Find Your Belly & Ground

So we begin to tune our skills of compassion through tuning our skills of grounding. Compassion requires a steadiness, a stability, a willingness to be with what is. So step one, find your seat. Maybe you're sitting on the ground, maybe you're sitting in a chair. Snuggle in a little bit through your sit bones.

Big deliberate inhale. And exhale as you let an audible sigh happen. Can you really let your low belly relax and drop? And do this again. Inhale.

And exhale, like soft down through the low belly, like really let this carry you downward. It can even help if you slump a little bit, like just pull, pull, let the earth have you. Allowing your attention to move down. Can feel depressing if you're not used to it. We won't be here for much longer, but just really have a sense of down.

If you're sitting in a chair and your feet are on the ground, open your feet up a little bit and start to see if you can trust the ground beneath you. Yes. And now the play as you maintain this connection with pull down. Can you allow the spine to grow back up tall without losing the fullness of the lower belly? Okay, shoulders relaxed.

Let the hands rest how it's comfortable for you. Maybe it's in your lap. Maybe it's open. Maintaining your awareness on your belly and what can help is if you feel the movement of your breath in your belly. You're not really breathing in your belly because your breath doesn't technically go beyond the lungs.

But there's a feeling of letting the belly as you inhale expand and drop. And as you exhale, you can feel the belly just gently draw in a little bit. And when I'm referring to the belly, that's not really an anatomical cue, it's kind of below the navel, a handful of inches in the little area you might know it as the pooch. That's an anatomical term. Okay, like let the skull align.

And now maintaining your awareness in the belly and a feeling of the breath here, begin to tune towards the quality of your eyes. So if you haven't already, you might close your eyes or let them softly focus. And can you for real, let your eyes feel softer, like as if you were looking from your belly. Let your eyes feel kinder, more tender. The kind of eyes that you wish somebody might look upon you with.

So after in the jaw, let the tongue come to rest. And so just a handful more moments here, just feeling the willingness to allow your attention to be lower in the body and the belly, feeling a willingness to soften and let your eyes be kinder. And then remembering our skill from season one of open, tender, receptive hands, easy in the back of the heart. To be able to sit like this is to be able to more easily have the capacity to see what is without being tempted or being less tempted to fix or change or alter. Beautiful practice this today when you find opportunities.

Just dropping in your belly, letting your eyes be kinder. Get good at this. Thank you.