Emotional Awareness Meditation

Hi there, let's continue our self study. Step one, be comfortable. I'm going to suggest for this next one, if you're sitting in a chair, to really sit with your feet on the floor. Let your toes spread wide and allow yourself to feel the ground underneath you. Maybe a deliberate inhale, an exhale, let it happen, softening your low belly and resting, trusting the chair, trusting that you know how to sit.

Allow your heart to be bright and again find the alignment of the skull so that the mind feels expansive. Eyes are either closed or softly focused. We're going to tune in a little bit to study how the emotions in our physical body relate. In order to do this, step one, let your attention come towards the region of your heart. Let the breath help tether your attention and be aware of the dimensionality of your heart.

While often it's easy to focus on the front of the heart. Be aware that there's a back, there are sides. And by heart you might find yourself in the physical heart or you might find yourself more attuned to what the yogis call the energetic heart, which sits a little bit more in the center of your chest, behind the breast bone. Out in the jaw, kinder in your eyes. And now just easily and without too much fuss, allow somebody for whom you have easy affection to come into your field.

Somebody uncomplicated, might be a grandchild, could even be a pet. And as you bring this being into your field, just be aware of the quality that arises in your heart, in your breath, even in your face. Be aware of the very direct effect of thinking on somebody you care about. A few more moments. Usually as you're ready, thank this being for allowing you to feel loving.

Only just return to the feeling of the breath in the heart space. And then if it feels safe to do so with the same tenderness, gently allow being with whom you have a more complex, perhaps difficult relationship come into your field. As you do this, if you need to imagine them further away or under a glass jar or very tiny, do that. But as you bring this being into your field, notice the very immediate effect on your physiology, in your heart, in your breath, in your face, in your throat. Just a few more moments, just study.

People gently thank this being for being a part of your meditation experiment. And now this isn't so easy. How do you unruffle? So tune into some of our skills, slack in the jaw, kind in the eyes, dome the upper palate, let your skull feel wider. Maybe instead of returning to the breath in the heart region, drop down a little lower to the belly.

Honing the skill of slipping into something more comfortable, honing the skill of coming back to what's true now, which is your breath, your body. If it would help to take a little chaser, you could tune for a moment back to the being for whom you have easy affection, just to brighten your mood a little bit, refresh. And for the last, just a little bit over a minute or so, just resting back into yourself, soft in the belly, slack in the jaw, kind in the eyes. If your eyes are closed now, gently let them open. Thank you.