Guided Meditation – Processing Experience and Sensation like Water

I thought I would share this as maybe it will help you clear your mind and body before you sleep. It is not really a video but a guided meditation, but so far with what I know a video is easier to share than audio. It is raw, not perfected or polished. I blow my nose, I have a cold, I sit up in a wonky way. It is taken from the end of a online Zoom yoga session with a private client. I have been wanting to share some guided meditations, when I teach it is pretty much all guided movement and stillness meditation. I don’t have a plan or use a script. I tried recording some with a script I wrote, and while I like what I said, it sounded like I was reading from a script. In this what I say is not exactly right, yet it sounds, at least to me, more authentic, albeit a little slow and with a stuffy nosed voice. I like it better than the script though. In 14 years of teaching it is the first time I have recorded myself and listened to the recording as a meditation for myself…I tend to be more ephemeral than documenting. I think it will help me get better at this to do this, record myself in real time rather than scripted and then experience myself as a student. It is fascinating. I am different on the outside than I am inside of me, it seems so far, and as I watch myself I have extreme compassion for this little woman that I am, in the same way I have compassion for you when I see you in real life. I will likely record a similar guided meditation and at that point perhaps delete this. Yet in the interim I am sharing what I have available and maybe it will be of interest to you.

turiya yoga

turiya yoga
~
turiya
is pure raw awareness
underlying all other states of consciousness
always accessible
all of the time
~
yoga is the continuum
and the practice
yoking all polarities
as parts of the same whole
balanced at the center
~
turiya yoga is a playful exploration
uncovering the spontaneous, embodied, direct experience
of our interconnected consciousness
manifesting uniquely
through each of us
~
body geometry
aware consciousness

Coming to Attention

Notice sometime when you are engaged in an activity that holds your attention. How you don’t have to try so hard to concentrate, it just happens. Spontaneous focus, effortless attention. Recognize what that feels like.

Then play with purposely focusing your attention while doing simple everyday things that are not so inherently interesting. Recalling the sense of ease you experienced when the focus happened spontaneously on its own.

Notice when you get distracted, and shift your mind back. No big deal. You might have to do it over and over again. Rather than fighting your mind, play with it. Keep coming back to what you are doing. Sharpening your mind with the focus, and letting your mind rest in attention.

Not to block out all of your thoughts, or that thinking or contemplation isn’t ever useful. Yet slowing down the momentum of your compulsive habitual thoughts and developing the capacity to pay attention at will. Not only when attention arises organically, whenever you want it, or need it.

By practicing this in less charged situations you give yourself experience so that when you find yourself in more difficult scenarios where you need to stay aware and important moments when you want to be present, you have developed an increased ability to do so by choice.