create more lightness. Just like as the seasons change and the leaves fall, the trees let go, they don't hold on. Their breath shows you the power of letting go. the light. the light. the light. gently letting your attention shift, back to the breath. bringing that breath more in focus, letting the feeling of the body drift into the background of the moment, as the breath comes to the foreground again. This time we will add an additional layer of focus to help calm the mind if it happens to be slightly agitated. As you finish your exhale breath, so you're completing your breath cycle. Breathing in, breathing out at the finish of that out breath, let your attention focus on the word love. As you drop this focus word in with each breath, notice the ripple. that it generates to the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. when you notice it comes up and using the breath and this focus word, feel that to its completion, let that move through you rather than stuff it away, try to avoid it, tell it it doesn't need to be there, simply let it be present. see how it shifts and changes under the weight of your attention. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. the rest of your experience. where we find ourselves distracted from the practice are the opportunities. the places that strengthen our focus. so much of your practice is built on this idea of beginning again. beginning the restart button with a bit of patience and understanding. letting your attention begin to broaden this time instead of just feeling the body and feeling the breath. open the aperture a bit wider. notice sounds that might be present. notice the way your mind is thinking in this moment. the flow of the stream of thoughts looks like. notice how your body feels now. how your breath moves. and see if you can simply try not to grab, push, pull, judge, or comment on the act of simply experiencing nature of your consciousness. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get 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not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. you can simply try not to get the feeling. listen to what the answer is. see if it's true for you. dear love, what would you have me know today? you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Allow your attention to come back into the breath. Focus on your next inhale, followed by your next exhale. Take another in breath. And then another out breath. One more breath in. And then let that breath go. Now when you're ready, you can begin to open the eyes as we close out practice for today. As you begin to open the eyes, there is anything worth keeping from the last contemplation question you had in practice, you might consider making a mental note of that or shutting it down. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I invite you to check out my substac where we are building a community of like-minded individuals to discuss all topics related to the ideas that we can do. And related to the idea of paying attention. I hope to see you there, but until then, with meta may you be well.