Mindfulness of the Breath and Body Audio Transcript


As you sit here, seeing if you can gently invite your awareness to expand around the belly or the nostrils or wherever you are attending to the breath, to include as well a sense of the body as a whole sitting here breathing, becoming, if you will, even more the mountain itself so that the sense of the whole of your body and the image of a lofty and majestic mountain coalesce into one stable presence sitting here, grounded on your cushion or chair or bench. Feeling the entirety of the body and its sensory field right out to the skin, almost as if you could feel the skin itself breathing and the air around the body, in touch inwardly and outwardly with the whole of the body, not through thought, but through direct sensory experiencing and cradling it in awareness moment by moment as we sit here with a sense of the whole body sitting and breathing.

Allowing the sense of the whole body sitting and breathing to now be featured center stage in the field of our awareness, sustaining it as best we can. And when the mind becomes distracted and wanders off, recognizing what is on our mind when we become aware that it's lost in thought, and gently bringing it back over and over again to this sense of the body as a whole, sitting here breathing, with no agenda other than to be present, awareness filling the body, bathing the body, the whole body alive and awake.

If you choose, feeling free to include within this wider sense of the body as a whole, sitting and breathing, any particular patterns of sensations that may arise within the body, perhaps from those regions that are in contact with the floor or the chair or with your cushion or bench, or where your hands are touching your knees or perhaps each other in your lap. As best you can, holding all these sensations together with the sense of the breath and the body as a whole in a wide and spacious awareness, watching them come and go and flux and change moment by moment by moment as we sit here.

From time to time, you may experience sensations arising that are particularly intense in one region or another, and perhaps even a sense of struggling to be still or just trying to hang on in the face of the intensity, especially if it is highly unpleasant. If that is the case and you find your attention repeatedly drawn away from attending to the body as a whole, sitting here breathing, you might experiment with intentionally bringing your attention right into the region of greatest intensity, and as best you can, exploring the detailed pattern of the sensations, their exact location, their precise qualities, how they do or don't change from moment to moment, even whether they move around within the body.

Again, not thinking about how you're feeling, but actually allowing yourself to feel whatever is already here to be felt and knowing what you are feeling through awareness itself. Breathing into the regions of greatest intensity, just as we do in the body scan, and breathing out from them, experiencing what unfolds moment by moment and breath by breath as we put out the welcome mat and bring this degree of intimacy to them.

And, of course, if and when the intensity subsides or the awareness becomes more stable, expanding the field of awareness to once again include a larger sense of the body as a whole sitting here breathing, mountain like, dignified, fully awake, fully at home in this timeless moment. Soon, you will hear the sound of a bell to signal the end of this segment of the sitting meditation practice. If you are extending your practice today, then just continuing right through the bell with a seamless continuity of moment to moment awareness.

Otherwise, please use the sound of the bell to mindfully bring this period of formal practice to a close.