This meditation is led by Gris Alves. You're listening to the Tales of Recovery. Once you find a comfortable place to sit or lay down, and if you're starting this and are feeling a bit anxious, too anxious to sit or lay down, you can try shaking your body a bit, moving your arms up and down, maybe touching your toes, or standing straight up and lifting your heels and then letting them drop on the floor a few times. Taking a profound breath in. And then an open mouth exhale. A few more of those.
It's okay to make some noise on the exhale because it actually lets your body know that you're about to soften a little bit. if possible, relax into your body. If you're sitting or laying down, or you're ready now to sit, we'll begin by following the breath. What do I mean by following the breath? Well, you can gently close your eyes or look towards your nose and notice as it goes inside your nose and then follow it as it exits either your nose or your mouth.
You can even try painting it. it's coming in one color and it's coming out another you're just gonna follow it just for a few seconds and as you follow it in and out try and notice the weight of your body on the chair or on the bed on the sofa and all of the points of contact so you're following your breath in and exhaling but at the same time you're noticing the points of contact of your seat, your body, where they meet.
And then tracking your right leg and your left leg all the way down to your feet. So sending all the attention now to the feet, to the felt sense of your feet. You might notice your shoes, you might notice that you're barefoot. But press your feet onto the ground so that you can see the felt sense of the feet pressing onto the ground.
So that you can experience it. keep following the breath in and out and next we'll bring the awareness from the feet up onto their knees tracking the thighs into your hip again perhaps even wiggling your hips from left to right or from front to back imagining the hip bones inside of your body and how they are moving and every time they move they sort of pull at your spinal cord a bit and at the joints of your legs it's pretty interesting, yeah and keep following the breath in now.
You can keep moving your hips or pause very aware of the inside of your body so maybe now your belly as it grows and then it softens every inhale and exhale sending the attention to the lower back the side of your lower back then the belly and around to the lip almost like you're tracking your torso through the felt sense so perhaps you can notice where your lower back is touching the chair or or the sofa, or your bed, or the felt sense of your shirt or your sweater.
Continuing to follow the breath and moving the attention a little bit upwards now, towards the chest area. Noticing in the inhale and the exhale how your chest moves. And when you exhale, how it moves again.
If the mind is chattering or going into commentary that's okay that's what it's supposed to do and it's what it's gonna do so we very gently bring the attention back to the feet pressing them against the floor tracking your body one leg the other leg the hips we're back in it take a deep breath in exhaling now feeling your belly your back and now tracking the the spinal cord through the back all the way to your neck. Sending the attention there.
Whether you can feel it or not, visualize all of your attention to your spinal cord all the way up to the neck. And then traveling down the shoulders, maybe on an exhale you can move the shoulders away from your ears. Landing them a little softer, and then tracking down the right arm as you inhale and exhale, and the left arm, continuing to follow the breath in and out, and remembering that if you are thinking future or past thoughts or to-do lists or that this is weird, it's okay.
This is a practice of returning to the present moment, which you might do right now As you once more follow, you inhale and the exhale. All we're doing here is becoming masters of returning to the present moment. We're training in each breath just for this exercise to be here with what's happening. So I now can maybe send my attention to my throat all the way up to my jaw and notice if I can soften the jaw if is it tight just bringing the awareness to that part of the body.
Inhaling and exhaling all the way down my arms to notice my hands and whether or not my hands are soft or tense? Are they clenching? Or can I open them? There's no right or wrong. We are just noticing. This is what's happening in my body right now. Can I be curious about it? No judgments. This is just a practice. Of embodied mindfulness. And I inhale again, and I exhale. If it's all right to just get curious about what's coming up.
As I inhale and exhale, and now, perhaps I can send my attention to my forehead, noticing if I can soften the forehead, and then moving the attention to my eyelids, noticing where the top eyelid meets the bottom eyelid. it. And maybe even sending my attention, my imagination to the back of the eyes, where the muscles of the eyes pull it to the left and to the right. Send the breath in there.
And noticing the felt sense of your hair your skull tracking down their left ear then the right ear and all the way down to the throat the chest the belly, the point of contact of your seat tracking down your legs all the way down to the feet, continuing to inhale deeply as if the air was coming in from the top of your head and then exhaling scanning the body all the way down to your feet, getting curious about any tension changes in temperature thoughts coming up, or sensations,
inhaling and softening into this present moment just for this practice we can get on with the to-do list in a bit it. But for now, it's just as. And this might be difficult to be with. So we might offer some words of compassion for our bodies that have been through so much, that have a hard time stopping because perhaps they don't feel safe. So may I offer compassion to my body in each breath.
I'm not the only one that goes through this. and practicing it's really just a training of the mind to be with myself just as I am not needing to change anything, or fix anything, I'm just accompanying myself with compassion every breath, I can be my best friend and watch how I speak to myself with kindness and respect, which are or my breath right. Just this breath. And the next one. And the next one. Music.