Peaceful Presence Practice #1 | Hangout with Andrea, Birds, and Nature

The Presence Sessions are an exploration into relaxing into the nature of our being

You're invited to join us daily to build upon this practice, leading to a deeper connection with yourself and the present moment where peace lives. 
       ( This episode was formerly on the the Pure Light Project Podcast) 

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Chapters

• 0:04 Introduction to Shamatha Meditation Practice
• 11:01 Exploring Presence and New Perspectives

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

we're going to start really gently today. We're going to start really gently with some seated meditation, and this practice is called shamatha, or peaceful, abiding, or calm, abiding, abiding, and it's just a beautiful way to begin connecting with yourself, connecting with yourself, meeting how you are, who you are right now, in the moment. There's nothing needed, there's nothing needed of you. Presence, right, we're sitting together right here right now, as we are, I'm showing up with you, just as I am right here right now. A beautiful bird song, a little bit of traffic, noise, and whatever that is, it's fine, it's part of the world we are in. So we're going to practice today with our eyes open, with our field open, and yet our awareness primarily on our breath, primarily on our breath, and the reason for that is to give us an object to place our awareness, our attention on and to return to when we get maybe swept away or distracted or sluggish swept away or distracted or sluggish. So we're going to work with our breath and this is very, very basic and very, very foundational. Don't dismiss basic for not worth doing. It's actually the one thing that is always with you and that is your breath. And so we can begin with our seat, with our posture and it's important to have your knees either level with your hips or just a little bit lower than and this will really support you is by doing that and being in a good vertical alignment. So where you're not leaning too far forward or backward is you will notice that it takes the pressure off of your tailbone and also, like, if you're leaning too far forward, you may notice some tension in the lower abdomen, in the hip flexors, tops of your legs, in the crease, right there where your hips and your legs sort of connect. Yeah, and so if you're leaning too far back right, it's gonna push that pelvic region and it's gonna sort of crunch the like the sacrum and the tailbone and the low back. It's gonna feel tight. So we don't want that and so just find the alignment where there's not a lot of pressure in that region, kind of down in the pelvic cavity and in the tailbone, up into the sacrum, all right, and then we're going to look, as I said, we're doing an open-eyed practice. Look, as I said, we're doing an open-eyed practice, and so, looking a few feet in front of you, eyes looking down, soft gaze. If your eyes have a lot of tension, you might take a moment and squeeze them tight and relax, and really relax these jaw muscles, upper cheeks, up into the face. Later we'll be doing not today, but later on I'll take you through a variety of practices we can do to soften these things in our body, and you'll also find a lot on my YouTube channel I think it's the Calm playlist, or Calm and Relaxed playlist.

Speaker 1: 5:38

So with that we come to the breath. With that we come to the breath To get a good breath. Let's notice our overall posture. I carry a lot of tension, often in my shoulders, in my upper shoulders and trapezoids, and all of that into my neck. We each carry it in different ways in different places. So for me, what I notice is that I always need to roll my shoulders down and back and do it almost in an exaggerated way. This opens the heart space beautifully, just like squeeze your shoulders back together for a moment, so your shoulder blades are trying to touch and, as you exhale, bring your hands down into your lap and your shoulders should be sort of lightly back and down. Neck elongated, spine elongated we don't have to think about these things too much. They're just points of reference that I wanted to make for you, and now let's begin bringing our awareness onto the breath. And the birds agree, as you can probably hear.

Speaker 1: 7:13

So take a breath right now, just a natural breath. Just see how it feels, notice where the breath is in your body. You want your belly to soften a bit. We're just going to work with a soft belly, soft eyes, soft breath. Calmly, abiding, calmly, hanging out right here, being in presence Again, eyes pointed a few feet in front of you. Keep breathing in and out, nice and relaxed.

Speaker 1: 8:04

The awareness, the mind's eye, stays with the breath and, as you notice, if something comes into your field, a thought perhaps, or a train of them, just allow yourself to drop back a little bit. I like to think of it as stepping to the back of the line with your awareness and just letting all of that happen in front of you while you return to the breath. That stream of thoughts we often call it stream of consciousness, but I would say that's not entirely true. Consciousness, but I would say that's not entirely true. It's a stream of thoughts and we don't need to jump on that stream. Jump into that stream we can step out of and our body and we can be present there's no agenda a little while and be with our body, be with our breath, be with the space we're in, gently, presently. However, we are right here, here, right now.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Thank you, thank you, hey. So thank you so much again for sitting with me today. This is going to be in our ability to be present with what is right now, with the moment, however it is. However it is, you may hear new terms, new language, and for some that may be curious, for some that may be off-putting. It's all okay. Take whatever resonates with you, take whatever sings in your heart and leave the rest alone, and leave the rest alone. So, yeah, thank you, and I want to invite you to check out PureLightBookshopcom, that's shop with double P-E. The link for that will be down in the description. I hope that this serves you well. A few minutes of presence. We'll be building on it over the next month, so come back, come back again tomorrow or any day these will be up for all time, as far as I can tell and so come back and spend some time in presence with me and with all of us who are ready, ready to experience more of it together. Be well.