Day 2: Allow Emotions

Welcome to day two of your meditation challenge. Today's meditation will be very similar to day one, but I'm going to start allowing a little bit more space between my comments so you have a little bit more time in the quiet and the silence so it builds your skills to eventually be good on your own after the 21 days without me. So find your seat, a comfortable position, again, you know what you need, you know enough lift, knees supported if they don't come all the way down, we don't want excessive discomfort in the lower body. And then once you've found that, just go ahead and make your choice on hand placement. Sit tall and close your eyes.

You're officially making that shift from outward energy, outward attention to the inward journey of meditation. And so when you close your eyes and shut out those distractions, then you really start to feel more acutely. You become more sensitive. So as we did yesterday, bring your attention to your foundation. It's always important, meditation or yoga, asana, to establish a good foundation.

So becoming aware of your feet, relaxing your feet and feeling where your feet are contacting the floor or your prop support. Relax the feet and move your mind's eye, your attention up and into your shins, the lower legs, softening, relaxing and feeling where the skin touches the floor or your support. And then making the journey up and over across both knees and into your thighs. Making the thigh bones, the femur bones drop down and the muscles relax. The fronts of the legs, the thighs and the backs of the legs, the hamstrings.

And if anything in the lower body isn't quite right in terms of placement or positioning, just a gentle readjustment now so that you feel good. And then moving from the legs, mentally move up and into the base of the pelvis. Being either centered on your sitting bones or sometimes a little on the front side of the sitting bones is helpful for posture. And then feel that base, the base of your pelvis, ground down. And again, that feeling of rootedness of being heavy and stable in your lower body.

And then moving your awareness once again up your spine, sacrum, fused vertebra below the lower back, top of the sacrum, slightly move it forward to initiate the curve in your lower back. Relax your belly, relax the digestive system. Free from tension. And then just as we did yesterday, begin that ascent, feeling the inward curvature of your lower back so you're not collapsing or sinking or rolling backwards. Begin to walk up the vertebra, up the spine, physically it's the vertebral column, energetically it's the shashumna, energy channel, the main nadi correlates with the spine.

Begin to walk up, up, up towards the mid-back, feeling a sense of lift as you go and as you keep moving your awareness up and creating the lift, you go up between the shoulder blades and into the region of your upper spine. Legs slide down even though that axis of your spine is lifting up. Move up to the base of your neck, it's called the cervical spine. Pause there just to align the shoulder girdle, a good amount of space through the front and back body creating balance is important. Just gently widen through your collar bones, just slightly moving the shoulder heads back.

Gently widen through your shoulder blades creating width across the back body. And once again blades slide down. And then continue that journey, go back to the base of your neck, moving up through the back of the neck, feeling, sensing that curvature moving inwards until you reach the base of your skull. And then up along the back of the head until you reach the crown of your head. And this sense of lifting even taller, up and beyond the top of your head, almost like you're suspended.

And then we'll make our way down the front side. Relax your forehead. Relax your eyes. Relax your eyes. Be really soft behind the lids.

If there's any gripping or any expression or tension across your face, relax your face. Relax the inside of the mouth. Bring the teeth together without tension. The tongue can rest at the roof of the mouth. Relax your throat.

Keep moving down across the chest, observing that sense of spaciousness. It's the front of the heart, it's the home of Anahata Chakra. Home of the breath, the lungs, chest, open and relaxed. Just keep moving down across the ribs. Notice the subtle and small movements of the ribs as you're breathing.

Once again, all the way back to the belly, you have a habit of gripping or holding tension in the belly or the lower back. Remember relax. Relax your abdominal muscles. And back down to your base, to the hips, the thighs, the shins, the feet, sitting bones, your whole foundation, relaxed, heavy and grounded. So now again you've covered the territory of your body, aligning and relaxing.

Now even more internal. Starting again with the emotional content. And this is sometimes one of the hardest aspects of meditation. When we get still, when we get quiet, things bubble up. So whatever is there today, can you just sit with it for a few moments?

Old grief, anxiety, joy, whatever arises rather than pushing it away or going somewhere else, let's pause and just have a few moments sitting in that emotional content. Really observing. You start to notice the intensity of whatever it is you're discovering often diminishes when you're just able to be with it and allow it to pass through. And now I want you to observe your mind, what is your mind state like today? There's not a right answer, there just is what is.

Sitting quality of mind today and sitting with that. And now observing pranic flow, energy. We are all little mini energy systems. What is your energy like today? How are you experiencing your energy today and simply observing a few moments?

And now moving from the awareness of our energy towards the observation of breathing. So again, shifting technique, observing your breath. And you may experience, as I mentioned yesterday, the moment you become aware of your breathing, it suddenly feels awkward or like the rhythm has changed. Stay with your breath until it feels natural and it's like it's breathing itself again. And notice what the breath feels like today, is it smooth, does it feel restricted, does it feel easy?

It's the urge to shape or change or deepen or control your breath and just watch it. Once again, this will be our primary focus now for the duration of the meditation. When you stay on current breath, whether it's the in breath, the out breath or the little sliver of space in between, top of inhale before you exhale, there's a brief pause. Time of exhale, that moment of emptiness before breath comes back in. You start to observe more subtlety, recognizing when your mind has roamed off and simply return.

Again, it's simple, but it's not necessarily easy. Return to your breathing. Sometimes as we get further along our meditation, we kind of succumb to gravity and we start to sink or round or collapse. So if that's happened, I'm reminding you to sit really tall again, a very quick lift from the tail to the crown, aligning all the natural curves and then returning to breath awareness. We'll have a few minutes of pure silence.

Yes. Now last few moments of your meditation. Let go of the breath technique and once more, checking in. Now that you've been sitting quietly for quite a while, what is the internal emotional content? Pay attention, observe.

Letting yourself be in whatever it is you discover. Play of mind, state, now. Busy mind, clear mind, foggy mind. Pay attention, and now paying attention to pranic flow, observing your energy body now, few moments. And then that deepest internal recognition, spiritual aspect of your practice. Have a moment to feel it, see it, connect with it, remember it, acknowledge it.

And then let's close by bringing hands together at the heart, namaste. Excellent day two. I'll see you on the cushion tomorrow. Thank you for practicing with me.